God help us if Farage ever gets “quite useful” at politics. He’ll probably win the US presidency and become supreme galactic warlord
A stupider, uglier and less funny Beppe Grillo. Who has sunk into political irrelevance, after topping the polls a few years ago.
Remind me of the year Beppe Grillo successfully built a eurosceptic party which forced an Italian referendum and then won Italexit, as Italy quit the EU
Did Beppe Grillo do that? No, he did not
Next
There’s a great deal of sour grapes. Farage is the most consequential British politician of the past thirty years.
(1) The challenge the Conservatives face was well described on the last thread: how do they simultaneously appeal to those they have lost to Reform, and those they have lost to the Liberal Democrats.
It is clear that they have to tack right: but if they do that, how do they even begin to differentiate themselves from Reform, especially as all Reform needs to do is to attack them for their previous period in government?
(2) The fragmentation of voting patterns is on a scale we've never seen before. Reform is winning close to half of all councillors. But it's doing in on an National Equivalent Vote share that is only a few point more than the LibDems managed in 2009.
We see this is the Mayoral elections: winning parties are coming in with sub 30% numbers. We could see MPs - multiple MPs - elected with less than a quarter of the vote in 2029.
Reform are a political Black Hole. A Nigel-sized singularity which is now sucking everything else towards it.
Whilst there is a major challenge for the Tories as described, the gravitational challenge for Labour is just as existential.
What is at the heart of the Black Hole? The need to significantly reform the UK from top to bottom. Labour and the Tories can't tack their way around the edges of the event horizon - they'll get torn apart. Their only solution is to become a bigger black hole.
How do you defeat populism? By fixing the problems that drive populism. In this country that means fixing public services, making work pay, putting the pride back into our communities. You can't do that by cutting WFA or scrapping HS2 or performative tossery about penises.
The biggest reasons people have for voting Reform are "another party needs a go" and "their policies on immigration". What do you suggest mainstream parties should do about immigration?
Tackle the problems blamed on immigration. Note where people are complaining. It isn't where jobs are plentiful and services are good. Immigrants are the problem because schools are poor and the NHS is sinking and there aren't any jobs and the council is broke and crime is high and and and
Go after these problems. With crime under control you can't blame immigrants. With NHS experiences transformed you can't blame migrants. With jobs paying the bills and easier to get you can't blame migrants.
But you can't do any of this because low wage migrants don't generate enough economic activity to pay for it. Our taxes are already too high because every immigrant lowers our GDP per capita and we allowed 2m to come to the country with basically zero restrictions on incomes and dependents. Immigration is a huge net drag on our GDP per capita and it doesn't generate enough tax income for the government to cover the welfare requirements they and their dependents bring with them.
Deportation of low wage migrants, illegals and hitting the pause button on asylum is the answer.
OK, lets play the scenario. Farage has won the election and your final sentence is now policy.
How?
To deport people you have to do multiple things. Declare the "low wage migrants" who are working legally to now be illegal Identify the people who are illegal Arrest, detain and process them through the courts Deport them to a country willing to receive them
I'm not questioning the merits of the policy, just looking at the details as to how it could be enacted. None of the things on the list are quick, and many of them involve the things people don't want such as detaining them in accommodation.
I expect he wants to follow the Mad King
Hire some blackshirts to round up undesirables and put them on planes to El Salvador
Job done
As an ardent pro-European, why don't you ever use relevant continental European examples like Denmark? Your mental universe seems to be entirely US-centric.
(1) The challenge the Conservatives face was well described on the last thread: how do they simultaneously appeal to those they have lost to Reform, and those they have lost to the Liberal Democrats.
It is clear that they have to tack right: but if they do that, how do they even begin to differentiate themselves from Reform, especially as all Reform needs to do is to attack them for their previous period in government?
(2) The fragmentation of voting patterns is on a scale we've never seen before. Reform is winning close to half of all councillors. But it's doing in on an National Equivalent Vote share that is only a few point more than the LibDems managed in 2009.
We see this is the Mayoral elections: winning parties are coming in with sub 30% numbers. We could see MPs - multiple MPs - elected with less than a quarter of the vote in 2029.
Reform are a political Black Hole. A Nigel-sized singularity which is now sucking everything else towards it.
Whilst there is a major challenge for the Tories as described, the gravitational challenge for Labour is just as existential.
What is at the heart of the Black Hole? The need to significantly reform the UK from top to bottom. Labour and the Tories can't tack their way around the edges of the event horizon - they'll get torn apart. Their only solution is to become a bigger black hole.
How do you defeat populism? By fixing the problems that drive populism. In this country that means fixing public services, making work pay, putting the pride back into our communities. You can't do that by cutting WFA or scrapping HS2 or performative tossery about penises.
The biggest reasons people have for voting Reform are "another party needs a go" and "their policies on immigration". What do you suggest mainstream parties should do about immigration?
Tackle the problems blamed on immigration. Note where people are complaining. It isn't where jobs are plentiful and services are good. Immigrants are the problem because schools are poor and the NHS is sinking and there aren't any jobs and the council is broke and crime is high and and and
Go after these problems. With crime under control you can't blame immigrants. With NHS experiences transformed you can't blame migrants. With jobs paying the bills and easier to get you can't blame migrants.
But you can't do any of this because low wage migrants don't generate enough economic activity to pay for it. Our taxes are already too high because every immigrant lowers our GDP per capita and we allowed 2m to come to the country with basically zero restrictions on incomes and dependents. Immigration is a huge net drag on our GDP per capita and it doesn't generate enough tax income for the government to cover the welfare requirements they and their dependents bring with them.
Deportation of low wage migrants, illegals and hitting the pause button on asylum is the answer.
OK, lets play the scenario. Farage has won the election and your final sentence is now policy.
How?
To deport people you have to do multiple things. Declare the "low wage migrants" who are working legally to now be illegal Identify the people who are illegal Arrest, detain and process them through the courts Deport them to a country willing to receive them
I'm not questioning the merits of the policy, just looking at the details as to how it could be enacted. None of the things on the list are quick, and many of them involve the things people don't want such as detaining them in accommodation.
I expect he wants to follow the Mad King
Hire some blackshirts to round up undesirables and put them on planes to El Salvador
Job done
From a process perspective it's fascinating. Play it from the end backwards
Fast deportations means a fleet of planes on hot standby ready to have people frogmarched into them. Planes cost £££ and with our ATC system and many airports already struggling to cope in the summer and holiday peaks, there would be travel chaos just from a surge in flights.
To get people onto the planes you need an army of security staff not worried about breaking limbs - because people are sick of the forrin bleating and then claiming they've been assaulted.
Because we should just bypass the EHRC and I assume our own laws we can skip the actual court phase - woke lefty lawyers and traitor judges.
We're rendering anyone here on asylum, or claiming asylum, and legal migrants with the wrong job. Which means an army of security willing to drag people and break limbs raiding asylum hotels and workplaces to drag people away to be immediately transported to the airport onto the lined up Farage Fleet.
As all of that is logistically dubious and politically almost impossible, its only another step towards letting communities sort out their own problems. Cut out the need for the state hiring thugs and expensive airplanes. Think the race riots of last year only with ministers encouraging higher levels of violence...
God help us if Farage ever gets “quite useful” at politics. He’ll probably win the US presidency and become supreme galactic warlord
A stupider, uglier and less funny Beppe Grillo. Who has sunk into political irrelevance, after topping the polls a few years ago.
Remind me of the year Beppe Grillo successfully built a eurosceptic party which forced an Italian referendum and then won Italexit, as Italy quit the EU
Did Beppe Grillo do that? No, he did not
Next
There’s a great deal of sour grapes. Farage is the most consequential British politician of the past thirty years.
People confuse not liking him or his politics a with his impact. The fact we are still talking about him shows his impact
More Johnson's legacy imo. Or perhaps we say both since one begat the other.
Cameron, his initial mistake begat Johnson
Yes but it can all get rather "kneebone's connected to the ... thighbone".
I mean, how far back do we go? Blair chickening out of the Euro because he was scared of Brown?
