You can't handle the truth. Honesty is Starmer’s only advantage over Farage – politicalbetting.com
You can't handle the truth. Honesty is Starmer’s only advantage over Farage – politicalbetting.com
Voters believe Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, is better than Sir Keir Starmer in almost every respect but is less honest than him, according to a poll.
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Forensic Farage ?
Relationship with Russia; Farage 10 v Starmer 0
Relationship with Trump; Farage 8 v Starmer 2
Sartorial elegance (casual shorts department); Farage 10 v Starmer 0
https://x.com/saulstaniforth/status/1944644394558042208?s=61&t=LYVEHh2mqFy1oUJAdCfe-Q
The front page of the Times is reporting a shortage of Good Brie.
Hats off voters.
This poll shows just how Starmer has failed in his first year and opened the door to Farage
With the conservatives presently dead in the water and another poll this morning in the Metro affirming the public 'do not trust any of them', the country is in a deep hole and hence the illusion Farage is the answer
I would suggest there are less than a handful of our fellow posters who actually endorse Farage but he certainly receives the wide publicity he does due to our political vacuum
Isn't a Plaid - Labour coalition the likely outcome though?
I'm left with a number of thoughts - had, by some miracle, Rishi Sunak been re-elected, would he now have as dire poll numbers as Starmer? Probably. Had, by some other miracle, Farage and Reform won last year's election, would he have such good numbers as he has now? Probably not.
There seemed to have been some unrealistic expectations about what an incoming Labour Government could, should or would do and, among some, there is almost a reflexive dislike of the very concept of a "Labour Government" which is up there with what you should or shouldn't put on a pizza.
Starmer had two choices - one was to be radical and unpopular from day one. We all knew restoring the public finances and trying to correct years of Conservative inertia (as an aside, my biggest condemnation of your party is not that they did the wrong thing but rather they did nothing across a range of issues) would involve pain in terms of tax rises and spending cuts and going hard on that (hampered by the OBR) would have been helpful.
The other option was to be Continuity Sunak and continue to kick the can of the difficult issues down the road. Change without change so to speak.
Starmer's problem is he has tried to do both and done neither. We have half-hearted exhortations of change backed up by continuing inertia and hamstrung, despite a large majority, by a tranche of fearful MPs suspecting their tenure on Westminster could be very short. It has disappointed those who hoped for better and confirmed the fears of those who suspected the worst.
The one saving grace for Starmer is none of his political opponents have the slightest clue how to handle the big issues from the "small boats" to social care to prison places to balancing the public finances to the huge demographic and technological challenges our economy and society has to confront and this helps Starmer and Labour enormously.
People are frustrated not because it's the wrong type of change but there appears to be no change. Another summer and the "boats" are still coming, the economy is still stagnating etc. The other side of this desire for change is the solutions most people have are either incoherent, ruinously expensive, illegal or all three predicated on it being pain for other people but not for themselves. The frustration is as much because no one can see the solutions rather than there being obvious solutions but the Government won't implement them.
There are obvious solutions to Britain's problems. Cut welfare for the undeserving, just tell foreigners to go away, don't do any investment that has a payback time beyond the next election. You know the sort of thing, some might call it common sense. It's just Deep State Conspiracy that stops us doing them.
Trouble with those obvious solutions tends to be that they're either creating even bigger problems down the line, or rubbish in ways that are boring and fiddly to explain.
It’s the control but that grates the most.
Farage is not seen as a messiah - just the Next Try.
First- aren't the next Senedd elections under a really proportional system, so you might as well vote for who you actually want?
Second- won't a Plaid government give you all the things you dislike about Labour but with knobs on?
https://x.com/mattyglesias/status/1944536180181135826
"American vlogging family with three young kids moves to Russia.
Husband is promised Russian citizenship and rear area service as a welder if he joins the RU Army.
Gets sent to the Ukrainian frontline after 3 weeks of training."
https://x.com/Osinttechnical/status/1944459550725464565
Opinion on leaders a product of current VI as people paste their hopes on them shocker.
Hopefully before the next GE everyone will remember what a spiv he is.
In Wales, Labour have been in power far too long and Plaid or Reform are the best chance to copy the SNP, and as in Scotland there is no chance of Plaid winning a referendum and in any respect they have declared it is not something for their first term in office
The Conservatives in the Daily Telegraph and on here still haven't got over losing the election and I am not sure Starmer believes he won. There is definitely some imposter syndrome to review. The Tories defeat was so comprehensive they are now clinging to former Tory Farage for salvation.
This government have been slow out of the blocks and very poor at politics. They should have done the really nasty stuff this time last year but they failed that test.
The government have made poor policy decisions ( NI and Welfare) and made poor sells of WFA and Farmer's inheritance tax. ( the WFA was also poorly thought through).
Where they have had a modicum of mixed success is foreign policy. Although foreign policy requires negotiation and that leads to concession pros and cons. Right wing media, social media and PB posters have sold every agreement and trade deal as 100% capitulation. These are the same writers, journalists and PB posters who told us Boris Johnson got all the big calls right. According to them the arrangement with France over asylum seekers has failed already.
Or his attention to Clacton residents concerns. If he was ever there to hear them.
