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Meet Reform’s new chairman – politicalbetting.com
Meet Reform’s new chairman – politicalbetting.com
Richard Madeley’s response to this incredible story is why he is a giant of broadcasting. pic.twitter.com/9YgRIsR9GU
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I suppose David Icke's notion of shape shifting lizards running the nation could be a step closer.
RFM: 30% (-1)
LAB: 24% (+2)
CON: 16% (=)
LDM: 13% (-2)
GRN: 11% (=)
Via @FindoutnowUK, 11 Jun.
Changes w/ 4 Jun.
Reform now definitely off their post LE highs and some sign of a minor Lab recovery in the works.
Tories at 16 with FoN for 5 weeks
'Terminal' is ott at this stage whilst most people are switched off
Thou shalt not kill; but need'st not strive officiously to keep alive. [The Latest Decalogue; Arthur Hugh Clough (1819 - 1861).] It's a parody of the Ten Commandments and I don't know whether he meant one ought indeed strive officiously to keep alive; but to me it seems ethical not so to strive.
Clough is frequently misunderstood. His 'Latest decalogue' was intended as an observation on modernity and its casuistry towards moral norms. Hence for example:
Thou shalt not steal; an empty feat,
When it's so lucrative to cheat:
So Clough intended the opposite of how he is now understood. (Though in the killing one I think he is mostly wrong! He's OK with the rest SFAICS).
Full text here:
https://allpoetry.com/The-Latest-Decalogue
Right wing politics desperately needs some serious and competent people.
Having said that they will get serious and competent people - by the standards now prevailing - as and if they get closer to the possibility of real power. Tim Montgomerie is not an outlier but an advance guard.
The longer Kemi stays on as LOTO, the closer it will get. If Hunt became leader the Tories have a chance of being serious. If a Jenrick type gets it, all bets are off.
The chances as of now is that top of the bill in the next election is Lab v Reform.
But then, serious people are rare, in politics, these days.
This does mean, however, that it will be very hard to Reform and the modern Republican Party will find it difficult to work together. I mean, his attitude is the complete opposite of Senator Ernst's "we're all going to die and the tooth fairy isnt real" one.
@thetimes
🔺 EXCLUSIVE: Trump’s birthday parade may be cancelled over thunderstorms
Army spokesman tells The Times of safety fears as president hopes to mark 250 years of the US military with event in Washington on Saturday
Free sweeties is a powerful electoral message. It's just that it's economically ruinous in the long run. (See America, South.)
If we want anyone to take out the Mullahs its going to have to be the Israelis unfortunately.
TACO Trump won't do it.
He didn't really have a lot of choice: there was no way back with Democratic voters, and SpaceX is incredibly dependent on the government for its contracts. Like many of the oligarchs in Putin's Russia, it became suddenly very clear to Elon that his only choice was to go in to bat for a government that is no longer pretending to be fiscally conservative or to reduce the deficit.
What a sad decline.
Rather it is that quite a lot of people with guns now want him put away. If I were responsible for his safety I would be very unhappy about putting him in front of so many folk with a potential grudge.
Obviously if the Cheeto faced crook was struck by lightening, it would be both hilarious and also proof that the Lord will not be mocked.
Of course, I might be wrong, but it reminds me of the airshow crash of the Airbus back in the 1980s, when a pilot was demonstrating the ability of the aircraft to maintain unusual attitudes via the fly by wire system. Only to crash into a forest.
Indeed I cannot see any politician that could deal with the hard decisions needed
https://bsky.app/profile/drtiffanyaflowers.bsky.social/post/3lre7ryla7c2x
https://www.lbc.co.uk/crime/teenagers-killing-pensioner-street-attack/
Star Trek Strange New Worlds has been renewed for a fifth season!
Yay!
Bad news!
The fifth season will be its last!
Boo!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLaL2oi0Gog
Reform UK have come out with a number of high-spending pledges and some nods to state intervention that would please a Labour Party member from 1981. However, that's a selective reading of the party. They also push "DOGE-style" cuts, rail against "woke" social liberalism, and want to move the NHS to an insurance model (which would be a huge reduction in the size of the state). This is all small state stuff. They oppose net zero and dabble in climate change denial, and in anti-vax nonsense. They don't want to open coal mines because they're left-wing; they want to open coal mines to own the libs and out of some sort of 1950s fantasy idea of the country. They are a fairly typical populist right party. They are MAGA wrapped in a Union Jack; Farage's love for Trump is explicit. The other obvious comparison after Trump is Pierre Poujade.