Seeing as it is happening across the western world it probably isn't down to any of them but a mix of demographics, globalisation and social media, in that order. More fun to blame an individual politico but doesn't stand up to reality.
That's true. But I do think it's fair to say the Con meltdown is largely self-inflicted with their choice of Boris Johnson despite knowing he was unfit to be PM.
For acceleration and timing definitely - far less so for direction.
The Cambridge results are coming through. The LibDems are winning divisions in the city, but the Greens have taken Newnham which I would have hoped for the LibDems. Winning the county may rest on the LDs winning both the Chestertons, but the east is probably a stretch. Labour is hanging on to its safer divisions.
God help us if Farage ever gets “quite useful” at politics. He’ll probably win the US presidency and become supreme galactic warlord
A stupider, uglier and less funny Beppe Grillo. Who has sunk into political irrelevance, after topping the polls a few years ago.
Remind me of the year Beppe Grillo successfully built a eurosceptic party which forced an Italian referendum and then won Italexit, as Italy quit the EU
Did Beppe Grillo do that? No, he did not
Next
There’s a great deal of sour grapes. Farage is the most consequential British politician of the past thirty years.
He is a brilliant politician - smart and agile in a way that no-one else comes close to matching. Of that there is no doubt and it's silly to say otherwise. He thinks in headlines, which is a tremendous gift for an insurgent. And Brexit happened because of him. But he has yet to shape the country in any particular direction. He has left that to others. I have my doubts as to whether he has the interest, the temperament or the stamina to do the hard job of actually governing a country. But I guess we may find out.
He says it’s the “best 100-day start of any president in history”, but you can file that along with his boast about crowd sizes and his claim to have won the 2020 election. In truth, the first three months of Donald Trump’s second presidency have been calamitous on almost every measure. The single biggest achievement of those 100 days has been to serve as a warning of the perils of nationalist populism, which is effective in winning votes but disastrous when translated into reality. That warning applies across the democratic world – and is especially timely in Britain.
Trump’s conman promises and delusional dreams of turning the clock back were always bound to fail. This is the nature of nationalist populism, whether it wears a red cap in Michigan or a turquoise rosette in Runcorn. It is expert at turning grievance, division and nostalgia into votes. But when it comes to governing, it will always fail. It offers an outlet for complaint – and has no answers at all.
I wonder why the Tories have never thought of a revolving set of leaders who get stabbed in the back by their colleagues before? It is bound to go down well with the voters surely?
God help us if Farage ever gets “quite useful” at politics. He’ll probably win the US presidency and become supreme galactic warlord
A stupider, uglier and less funny Beppe Grillo. Who has sunk into political irrelevance, after topping the polls a few years ago.
Remind me of the year Beppe Grillo successfully built a eurosceptic party which forced an Italian referendum and then won Italexit, as Italy quit the EU
Did Beppe Grillo do that? No, he did not
Next
There’s a great deal of sour grapes. Farage is the most consequential British politician of the past thirty years.
He is a brilliant politician - smart and agile in a way that no-one else comes close to matching. Of that there is no doubt and it's silly to say otherwise. He thinks in headlines, which is a tremendous gift for an insurgent. And Brexit happened because of him. But he has yet to shape the country in any particular direction. He has left that to others. I have my doubts as to whether he has the interest, the temperament or the stamina to do the hard job of actually governing a country. But I guess we may find out.
Is he brilliant or is it the rest are absolutely shit. Listening to the drones on BBC and Sky today, further, faster, further, faster....he just speaks human and so instantly sounds "better" to a certain section of the population.
"Temu to stop selling goods from China directly to US customers"
Will import in bulk instead, the de minimus route being closed.
That's more Trump chaos for US consumers, and a loss of flexibility.
No, this is actually the one good thing Trump has done (albeit in usual chaotic Trump fashion). I know a number of US based e-commerce business people and they are sick of how this rule is exploited by the likes of Temu. They can sell all sorts of shit without having to stick to any rules and if the product turns out to be dodgy the sellers on there just disappear and come back again as a different company. If the US company did it they would be liable for all sorts of fines. It is not a level playing field for companies based outside of China.
Yes, they can.
However it will reduce availability of goods, and convenience in obtaining them.
Labour figures fear more Gaza independent gains at the locals on Thursday
My dispatch from Burnley, where one candidate challenging Labour wants to end “free mixing” between men and women
I sincerely hope this is a joke/racist lie/otherwise not true.
Because if this is true, it is deeply, deeply disturbing.
It's true, and that won't be the first rude awakening you'll have about the direction of politics in multicultural Britain:
Maheen Kamran, 18, an aspiring medical student, is standing as an independent for Burnley Central East. She was motivated to enter politics by the war in Gaza, where she believes a “genocide” is taking place.
Kamran told PoliticsHome she wanted to improve school standards, public cleanliness and encourage public spaces to end “free mixing” between men and women.
“There’s a big aspect of free mixing,” she said. “Muslim women aren’t really comfortable with being involved with Muslim men. I'm sure we can have segregated areas, segregated gyms, where Muslim women don't have to sacrifice their health.”
"This is the first time that a party other than Conservatives or Labour have been ahead in the projected national vote share calculation - and Reform's estimated 30% is well above the 23% that Ukip scored at the height of its popularity in 2013.
Labour's tally equals its lowest previous recorded performance in 2009, while the Conservative estimate is the party's lowest-ever recorded."
BBC projected national share just released by Prof John Curtice
RefUK 30% Lab 20% LD 17% Con 15% Grn 11%
After Kemi reduced the CON vote to 19% in national polls and 15% in council elections, it's hard to see what the next edge goal is. 15% in a national poll? I mean she's good, but is she that good?
One possible strategy is Bobby J could bring Lowe in as shadow Home Sec and try and outflank Farage to his right.
If he could also persuade someone like Jeremy Hunt to be Shadow Chancellor then it could be a formidable combination.
I think this is the only combination that works for the Tories, they need to be on the right, repudiate the Boriswave and apologise to the country for importing en masse people who are culturally completely alien to our own. A complete pause on immigration from poor countries has got the be the answer, Labour and the Tories really need to arrive to that conclusion sooner rather than later, raise the immigration barrier to £60k in London and SE and £50k elsewhere, no exemptions for any industries, limit student visas to redbrick universities and make them bid for a maximum of 20k per year, and above all pause asylum seeking for the next 4 years and deport the ones we do have that are in hotels.
The Tories, and Hunt in particular, have their best asset in fiscal conservatism and tax.
But, I fear it all might be too late: they didn't deliver for their base, let alone their coalition, and displayed venality and incompetence in office that I suspect is terminal for their brand.
We'll probably end up with the Reformed Conservatives or similar in 10 years time.
There is always a potential way back for a governing party, as Mark Carney and the Canadian Liberals just showed. But those numbers look potentially terminal for the Tories.
The Cambridge results are coming through. The LibDems are winning divisions in the city, but the Greens have taken Newnham which I would have hoped for the LibDems. Winning the county may rest on the LDs winning both the Chestertons, but the east is probably a stretch. Labour is hanging on to its safer divisions.
Winning both Chestertons at the County level is a tough ask, because (unlike the City council) there is only one Chesterton seat. Phil Rodgers reckons they'll hold Queen Edith's, and both Chesterton and Castle are in the "tossup" basket, with the rest safe Labour.
God help us if Farage ever gets “quite useful” at politics. He’ll probably win the US presidency and become supreme galactic warlord
Once again you confuse wining votes with being good at politics.
BoZo won lots of votes. He was fucking useless.
Trump won lots of votes. He's senile (and a bit mad)
Nigel Fucking Farage wins votes and then delivers fuck all
You are welcome to him
Can you give us a counter-example? Some-one who was "good at politics" but didn't get many votes.
David Steel?
Politics needs its showmen and women who will bring in the votes, but it also needs the quieter, sensible, organised backroom folks who will get the organising and eventually governing done. Rarely are they the same people, ever since Thatcher needed her Willie.
Even today's Reform success likely rests considerably on the work their new top team has been doing while Farage was off doing Any Questions
"Temu to stop selling goods from China directly to US customers"
Will import in bulk instead, the de minimus route being closed.