Certainty it would not be popular if Plaid facilitated Labour in office
"It's not Good Brie - UK shoppers say au revoir to top French cheeses in cattle disease outbreak"
I guess it's la vache qui ne rit pas now
Is this arrangement unique ?
https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/southkorea/defense/20250714/seoul-cautious-on-opcon-transfer-as-us-moves-to-restore-restriction
...Wartime control of South Korean forces was handed to the U.S.-led U.N. Command during the Korean War and has yet to return. While Seoul regained peacetime control in 1994, efforts to reclaim wartime authority have faced repeated delays.
Korea first moved to reclaim wartime operational control in August 2006, during the Roh Moo-hyun administration. A month later, Seoul and Washington agreed on basic principles and set April 17, 2012, as the target date. That year, the two sides also drafted a strategic transition plan to guide the handover.
However, growing opposition from conservative parties and heightened security concerns following North Korean military provocations resulted in a delay...
Just in a different form.
One of the reasons MAGA are so crazy about this is they were genuinely not aware Trump and Epstein were buddies.
Their information diet to date has been Epstein is a Pedo (sic) and that's really bad, Trump is a saviour.
They literally haven't seen anything showing Trump and Epstein together.
And argument that says "Yeah he might be a pedo but he is our pedo" doesn't exactly answer the question to any degree of satisfaction
Sooner or later, a government is going to come in and use primary legislation to try and do stuff faster. The only questions are - When? and Which party?
EDIT: The second stage, after that, will be to take the lesson from MAGA. Take control of courts by flooding the judiciary with the like minded.
Yes, these will be fun times indeed.
So far, it doesn't look like Farage is up for this.
The question for the next election looks pretty dismal. One candidate who is intensely loved by some but hated by more. Another candidate who stirs nobody's enthusiasm. Who wins?
What's interesting is that some of his supporters are going there.
There is nothing constraining Parliament from legislating whatever they want. Which is very different from the position in the US.
Flooding the judiciary would be a pointless waste of time for a government with a determined program, and a substantial majority.
2040 - "Today, Justice Jeffries ruled that *not* sending asylum seekers to South Georgia to live in tents violated the Human Rights of The People, under the doctrine of Averaged Human Rights."
https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/13/uk-launches-500-package-to-support-diverse-underrepresented-investors-and-founders/
The British Business Bank, owned by the UK government, is creating a £500 million (around $674 million) economic package to help support diverse and underrepresented fund managers and founders in the country.
Second, given the regime was gung-ho for release just a couple of weeks prior, something must have been uncovered very recently, which again is unlikely to be Trump because his would have been the very first name they checked for.
Third, that it came up so late suggests it might be something not immediately obvious, a line that requires some dot-joining.
On the MAGA reaction, remember it is not just about Epstein but also that Trump seems to be double-crossing MAGA, which is isolationist, on the SMO by releasing arms to Ukraine that had been blocked by Pete at the Pentagon, and also bombing Iran. Texas is the cherry on top.
https://www.sainsburys.co.uk/gol-ui/product/sainsburys-somerset-brie-160g
As long as it’s properly competitive and the programme and entry levels are set for ability and not just for feels then it could find growth by allowing people to set up and run business where they would have just bumbled along the sea bed otherwise.
If you get the right people being the selectors, properly successful city people and not people from pressure groups then it could work for everyone.
What happens (in the US) is that minority/veteran owned* firms are setup. These are part of the layering* of government contracts through a pyramid of contracts and sub-contracts. The contracts pass through these firms, as long as they re-direct the contracts to the right firms.
If the people nominally owning the firms behave nicely, they are allowed to keep a small profit.
* The game is in how much of the business they really own. It's a bit like the scene from Goodfellas, where the bar owner is encouraged to go into business with Pauli.
**The word "Layering" is deliberate here. Very often the same firms own multiple companies in the pyramid. Which often do little more than add a profit to passing the contract to a sub-contractor.
This one seems to have cut through.
Given Trump's recorded and evidenced actions, and the crimes of which he has been convicted, heaven knows what he has done. Or some lawyers.
Trump's obsession with Epstein, followed by his 'Epstein who? Why are you talking about him?' pivot is another strange facet.
I've been shown some emails, recently, relating to the Brit Volt.
When published (going in a book someone is writing), they will fit the format of comedy best, I think.
The politicians, civil servants and various quangocrats, all congratulating themselves in dealing with a Proper Company of "Expert Investors" without "Too much influence from techies"...
The think about the NU10K is that it looks a bit more diverse than the Old10K. But this is quite superficial - there is no diversity of thought.
Possibly Sunak, himself, is the perfect example of this.
Trump hasn't been posting them on Truth Social
Elon hasn't been pumping them on TwiX
Joe Rogan hasn't been talking about them
The only thing MAGA knew about Epstein (Pedo) is that trump was gonna release the files.
And didn't.
And now it seems they were best buds.
Support for Farage is not going to survive much scrutiny, and it is fragile enough as it is.
Brit Volt structured themselves to be 100% compatible with the UK permanent and political structures of government. They were absolutely ideal. The fact that (as you say) there was 0% chance of them producing batteries was irrelevant.
So to repeat, imo the reason for the Epstein file being withheld is not a link to Trump.
They also include *publicly* linking Trump to Epstein in a humiliating way. Being humiliated is the ultimate Trump no-no.
Which was Epstein's intention, I think.