It is also telling where Reform UK members are coming from. They are coming from the Conservative Party mostly, with a smattering coming from a lot further right.
So, yes, Reform UK are on the right. They may accept some of the post-war consensus that you label as centrism. They may make unachievable spending promises to the voters of Clacton. But they are not centrists. They are right-wingers, some conservative, some small state, some Poujadist, some reactionary, some nationalist.
As for whether they will attract serious and competent people... well, one Tim Montgomerie doesn't make a summer. Again, let us look at Trump. Trump attracted some serious and competent people, who either soon fell out with him or (e.g. Rubio, arguably Vance) abandoned all their seriousness and competence in favour of bending the knee.
I think the next election may well be Lab v Reform, but I don't expect Reform to be serious or competent. They will be offering fantasy spending plans and grievance politics, like Trump did.
Well as I say I think there's a decent chance, TACO notwithstanding, that you'll get it. 30% let's say.
But I then look at how they get to 100, or 110, or 120, and I can't even imagine what the seats they'd need to win would be. Maybe look for a by-election to win and hold somewhere unexpected? If the Lib Dems can't break into areas they've had little strength in since ever, they aren't ever going to get to 100 seats. And I don't see anything in polling or local results that suggests that sort of breakthrough.
So you'd need a complete landslide for Labour or Reform, to get the Lib Dems coming second. And that just doesn't ring true for the moment, with polarised and split voting all around.
Maybe he had already released his seatbelt, or maybe the seat was thrown out with him? Possibly doing the first saved his life. Everyone else would still have been strapped to the exploding plane.
🚨Scoop: White House envoy Steve Witkoff privately warned top Senate Republicans that Iran's retaliation to an Israeli strike on its nuclear program could overwhelm Israel's defenses and cause mass damage and casualties. My story on
@axios
https://x.com/BarakRavid/status/1933196075135062164
Unprovoked?
Unprovoked!?
LOL kinabalu that was a good one, you literally made me laugh out loud at that one.
(Guilty secret: I actually quite liked Series 5 of B5. It's not as good as if they'd stretched the fourth season over the fifth, but I quite liked what they did with it.)
Labour are also hovering just above their lowest ever polling
That's a feature of 5 party polling. 25% now is 35% plus two years ago. The days of winning seats with 35,000 votes and 70% are gone
Massive scandal in Hungary 🇭🇺
Georg Spöttle, Orban's "best pundit" who has been influencing public opinion for years now, turned out to be a foreign agent (ruzzia), and his handler is colonel Oleg Smirnov (GRU)
The Orban-regime is not commenting so far!
https://x.com/SzabadonMagyar/status/1933067247511113743
Now do Tulsi Gabbard.
https://www.pprune.org/accidents-close-calls/666472-plane-crash-near-ahmedabad.html
They are light years more serious than Kemi and Farage
So I can see the same outcome as 1983 but from a higher base - even on 28% I'd be surprised if they won more than 120 seats. But at 35% they probably win 500.
Though he has a point.
OK, even the existence of this programme review is going to force the UK to re-examine our reliance on the USA.
Remember: AUKUS is a TREATY ratified by three legislature, it's not an idle MoU (like F-35) - it's about the worth of a country.
https://x.com/FTusa284/status/1933066549163708431
But it also puts the sweet spot at about 72 MPs. The vote spread becomes increasingly inefficient thereafter as you go up, whereas although Reform hit breakthrough at a higher level, once they're there, the seats come flooding in. So the question is: what's the limit of your ambition. Do you see your ceiling as a largish third party or do you aspire to lead a government?
On the other hand, the Lib Dems are being quite distinct from all the other three parties at the moment. unfortunately, they're not getting as much media coverage as they should be - particularly with something to say that the others aren't, whether on social care or Trump, Europe and foreign affairs. The comms team needs to be knocking harder on media doors.
He said he had a copy in his bedside cabinet at home, one in his office, one in his travel bag, etc. He also said he felt an enormous relief when he ended his time in charge at the company and could shred the lot, without them having been used.
Nowadays, it's all probably online...
Kemi is just talking to herself
Hopefully Israel are not.
Will noone rid us of these turbulent Mullahs?
Sorry, missed that. My bad.
They are all pretty useless in my opinion, but that's not objective, its opinion
There is nothing objectively more 'serious' about Starmer than the LOTO
But yes, five parties in double figures is going to put a hell of a stress on FPTP.