That's more Trump chaos for US consumers, and a loss of flexibility.
No, this is actually the one good thing Trump has done (albeit in usual chaotic Trump fashion). I know a number of US based e-commerce business people and they are sick of how this rule is exploited by the likes of Temu. They can sell all sorts of shit without having to stick to any rules and if the product turns out to be dodgy the sellers on there just disappear and come back again as a different company. If the US company did it they would be liable for all sorts of fines. It is not a level playing field for companies based outside of China.
Yes, they can.
However it will reduce availability of goods, and convenience in obtaining them.
The de minimus rules are exploited across Amazon, Ebay, Temu. Its totally unfair competition based upon the de minimus and also the discounted postage scheme. In terms of convenience I don't think it is more convenient, you have to wait weeks to get your product. And of course one reason a lot of the tat is dirt cheap is they use slave labour.
Trump and his tariffs are bonkers. This is actually a sensible move, its a huge loop hole that was never designed to be exploited for this use. In most cases the shit on Temu is available from legit companies on Amazon and it isn't massively more expensive (its still made in China). We aren't talking the crazy Trump Tariffs difference.
Labour figures fear more Gaza independent gains at the locals on Thursday
My dispatch from Burnley, where one candidate challenging Labour wants to end “free mixing” between men and women
I sincerely hope this is a joke/racist lie/otherwise not true.
Because if this is true, it is deeply, deeply disturbing.
It's true, and that won't be the first rude awakening you'll have about the direction of politics in multicultural Britain:
Maheen Kamran, 18, an aspiring medical student, is standing as an independent for Burnley Central East. She was motivated to enter politics by the war in Gaza, where she believes a “genocide” is taking place.
Kamran told PoliticsHome she wanted to improve school standards, public cleanliness and encourage public spaces to end “free mixing” between men and women.
“There’s a big aspect of free mixing,” she said. “Muslim women aren’t really comfortable with being involved with Muslim men. I'm sure we can have segregated areas, segregated gyms, where Muslim women don't have to sacrifice their health.”
Didn't we have long arguments on here about women's need for single sex facilities?
It is indeed a stunning performance by Reform UK. The LibDems were unlucky to miss out on control of 2 councils by tiny margins (Devon, Gloucestershire), but can be very happy overall.
The "big two" are flattered in the mayoral results. Holds for Labour in three close mayoral contests makes up for a big drop in councillor numbers. The Tories gaining the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough mayor gives them something to celebrate amid the devastation, although their gain is more to do with switching to FPTP!
Yes you can spin this in different ways (eg I think the main story is the Cons heading for minor party status) but any reasonable take has to acknowledge that Reform are now serious players in British politics. Not a surprise tbh. The Xeno Right are doing well all over the developed world. There's no reason we should escape.
"This is the first time that a party other than Conservatives or Labour have been ahead in the projected national vote share calculation - and Reform's estimated 30% is well above the 23% that Ukip scored at the height of its popularity in 2013.
Labour's tally equals its lowest previous recorded performance in 2009, while the Conservative estimate is the party's lowest-ever recorded."
BBC
Interesting. A year after 2009 Labour were strong enough to deny the Tories an outright majority.
God help us if Farage ever gets “quite useful” at politics. He’ll probably win the US presidency and become supreme galactic warlord
Once again you confuse wining votes with being good at politics.
BoZo won lots of votes. He was fucking useless.
Trump won lots of votes. He's senile (and a bit mad)
Nigel Fucking Farage wins votes and then delivers fuck all
You are welcome to him
Can you give us a counter-example? Some-one who was "good at politics" but didn't get many votes.
David Steel?
Politics needs its showmen and women who will bring in the votes, but it also needs the quieter, sensible, organised backroom folks who will get the governing done. Rarely are they the same people, ever since Thatcher needed her Willie.
Even today's Reform success likely rests considerably on the work their new top team has been doing while Farage was off doing Any Questions
You've touched on an important point there. All the intellectual energy at the moment is outside the mainstream. What new thinking do Labour or the Tories have to offer on any question of any importance?
With Merz finally becoming Chancellor in a few days there's not much sign of a honeymoon for the new government.
The latest poll has 48 percent welcoming the incoming coalition, and 37 percent opposing. Still much better numbers than the outgoing coaltion.
Merz is much less popular: 38 percent favourable vs 56 percent unfavourable. It's really unfortunate that the CDU picked such an unlikeable politician as leader right now.
BBC projected national share just released by Prof John Curtice
RefUK 30% Lab 20% LD 17% Con 15% Grn 11%
That's not actually as bad as I feared. Lab/LD/Green 48%, Ref/Con 45%. Left of centre wins!
Labours share rests heavily on the modelling assumptions for what would have happened in London and the other big cities, which had no elections. That must contain a lot of guesswork.
Labour figures fear more Gaza independent gains at the locals on Thursday
My dispatch from Burnley, where one candidate challenging Labour wants to end “free mixing” between men and women
I sincerely hope this is a joke/racist lie/otherwise not true.
Because if this is true, it is deeply, deeply disturbing.
It's true, and that won't be the first rude awakening you'll have about the direction of politics in multicultural Britain:
Maheen Kamran, 18, an aspiring medical student, is standing as an independent for Burnley Central East. She was motivated to enter politics by the war in Gaza, where she believes a “genocide” is taking place.
Kamran told PoliticsHome she wanted to improve school standards, public cleanliness and encourage public spaces to end “free mixing” between men and women.
“There’s a big aspect of free mixing,” she said. “Muslim women aren’t really comfortable with being involved with Muslim men. I'm sure we can have segregated areas, segregated gyms, where Muslim women don't have to sacrifice their health.”
Walking around central Birmingham going to the Blues match on Sunday I was struck by how many Palestine flags were flying from homes and lamp posts.
Labour figures fear more Gaza independent gains at the locals on Thursday
My dispatch from Burnley, where one candidate challenging Labour wants to end “free mixing” between men and women
I sincerely hope this is a joke/racist lie/otherwise not true.
Because if this is true, it is deeply, deeply disturbing.
It's true, and that won't be the first rude awakening you'll have about the direction of politics in multicultural Britain:
Maheen Kamran, 18, an aspiring medical student, is standing as an independent for Burnley Central East. She was motivated to enter politics by the war in Gaza, where she believes a “genocide” is taking place.
Kamran told PoliticsHome she wanted to improve school standards, public cleanliness and encourage public spaces to end “free mixing” between men and women.
“There’s a big aspect of free mixing,” she said. “Muslim women aren’t really comfortable with being involved with Muslim men. I'm sure we can have segregated areas, segregated gyms, where Muslim women don't have to sacrifice their health.”
Sectarian, Islamist politics becoming entrenched in the UK. Well done, everyone
(Formally true Blue) Leics County council interesting. 55 seats up for grabs:
Reform UK - 25 seats (+25)
Conservatives - 15 seats (-25)
Liberal Democrats - 11 seats (+2)
Labour - 2 seats (-2)
Green Party - 1 seat (+1)
Indepdent - 1 seat
Lab lost, 3, but picked up 1 (in Loughborough), lost to Reform. Greens picked up Sileby (maybe due to the flooding problems there?) from Con LDs picked up 2 from Con.
The Reform gains were mostly in the Leicester suburbs, and NW.
One of the hot debates is the unitary authority boundaries, in particular expansion of the City boundaries, which isn't popular in the County wards.
God help us if Farage ever gets “quite useful” at politics. He’ll probably win the US presidency and become supreme galactic warlord
A stupider, uglier and less funny Beppe Grillo. Who has sunk into political irrelevance, after topping the polls a few years ago.
Remind me of the year Beppe Grillo successfully built a eurosceptic party which forced an Italian referendum and then won Italexit, as Italy quit the EU
Did Beppe Grillo do that? No, he did not
Next
There’s a great deal of sour grapes. Farage is the most consequential British politician of the past thirty years.
He is a brilliant politician - smart and agile in a way that no-one else comes close to matching. Of that there is no doubt and it's silly to say otherwise. He thinks in headlines, which is a tremendous gift for an insurgent. And Brexit happened because of him. But he has yet to shape the country in any particular direction. He has left that to others. I have my doubts as to whether he has the interest, the temperament or the stamina to do the hard job of actually governing a country. But I guess we may find out.
Is he brilliant or is it the rest are absolutely shit. Listening to the drones on BBC and Sky today, further, faster, further, faster....he just speaks human and so instantly sounds "better" to a certain section of the population.
I don't think you achieve what he has just by being the best of a bad bunch. He has something to him. He is totally at ease with himself in a way that most politicians struggle with.
"This is the first time that a party other than Conservatives or Labour have been ahead in the projected national vote share calculation - and Reform's estimated 30% is well above the 23% that Ukip scored at the height of its popularity in 2013.
Labour's tally equals its lowest previous recorded performance in 2009, while the Conservative estimate is the party's lowest-ever recorded."
BBC
Yet that historical reference to the UKIP 23% can also be taken as a warning
The Cambridge results are coming through. The LibDems are winning divisions in the city, but the Greens have taken Newnham which I would have hoped for the LibDems. Winning the county may rest on the LDs winning both the Chestertons, but the east is probably a stretch. Labour is hanging on to its safer divisions.
Winning both Chestertons at the County level is a tough ask, because (unlike the City council) there is only one Chesterton seat. Phil Rodgers reckons they'll hold Queen Edith's, and both Chesterton and Castle are in the "tossup" basket, with the rest safe Labour.
I which case they had better start being very friendly to that Green
A long time ago, I used to run the Castle ward LibDem committee room. A shame it's no longer an LD stronghold
God help us if Farage ever gets “quite useful” at politics. He’ll probably win the US presidency and become supreme galactic warlord
A stupider, uglier and less funny Beppe Grillo. Who has sunk into political irrelevance, after topping the polls a few years ago.
Remind me of the year Beppe Grillo successfully built a eurosceptic party which forced an Italian referendum and then won Italexit, as Italy quit the EU
Did Beppe Grillo do that? No, he did not
Next
There’s a great deal of sour grapes. Farage is the most consequential British politician of the past thirty years.
He is a brilliant politician - smart and agile in a way that no-one else comes close to matching. Of that there is no doubt and it's silly to say otherwise. He thinks in headlines, which is a tremendous gift for an insurgent. And Brexit happened because of him. But he has yet to shape the country in any particular direction. He has left that to others. I have my doubts as to whether he has the interest, the temperament or the stamina to do the hard job of actually governing a country. But I guess we may find out.
Is he brilliant or is it the rest are absolutely shit. Listening to the drones on BBC and Sky today, further, faster, further, faster....he just speaks human and so instantly sounds "better" to a certain section of the population.
I don't think you achieve what he has just by being the best of a bad bunch. He has something to him. He is totally at ease with himself in a way that most politicians struggle with.
I think he is certainly aided by how poor the mainstream lot are. As you say they seem totally handicapped by an inability to be at ease with themselves, worried they might say the "wrong" thing. e.g. jibbering wreck of Starmer inability to say what he thinks a woman is.
I just think back to say Thatcher and Kinnock, they had little trouble saying what they thought. Corbyn in many respects is the same unless you get onto one particular thorny issue.
"This is the first time that a party other than Conservatives or Labour have been ahead in the projected national vote share calculation - and Reform's estimated 30% is well above the 23% that Ukip scored at the height of its popularity in 2013.
Labour's tally equals its lowest previous recorded performance in 2009, while the Conservative estimate is the party's lowest-ever recorded."
BBC
Yet that historical reference to the UKIP 23% can also be taken as a warning
(Formally true Blue) Leics County council interesting. 55 seats up for grabs:
Reform UK - 25 seats (+25)
Conservatives - 15 seats (-25)
Liberal Democrats - 11 seats (+2)
Labour - 2 seats (-2)
Green Party - 1 seat (+1)
Indepdent - 1 seat
Lab lost, 3, but picked up 1 (in Loughborough), lost to Reform. Greens picked up Sileby (maybe due to the flooding problems there?) from Con LDs picked up 2 from Con.
The Reform gains were mostly in the Leicester suburbs, and NW.
One of the hot debates is the unitary authority boundaries, in particular expansion of the City boundaries, which isn't popular in the County wards.
Farage is a successful campaigner but UKIP / Reform have not been in govt, UKIP did win control of Thanet council in 2015, splintered over Manston in 2018 and get wiped out in 2019. Successful political campaigner but not until he's been in government not a successful politician.
Farage is a successful campaigner but UKIP / Reform have not been in govt, UKIP did win control of Thanet council in 2015, splintered over Manston in 2018 and get wiped out in 2019. Successful political campaigner but not until he's been in government not a successful politician.
It would be interesting to know how many councillors elected for Reform are total newbies. Two of the high profile wins for Reform they have made a career of being a politician / councillor for the Tories.
More Johnson's legacy imo. Or perhaps we say both since one begat the other.
Cameron, his initial mistake begat Johnson
Cameron's initial mistake was aping Blair and not unrolling his legacy.
Thats why the country is in the shit.
We can surely go further back to Wilson devaluing the pound. And before that, Suez.
No we've had the Tird Way bollocks for 30 years or so. Parties have lost their deficed positions and the differences are marginal. Now we've run out of money and the country is tied up in legal knots. Cameron made that worse and lost the Conservatives distinctness. Everyone is crowded in the middle and the voters are looking for something different.
There is always a potential way back for a governing party, as Mark Carney and the Canadian Liberals just showed. But those numbers look potentially terminal for the Tories.
They surely have to be terminal for Badenoch ? The Tories will inevitably want a last throw of the dice, before their MPs start the competition to see who will defect to Reform early enough to actually get credit for it.
Farage is a successful campaigner but UKIP / Reform have not been in govt, UKIP did win control of Thanet council in 2015, splintered over Manston in 2018 and get wiped out in 2019. Successful political campaigner but not until he's been in government not a successful politician.
Until recently I would have doubted whether he actually wanted power but something seems to have changed now he's sensed that it's possible to win.
The Greens are perilously close to overtaking Labour in the number of councillors - 65 behind 69
And yet still the Greens might have expected more?
The LDs will be happy
Reform will be ecstatic
Labour and the Tories are staring into an abyss
Farage said he wanted to destroy the Tory Party.
He wasn’t taken that seriously at the time. I bet people are listening now.
To be fair, the Tory Party have been accomplices in their own downfall... if that´s what it turns put to be. The comments earlier today about the abject lack of talent amongst Conservatives are indeed well taken. How do they come back? It is clearly not Badenoch and it is absolutely not Jenrick. So it is a serious question: can the Tories come back, and if so, then, how?
(Formally true Blue) Leics County council interesting. 55 seats up for grabs:
Reform UK - 25 seats (+25)
Conservatives - 15 seats (-25)
Liberal Democrats - 11 seats (+2)
Labour - 2 seats (-2)
Green Party - 1 seat (+1)
Indepdent - 1 seat
Lab lost, 3, but picked up 1 (in Loughborough), lost to Reform. Greens picked up Sileby (maybe due to the flooding problems there?) from Con LDs picked up 2 from Con.
The Reform gains were mostly in the Leicester suburbs, and NW.
One of the hot debates is the unitary authority boundaries, in particular expansion of the City boundaries, which isn't popular in the County wards.
Reform minority control I think, If the Tories support them then they will turn from toast to charcoal.
Are you going to lose Rutland.
The proposal is for Leics to be divided in two, more or less horizontally, with Rutland merging into North Leics. I don't expect that to be popular there.
God help us if Farage ever gets “quite useful” at politics. He’ll probably win the US presidency and become supreme galactic warlord
Once again you confuse wining votes with being good at politics.
BoZo won lots of votes. He was fucking useless.
Trump won lots of votes. He's senile (and a bit mad)
Nigel Fucking Farage wins votes and then delivers fuck all
You are welcome to him
Can you give us a counter-example? Some-one who was "good at politics" but didn't get many votes.
David Steel?
Politics needs its showmen and women who will bring in the votes, but it also needs the quieter, sensible, organised backroom folks who will get the governing done. Rarely are they the same people, ever since Thatcher needed her Willie.
Even today's Reform success likely rests considerably on the work their new top team has been doing while Farage was off doing Any Questions
You've touched on an important point there. All the intellectual energy at the moment is outside the mainstream. What new thinking do Labour or the Tories have to offer on any question of any importance?
Unfortunately most of this "intellectual energy" manifests as reality-avoidance laced with bigotry.
(1) The challenge the Conservatives face was well described on the last thread: how do they simultaneously appeal to those they have lost to Reform, and those they have lost to the Liberal Democrats.
It is clear that they have to tack right: but if they do that, how do they even begin to differentiate themselves from Reform, especially as all Reform needs to do is to attack them for their previous period in government?
(2) The fragmentation of voting patterns is on a scale we've never seen before. Reform is winning close to half of all councillors. But it's doing in on an National Equivalent Vote share that is only a few point more than the LibDems managed in 2009.
We see this is the Mayoral elections: winning parties are coming in with sub 30% numbers. We could see MPs - multiple MPs - elected with less than a quarter of the vote in 2029.
Reform are a political Black Hole. A Nigel-sized singularity which is now sucking everything else towards it.
Whilst there is a major challenge for the Tories as described, the gravitational challenge for Labour is just as existential.
What is at the heart of the Black Hole? The need to significantly reform the UK from top to bottom. Labour and the Tories can't tack their way around the edges of the event horizon - they'll get torn apart. Their only solution is to become a bigger black hole.
How do you defeat populism? By fixing the problems that drive populism. In this country that means fixing public services, making work pay, putting the pride back into our communities. You can't do that by cutting WFA or scrapping HS2 or performative tossery about penises.
The biggest reasons people have for voting Reform are "another party needs a go" and "their policies on immigration". What do you suggest mainstream parties should do about immigration?
Tackle the problems blamed on immigration. Note where people are complaining. It isn't where jobs are plentiful and services are good. Immigrants are the problem because schools are poor and the NHS is sinking and there aren't any jobs and the council is broke and crime is high and and and
Go after these problems. With crime under control you can't blame immigrants. With NHS experiences transformed you can't blame migrants. With jobs paying the bills and easier to get you can't blame migrants.
But you can't do any of this because low wage migrants don't generate enough economic activity to pay for it. Our taxes are already too high because every immigrant lowers our GDP per capita and we allowed 2m to come to the country with basically zero restrictions on incomes and dependents. Immigration is a huge net drag on our GDP per capita and it doesn't generate enough tax income for the government to cover the welfare requirements they and their dependents bring with them.
Deportation of low wage migrants, illegals and hitting the pause button on asylum is the answer.
Not giving people here on 5 year care home Visas ILR with the access to everything that comes with it for starters. Especially as many have brought over economically inactive dependents.
They will never be a net contributor.
It won’t happen. All the main parties are ideologically in favour of it.
Not just economically inactive but kids who need schooling, parents who need healthcare and translation services for it etc...
It was the biggest own goal by the Tories in the party's history and I don't think they'll ever recover from it.
"This is the first time that a party other than Conservatives or Labour have been ahead in the projected national vote share calculation - and Reform's estimated 30% is well above the 23% that Ukip scored at the height of its popularity in 2013.
Labour's tally equals its lowest previous recorded performance in 2009, while the Conservative estimate is the party's lowest-ever recorded."
BBC
Yet that historical reference to the UKIP 23% can also be taken as a warning
Yes, three years after UKIP got 23%, we Brexited
It was indeed a warning
Yea, the warning is that populism fucks your economy. Donal Trump is currently adding further evidence that will be even more extreme than the Brexit madness.
"This is the first time that a party other than Conservatives or Labour have been ahead in the projected national vote share calculation - and Reform's estimated 30% is well above the 23% that Ukip scored at the height of its popularity in 2013.
Labour's tally equals its lowest previous recorded performance in 2009, while the Conservative estimate is the party's lowest-ever recorded."
BBC
Interesting. A year after 2009 Labour were strong enough to deny the Tories an outright majority.
Things look far bleaker for the Conservatives than for Labour imo.
Of course it's tongue in cheek comparing Reform with the 5 Star Movement in Italy. But there might turn out to be some similarities.
M5S had spectacular success because people were fed up with the established parties and politicians. Once they gained power they quickly faded (though still at 10% in the polls, so not irrelevant), because they had no coherent programme. They were a just disparate bunch of people with various (sometimes incompatible) 'populist' grievances, so were unable to govern. Reform may go the same way.
God help us if Farage ever gets “quite useful” at politics. He’ll probably win the US presidency and become supreme galactic warlord
A stupider, uglier and less funny Beppe Grillo. Who has sunk into political irrelevance, after topping the polls a few years ago.
Remind me of the year Beppe Grillo successfully built a eurosceptic party which forced an Italian referendum and then won Italexit, as Italy quit the EU
Did Beppe Grillo do that? No, he did not
Next
There’s a great deal of sour grapes. Farage is the most consequential British politician of the past thirty years.
With Merz finally becoming Chancellor in a few days there's not much sign of a honeymoon for the new government.
The latest poll has 48 percent welcoming the incoming coalition, and 37 percent opposing. Still much better numbers than the outgoing coaltion.
Merz is much less popular: 38 percent favourable vs 56 percent unfavourable. It's really unfortunate that the CDU picked such an unlikeable politician as leader right now.
The Cambridge results are coming through. The LibDems are winning divisions in the city, but the Greens have taken Newnham which I would have hoped for the LibDems. Winning the county may rest on the LDs winning both the Chestertons, but the east is probably a stretch. Labour is hanging on to its safer divisions.
Winning both Chestertons at the County level is a tough ask, because (unlike the City council) there is only one Chesterton seat. Phil Rodgers reckons they'll hold Queen Edith's, and both Chesterton and Castle are in the "tossup" basket, with the rest safe Labour.
I which case they had better start being very friendly to that Green
A long time ago, I used to run the Castle ward LibDem committee room. A shame it's no longer an LD stronghold
Well, they got both Castle and Chesterton (the latter by only 10 votes) to just gain control of Cambridgeshire.
A fairly terrifying thread. Worth reading the whole thing
"I've just finished working for the local elections and i tell you, England is finished. The impoverished area i worked in, the Somali and Pakistani inhabitants were organised. With many not able to speak or read English being told who to vote for by family. It was insane to me"
"The sheer amount eligible to vote that were neither born here, read English, write or understand English, having a say over how this country is governed. I saw too, foreign severely mentally incapacitated people with voting ballots being told who to vote for by presumably family."
Lib Dems 22 (+11) --- 12 gains from Con, 1 loss to Ind Reform 17 (+17) --- 13 gains from Con, 2 from Ind, 1 from Lab, 1 from MK Independents 15 (+0) --- 1 gain from Con, 1 from LD, 2 losses to Ref Conservatives 5 (-28) --- 13 losses to Ref, 12 to LD, 1 to Lab, 1 to Grn, 1 to Ind Labour 3 (+0) --- 1 gain from Con, 1 loss to Ref Green 2 (+1) --- 1 gain from Con Mebyon Kernow 1 (-1) --- 1 loss to Ref
(Formally true Blue) Leics County council interesting. 55 seats up for grabs:
Reform UK - 25 seats (+25)
Conservatives - 15 seats (-25)
Liberal Democrats - 11 seats (+2)
Labour - 2 seats (-2)
Green Party - 1 seat (+1)
Indepdent - 1 seat
Lab lost, 3, but picked up 1 (in Loughborough), lost to Reform. Greens picked up Sileby (maybe due to the flooding problems there?) from Con LDs picked up 2 from Con.
The Reform gains were mostly in the Leicester suburbs, and NW.
One of the hot debates is the unitary authority boundaries, in particular expansion of the City boundaries, which isn't popular in the County wards.
Reform minority control I think, If the Tories support them then they will turn from toast to charcoal.
Are you going to lose Rutland.
The proposal is for Leics to be divided in two, more or less horizontally, with Rutland merging into North Leics. I don't expect that to be popular there.
One possible strategy is Bobby J could bring Lowe in as shadow Home Sec and try and outflank Farage to his right.
If he could also persuade someone like Jeremy Hunt to be Shadow Chancellor then it could be a formidable combination.
I think this is the only combination that works for the Tories, they need to be on the right, repudiate the Boriswave and apologise to the country for importing en masse people who are culturally completely alien to our own. A complete pause on immigration from poor countries has got the be the answer, Labour and the Tories really need to arrive to that conclusion sooner rather than later, raise the immigration barrier to £60k in London and SE and £50k elsewhere, no exemptions for any industries, limit student visas to redbrick universities and make them bid for a maximum of 20k per year, and above all pause asylum seeking for the next 4 years and deport the ones we do have that are in hotels.
The Tories, and Hunt in particular, have their best asset in fiscal conservatism and tax.
But, I fear it all might be too late: they didn't deliver for their base, let alone their coalition, and displayed venality and incompetence in office that I suspect is terminal for their brand.
We'll probably end up with the Reformed Conservatives or similar in 10 years time.
Yes, there will be a unite the right moment in 10 years where Reform subsumes the Tory party and the few who can't get on board will join the Lib Dems.
A fairly terrifying thread. Worth reading the whole thing
"I've just finished working for the local elections and i tell you, England is finished. The impoverished area i worked in, the Somali and Pakistani inhabitants were organised. With many not able to speak or read English being told who to vote for by family. It was insane to me"
"The sheer amount eligible to vote that were neither born here, read English, write or understand English, having a say over how this country is governed. I saw too, foreign severely mentally incapacitated people with voting ballots being told who to vote for by presumably family."
One possible strategy is Bobby J could bring Lowe in as shadow Home Sec and try and outflank Farage to his right.
If he could also persuade someone like Jeremy Hunt to be Shadow Chancellor then it could be a formidable combination.
I think this is the only combination that works for the Tories, they need to be on the right, repudiate the Boriswave and apologise to the country for importing en masse people who are culturally completely alien to our own. A complete pause on immigration from poor countries has got the be the answer, Labour and the Tories really need to arrive to that conclusion sooner rather than later, raise the immigration barrier to £60k in London and SE and £50k elsewhere, no exemptions for any industries, limit student visas to redbrick universities and make them bid for a maximum of 20k per year, and above all pause asylum seeking for the next 4 years and deport the ones we do have that are in hotels.
The Tories, and Hunt in particular, have their best asset in fiscal conservatism and tax.
But, I fear it all might be too late: they didn't deliver for their base, let alone their coalition, and displayed venality and incompetence in office that I suspect is terminal for their brand.
We'll probably end up with the Reformed Conservatives or similar in 10 years time.
Yes, there will be a unite the right moment in 10 years where Reform subsumes the Tory party and the few who can't get on board will join the Lib Dems.
With Merz finally becoming Chancellor in a few days there's not much sign of a honeymoon for the new government.
The latest poll has 48 percent welcoming the incoming coalition, and 37 percent opposing. Still much better numbers than the outgoing coaltion.
Merz is much less popular: 38 percent favourable vs 56 percent unfavourable. It's really unfortunate that the CDU picked such an unlikeable politician as leader right now.
Starmer is PM with a huge majority no matter how shaky his locals base is. Badenoch has lost 456 out of 645 councillors declared so far. In opposition !
Disaster doesn't begin to cover it.
Oh, landslide is much too mild a word; this is like an asteroid coming down and wiping out all life on earth!
It’s like 1924 for the Liberals, from the Conservatives POV.
As usual the yellows are peaking late in the day because of the order of the counts. I have an old tab open on my phone with the results when 5 councils were in. Reform had 367 seats already and the Lib Dems only 132. Since then Reform have continued to add councillors at pace (195 more) but we have also added 184. In the same time Labour have added 41.
BBC projected national share just released by Prof John Curtice
RefUK 30% Lab 20% LD 17% Con 15% Grn 11%
After Kemi reduced the CON vote to 19% in national polls and 15% in council elections, it's hard to see what the next edge goal is. 15% in a national poll? I mean she's good, but is she that good?
There is the potential that these results mark a tipping point and more of the Tory vote just decamps to Reform, knocking say another 5% off their polling figures. This has always been the greatest risk for the Tories - that at some point a chunk of their remaining core vote just won’t see them as a viable option anymore and will decide Reform is now the main party of the right. If that happens, the downfall could be very quick indeed.
I thought there was a risk of this happening later in the parliament, particularly after Wales and Scotland, but because Reform have done so well and the Tories so badly, there is a possibility this could all kick off now. A couple of defections would also help it along.
God help us if Farage ever gets “quite useful” at politics. He’ll probably win the US presidency and become supreme galactic warlord
A stupider, uglier and less funny Beppe Grillo. Who has sunk into political irrelevance, after topping the polls a few years ago.
Remind me of the year Beppe Grillo successfully built a eurosceptic party which forced an Italian referendum and then won Italexit, as Italy quit the EU
Did Beppe Grillo do that? No, he did not
Next
There’s a great deal of sour grapes. Farage is the most consequential British politician of the past thirty years.
I expect we'll get Liberals on here soon saying he's "a loser".
Farage is a successful campaigner but UKIP / Reform have not been in govt, UKIP did win control of Thanet council in 2015, splintered over Manston in 2018 and get wiped out in 2019. Successful political campaigner but not until he's been in government not a successful politician.
Until recently I would have doubted whether he actually wanted power but something seems to have changed now he's sensed that it's possible to win.
That was Farage's hope - two mayoralties plus Runcorn, and a lot of councillors
He's got everything he hoped, and, I suspect, far more councillors than he dreamed
BBC projected national share just released by Prof John Curtice
RefUK 30% Lab 20% LD 17% Con 15% Grn 11%
That's not actually as bad as I feared. Lab/LD/Green 48%, Ref/Con 45%. Left of centre wins!
All about the tactical voting. A simple adjustment sees a lefty coalition majority of 180 Labour, 100 Lib Dems, 20 Greens on those numbers. Without, it's 100 Labour, 100 LD, 20 Greens.
(1) The challenge the Conservatives face was well described on the last thread: how do they simultaneously appeal to those they have lost to Reform, and those they have lost to the Liberal Democrats.
It is clear that they have to tack right: but if they do that, how do they even begin to differentiate themselves from Reform, especially as all Reform needs to do is to attack them for their previous period in government?
(2) The fragmentation of voting patterns is on a scale we've never seen before. Reform is winning close to half of all councillors. But it's doing in on an National Equivalent Vote share that is only a few point more than the LibDems managed in 2009.
We see this is the Mayoral elections: winning parties are coming in with sub 30% numbers. We could see MPs - multiple MPs - elected with less than a quarter of the vote in 2029.
Reform are a political Black Hole. A Nigel-sized singularity which is now sucking everything else towards it.
Whilst there is a major challenge for the Tories as described, the gravitational challenge for Labour is just as existential.
What is at the heart of the Black Hole? The need to significantly reform the UK from top to bottom. Labour and the Tories can't tack their way around the edges of the event horizon - they'll get torn apart. Their only solution is to become a bigger black hole.
How do you defeat populism? By fixing the problems that drive populism. In this country that means fixing public services, making work pay, putting the pride back into our communities. You can't do that by cutting WFA or scrapping HS2 or performative tossery about penises.
The biggest reasons people have for voting Reform are "another party needs a go" and "their policies on immigration". What do you suggest mainstream parties should do about immigration?
Tackle the problems blamed on immigration. Note where people are complaining. It isn't where jobs are plentiful and services are good. Immigrants are the problem because schools are poor and the NHS is sinking and there aren't any jobs and the council is broke and crime is high and and and
Go after these problems. With crime under control you can't blame immigrants. With NHS experiences transformed you can't blame migrants. With jobs paying the bills and easier to get you can't blame migrants.
But you can't do any of this because low wage migrants don't generate enough economic activity to pay for it. Our taxes are already too high because every immigrant lowers our GDP per capita and we allowed 2m to come to the country with basically zero restrictions on incomes and dependents. Immigration is a huge net drag on our GDP per capita and it doesn't generate enough tax income for the government to cover the welfare requirements they and their dependents bring with them.
Deportation of low wage migrants, illegals and hitting the pause button on asylum is the answer.
OK, lets play the scenario. Farage has won the election and your final sentence is now policy.
How?
To deport people you have to do multiple things. Declare the "low wage migrants" who are working legally to now be illegal Identify the people who are illegal Arrest, detain and process them through the courts Deport them to a country willing to receive them
I'm not questioning the merits of the policy, just looking at the details as to how it could be enacted. None of the things on the list are quick, and many of them involve the things people don't want such as detaining them in accommodation.
I expect he wants to follow the Mad King
Hire some blackshirts to round up undesirables and put them on planes to El Salvador
Job done
As an ardent pro-European, why don't you ever use relevant continental European examples like Denmark? Your mental universe seems to be entirely US-centric.
Many of us remember when you were "an ardent pro-European. What happened, did you hit of head, have an aneurism, or has your account been nicked by a swivel-eyed relative?
God help us if Farage ever gets “quite useful” at politics. He’ll probably win the US presidency and become supreme galactic warlord
A stupider, uglier and less funny Beppe Grillo. Who has sunk into political irrelevance, after topping the polls a few years ago.
Remind me of the year Beppe Grillo successfully built a eurosceptic party which forced an Italian referendum and then won Italexit, as Italy quit the EU
Did Beppe Grillo do that? No, he did not
Next
There’s a great deal of sour grapes. Farage is the most consequential British politician of the past thirty years.
He is a brilliant politician - smart and agile in a way that no-one else comes close to matching. Of that there is no doubt and it's silly to say otherwise. He thinks in headlines, which is a tremendous gift for an insurgent. And Brexit happened because of him. But he has yet to shape the country in any particular direction. He has left that to others. I have my doubts as to whether he has the interest, the temperament or the stamina to do the hard job of actually governing a country. But I guess we may find out.
Is he brilliant or is it the rest are absolutely shit. Listening to the drones on BBC and Sky today, further, faster, further, faster....he just speaks human and so instantly sounds "better" to a certain section of the population.
I don't think you achieve what he has just by being the best of a bad bunch. He has something to him. He is totally at ease with himself in a way that most politicians struggle with.
I think he is certainly aided by how poor the mainstream lot are. As you say they seem totally handicapped by an inability to be at ease with themselves, worried they might say the "wrong" thing. e.g. jibbering wreck of Starmer inability to say what he thinks a woman is.
I just think back to say Thatcher and Kinnock, they had little trouble saying what they thought. Corbyn in many respects is the same unless you get onto one particular thorny issue.
There is something other worldly about the way Starmer talks. I have said it before, but he genuinely is a big football fan, yet when he talks about the game it's like he's got someone in his ear telling him what to say. Quite astonishingly awkward and forced.
The fact is there is a huge market in the UK for a politician who seems relatively normal, and Farage is one of a tiny minority of them who are, or at least seem like they are. Most people don't like smart arses. I am one, and am not as popular as my friends who are less pedantic, clever clogs. On here, and in political media, they love a clever clogs... although I am not that popular here either!
A fairly terrifying thread. Worth reading the whole thing
"I've just finished working for the local elections and i tell you, England is finished. The impoverished area i worked in, the Somali and Pakistani inhabitants were organised. With many not able to speak or read English being told who to vote for by family. It was insane to me"
"The sheer amount eligible to vote that were neither born here, read English, write or understand English, having a say over how this country is governed. I saw too, foreign severely mentally incapacitated people with voting ballots being told who to vote for by presumably family."
Labour figures fear more Gaza independent gains at the locals on Thursday
My dispatch from Burnley, where one candidate challenging Labour wants to end “free mixing” between men and women
I sincerely hope this is a joke/racist lie/otherwise not true.
Because if this is true, it is deeply, deeply disturbing.
It's true, and that won't be the first rude awakening you'll have about the direction of politics in multicultural Britain:
Maheen Kamran, 18, an aspiring medical student, is standing as an independent for Burnley Central East. She was motivated to enter politics by the war in Gaza, where she believes a “genocide” is taking place.
Kamran told PoliticsHome she wanted to improve school standards, public cleanliness and encourage public spaces to end “free mixing” between men and women.
“There’s a big aspect of free mixing,” she said. “Muslim women aren’t really comfortable with being involved with Muslim men. I'm sure we can have segregated areas, segregated gyms, where Muslim women don't have to sacrifice their health.”
She has a point.
A lot of gyms run women only sessions already, and it seems legal under the Equality Act if considered a proportionate action for a legitimate goal.
A fairly terrifying thread. Worth reading the whole thing
"I've just finished working for the local elections and i tell you, England is finished. The impoverished area i worked in, the Somali and Pakistani inhabitants were organised. With many not able to speak or read English being told who to vote for by family. It was insane to me"
"The sheer amount eligible to vote that were neither born here, read English, write or understand English, having a say over how this country is governed. I saw too, foreign severely mentally incapacitated people with voting ballots being told who to vote for by presumably family."
Labour figures fear more Gaza independent gains at the locals on Thursday
My dispatch from Burnley, where one candidate challenging Labour wants to end “free mixing” between men and women
I sincerely hope this is a joke/racist lie/otherwise not true.
Because if this is true, it is deeply, deeply disturbing.
It's true, and that won't be the first rude awakening you'll have about the direction of politics in multicultural Britain:
Maheen Kamran, 18, an aspiring medical student, is standing as an independent for Burnley Central East. She was motivated to enter politics by the war in Gaza, where she believes a “genocide” is taking place.
Kamran told PoliticsHome she wanted to improve school standards, public cleanliness and encourage public spaces to end “free mixing” between men and women.
“There’s a big aspect of free mixing,” she said. “Muslim women aren’t really comfortable with being involved with Muslim men. I'm sure we can have segregated areas, segregated gyms, where Muslim women don't have to sacrifice their health.”
You say its true, but then provide a quote without a source, which is quite possibly made-up bullshit scraped from Twitter made for and shared by the gullible.
God help us if Farage ever gets “quite useful” at politics. He’ll probably win the US presidency and become supreme galactic warlord
A stupider, uglier and less funny Beppe Grillo. Who has sunk into political irrelevance, after topping the polls a few years ago.
Remind me of the year Beppe Grillo successfully built a eurosceptic party which forced an Italian referendum and then won Italexit, as Italy quit the EU
Did Beppe Grillo do that? No, he did not
Next
There’s a great deal of sour grapes. Farage is the most consequential British politician of the past thirty years.
He is a brilliant politician - smart and agile in a way that no-one else comes close to matching. Of that there is no doubt and it's silly to say otherwise. He thinks in headlines, which is a tremendous gift for an insurgent. And Brexit happened because of him. But he has yet to shape the country in any particular direction. He has left that to others. I have my doubts as to whether he has the interest, the temperament or the stamina to do the hard job of actually governing a country. But I guess we may find out.
Is he brilliant or is it the rest are absolutely shit. Listening to the drones on BBC and Sky today, further, faster, further, faster....he just speaks human and so instantly sounds "better" to a certain section of the population.
I don't think you achieve what he has just by being the best of a bad bunch. He has something to him. He is totally at ease with himself in a way that most politicians struggle with.
I think he is certainly aided by how poor the mainstream lot are. As you say they seem totally handicapped by an inability to be at ease with themselves, worried they might say the "wrong" thing. e.g. jibbering wreck of Starmer inability to say what he thinks a woman is.
I just think back to say Thatcher and Kinnock, they had little trouble saying what they thought. Corbyn in many respects is the same unless you get onto one particular thorny issue.
There is something other worldly about the way Starmer talks. I have said it before, but he genuinely is a big football fan, yet when he talks about the game it's like he's got someone in his ear telling him what to say. Quite astonishingly awkward and forced.
The fact is there is a huge market in the UK for a politician who seems relatively normal, and Farage is one of a tiny minority of them who are, or at least seem like they are. Most people don't like smart arses. I am one, and am not as popular as my friends who are less pedantic, clever clogs. On here, and in political media, they love a clever clogs... although I am not that popular here either!
He has a habit of looking and sounding like someone has just told him his cat has died just before he walks on stage.
Comments
https://www.communitycare.co.uk/2025/04/29/union-recommends-rejection-of-local-government-pay-offer/#:~:text=A union has recommended that,members to reject the offer.
Fast deportations means a fleet of planes on hot standby ready to have people frogmarched into them. Planes cost £££ and with our ATC system and many airports already struggling to cope in the summer and holiday peaks, there would be travel chaos just from a surge in flights.
To get people onto the planes you need an army of security staff not worried about breaking limbs - because people are sick of the forrin bleating and then claiming they've been assaulted.
Because we should just bypass the EHRC and I assume our own laws we can skip the actual court phase - woke lefty lawyers and traitor judges.
We're rendering anyone here on asylum, or claiming asylum, and legal migrants with the wrong job. Which means an army of security willing to drag people and break limbs raiding asylum hotels and workplaces to drag people away to be immediately transported to the airport onto the lined up Farage Fleet.
As all of that is logistically dubious and politically almost impossible, its only another step towards letting communities sort out their own problems. Cut out the need for the state hiring thugs and expensive airplanes. Think the race riots of last year only with ministers encouraging higher levels of violence...
Because if this is true, it is deeply, deeply disturbing.
Trump’s conman promises and delusional dreams of turning the clock back were always bound to fail. This is the nature of nationalist populism, whether it wears a red cap in Michigan or a turquoise rosette in Runcorn. It is expert at turning grievance, division and nostalgia into votes. But when it comes to governing, it will always fail. It offers an outlet for complaint – and has no answers at all.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/may/02/donald-trump-first-100-days-tariffs-us-economy
And yet still the Greens might have expected more?
The LDs will be happy
Reform will be ecstatic
Labour and the Tories are staring into an abyss
The last set of Euro elections? As far as we were concerned.
For the moment, anyway.
However it will reduce availability of goods, and convenience in obtaining them.
Maheen Kamran, 18, an aspiring medical student, is standing as an independent for Burnley Central East. She was motivated to enter politics by the war in Gaza, where she believes a “genocide” is taking place.
Kamran told PoliticsHome she wanted to improve school standards, public cleanliness and encourage public spaces to end “free mixing” between men and women.
“There’s a big aspect of free mixing,” she said. “Muslim women aren’t really comfortable with being involved with Muslim men. I'm sure we can have segregated areas, segregated gyms, where Muslim women don't have to sacrifice their health.”
"This is the first time that a party other than Conservatives or Labour have been ahead in the projected national vote share calculation - and Reform's estimated 30% is well above the 23% that Ukip scored at the height of its popularity in 2013.
Labour's tally equals its lowest previous recorded performance in 2009, while the Conservative estimate is the party's lowest-ever recorded."
BBC
https://x.com/danbloom1/status/1918322694921072888
Dan Bloom
@danbloom1
BREAKING: The 149-page (!) impact assessment for the assisted dying bill has just been published https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/bills/cbill/59-01/0212/TIABImpactAssessment.pdf
Losing Runcorn could be the best thing to,happen to labour.
https://x.com/maitlis/status/1918248175095431478?s=61
But, I fear it all might be too late: they didn't deliver for their base, let alone their coalition, and displayed venality and incompetence in office that I suspect is terminal for their brand.
We'll probably end up with the Reformed Conservatives or similar in 10 years time.
Even today's Reform success likely rests considerably on the work their new top team has been doing while Farage was off doing Any Questions
He wasn’t taken that seriously at the time. I bet people are listening now.
Trump and his tariffs are bonkers. This is actually a sensible move, its a huge loop hole that was never designed to be exploited for this use. In most cases the shit on Temu is available from legit companies on Amazon and it isn't massively more expensive (its still made in China). We aren't talking the crazy Trump Tariffs difference.
The latest poll has 48 percent welcoming the incoming coalition, and 37 percent opposing. Still much better numbers than the outgoing coaltion.
Merz is much less popular: 38 percent favourable vs 56 percent unfavourable. It's really unfortunate that the CDU picked such an unlikeable politician as leader right now.
https://www.tagesspiegel.de/politik/union-setzt-sich-von-afd-ab-mehrheit-spricht-sich-im-zdf-politbarometer-gegen-merz-als-kanzler-aus-13627012.html
Reform UK - 25 seats (+25)
Conservatives - 15 seats (-25)
Liberal Democrats - 11 seats (+2)
Labour - 2 seats (-2)
Green Party - 1 seat (+1)
Indepdent - 1 seat
Lab lost, 3, but picked up 1 (in Loughborough), lost to Reform.
Greens picked up Sileby (maybe due to the flooding problems there?) from Con
LDs picked up 2 from Con.
The Reform gains were mostly in the Leicester suburbs, and NW.
One of the hot debates is the unitary authority boundaries, in particular expansion of the City boundaries, which isn't popular in the County wards.
I think @Icarus is represented by a Tory, @twistedfirestopper3 has Reform, and I have an LD.
Reform minority control I think, If the Tories support them then they will turn from toast to charcoal.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c367lry5ypxo
A long time ago, I used to run the Castle ward LibDem committee room. A shame it's no longer an LD stronghold
I just think back to say Thatcher and Kinnock, they had little trouble saying what they thought. Corbyn in many respects is the same unless you get onto one particular thorny issue.
It was indeed a warning
Successful political campaigner but not until he's been in government not a successful politician.
The Tories will inevitably want a last throw of the dice, before their MPs start the competition to see who will defect to Reform early enough to actually get credit for it.
Next week, or slightly longer ?
Runcorn: ReFuk
Hull & EY: ReFuk
Lincs: ReFuk
Most council sets won: ReFuk
Ahead on NEV: ReFuk
It was the biggest own goal by the Tories in the party's history and I don't think they'll ever recover from it.
Though he needed Brexit to do so, and that's at least partly down to Farage.
M5S had spectacular success because people were fed up with the established parties and politicians. Once they gained power they quickly faded (though still at 10% in the polls, so not irrelevant), because they had no coherent programme. They were a just disparate bunch of people with various (sometimes incompatible) 'populist' grievances, so were unable to govern. Reform may go the same way.
"I've just finished working for the local elections and i tell you, England is finished.
The impoverished area i worked in, the Somali and Pakistani inhabitants were organised. With many not able to speak or read English being told who to vote for by family. It was insane to me"
"The sheer amount eligible to vote that were neither born here, read English, write or understand English, having a say over how this country is governed. I saw too, foreign severely mentally incapacitated people with voting ballots being told who to vote for by presumably family."
https://x.com/HaitchBee_/status/1918062187404284202
Lib Dems 22 (+11) --- 12 gains from Con, 1 loss to Ind
Reform 17 (+17) --- 13 gains from Con, 2 from Ind, 1 from Lab, 1 from MK
Independents 15 (+0) --- 1 gain from Con, 1 from LD, 2 losses to Ref
Conservatives 5 (-28) --- 13 losses to Ref, 12 to LD, 1 to Lab, 1 to Grn, 1 to Ind
Labour 3 (+0) --- 1 gain from Con, 1 loss to Ref
Green 2 (+1) --- 1 gain from Con
Mebyon Kernow 1 (-1) --- 1 loss to Ref
Difficult to keep up.
https://www.dw.com/en/why-is-germanys-next-chancellor-merz-so-unpopular/a-72355492
I thought there was a risk of this happening later in the parliament, particularly after Wales and Scotland, but because Reform have done so well and the Tories so badly, there is a possibility this could all kick off now. A couple of defections would also help it along.
He's got everything he hoped, and, I suspect, far more councillors than he dreamed
-553 and counting. Getting pretty much wiped out on councils they used to run across the country.
She's done, surely?
Serious bargaining power for the LDs and Greens.
The fact is there is a huge market in the UK for a politician who seems relatively normal, and Farage is one of a tiny minority of them who are, or at least seem like they are. Most people don't like smart arses. I am one, and am not as popular as my friends who are less pedantic, clever clogs. On here, and in political media, they love a clever clogs... although I am not that popular here either!
A lot of gyms run women only sessions already, and it seems legal under the Equality Act if considered a proportionate action for a legitimate goal.
If true its a disgrace, but that's a big if.