In July, Mr Kruger used a speech in the Commons to warn that Reform would 'spend money like drunken sailors' if they went into Government.
Is there on the record any sensible lengthy discussion between a proper economics journalist and a Reform economics/finance spokesperson about their current policy on tax/spend/debt/deficit?
I noticed recently Tice being allowed to get away with saying that they couldn't say now what their 2029 policy would be on these matters. If they are a potential party of government the voter is entitled to be interested in how they would do the hard stuff differently now.
No reform voter is going to like the answers that come out when reality is applied to that 2029 manifesto so no Reform Spokesman is going to provide details because they would be laughed at.
As I said a while back the best plan to deal with the boats would have been to offered Farage some control over the approach used so we could watch him flounder the way everyone else does. Some how or other he needs to be brought into things in a way that he can no longer scream from the sidelines..
Krugers defection is old news by tomorrow though. Defections are a one day wonder
True but in conference season it will unsettle Conservative backbenchers, ease the pressure on Starmer and take the shine of Kemi's week. In the longer term, Kruger will either professionalise Reform or become the 917th big hitter to fall out with Nigel Farage.
This feels too early if Farage wants to be the focus of the tory party conference so I wonder if another one or 2 defecting MPs are lined up to defect before October 5th.
If the shadow whips get wind then swift removal of the whip warranted and expulsion from the party before Nigel gets to arse about with another 'important announcement'
Very good quote from my current favourite book (because I've only just finished it), Kill all Normies, by Angela Nagle:
"Liberals don't believe in actual politics any more, just bearing witness to suffering. The cult of suffering, weakness and vulnerability has become central to contemporary liberal identity politics."
It's an aspect of modern Chritianity in this country that intrigues me. The one with the highest victim credentials is top dog. I'd really like to understand the theology behind it.
It's mostly in the Sermon on the Mount.
I believe you're right, thank you, that is what they seem to be imitating.
Krugers defection is old news by tomorrow though. Defections are a one day wonder
True but in conference season it will unsettle Conservative backbenchers, ease the pressure on Starmer and take the shine of Kemi's week. In the longer term, Kruger will either professionalise Reform or become the 917th big hitter to fall out with Nigel Farage.
This feels too early if Farage wants to be the focus of the tory party conference so I wonder if another one or 2 defecting MPs are lined up to defect before October 5th.
That is possible, or the announcement might have been brought forward to recapture the spotlight for Nigel Farage away from Tommy Robinson's march and Kemi's good week (not to mention the subject of this thread).
Danny Kruger, my goodness. Blanche has a Reform MP.
Pity, though Kruger is very socially conservative and an evangelical Christian, anti abortion, anti euthanasia and anti same sex marriage and hostile to much of Islam and economically very small state so no great surprise
Perfect fit for the narrow minded far right attracted to Farage
I am very pleased he has gone as that is not my conservative party, though it could be yours
The Tory Party can’t keep affording to lose people. If the response is “good riddance” every time someone defects then bit by bit it loses that broad church status and starts to serve a dwindling number of interests.
With one half of the party feeling more affinity with the LibDems, and the other half more affinity with ReFuk, what is the point of the Conservatives?
It is now the party of economically conservative, socially liberal voters ie more economically conservative than the LDs and more socially liberal than Reform
Krugers defection is old news by tomorrow though. Defections are a one day wonder
True but in conference season it will unsettle Conservative backbenchers, ease the pressure on Starmer and take the shine of Kemi's week. In the longer term, Kruger will either professionalise Reform or become the 917th big hitter to fall out with Nigel Farage.
This feels too early if Farage wants to be the focus of the tory party conference so I wonder if another one or 2 defecting MPs are lined up to defect before October 5th.
In July, Mr Kruger used a speech in the Commons to warn that Reform would 'spend money like drunken sailors' if they went into Government.
Is there on the record any sensible lengthy discussion between a proper economics journalist and a Reform economics/finance spokesperson about their current policy on tax/spend/debt/deficit?
I noticed recently Tice being allowed to get away with saying that they couldn't say now what their 2029 policy would be on these matters. If they are a potential party of government the voter is entitled to be interested in how they would do the hard stuff differently now.
I am an economist and chatted recently with Richard Tice and I think it is safe to say that their economic and fiscal policy is a work in progress, largely dreamt up on the back of one of Mr Farage's fag packets. Cut taxes, increase spending, fund it by massive efficiency savings (ie magical thinking). I think they would face an immediate test from the bond market if they won, and their response would be to slash spending in ways that will make voters in places like Mr Tice's Skegness constituency feel extremely betrayed.
The thing about Farage's girlfriend is that the BBC article, when read in detail, contradicts the claim that her family was not rich enough for her to own the flat.
Her parents own a 300,000 euro flat in Strasbourg, but a family company owns a very valuable building that is estimated to generate an income of 95-110,000 euros a year. That building must be worth 2-2.5m euros. And, if they've been getting a rent like that for several years, the company should have hundreds of thousands of euros in its accounts.
Krugers defection is old news by tomorrow though. Defections are a one day wonder
True but in conference season it will unsettle Conservative backbenchers, ease the pressure on Starmer and take the shine of Kemi's week. In the longer term, Kruger will either professionalise Reform or become the 917th big hitter to fall out with Nigel Farage.
This feels too early if Farage wants to be the focus of the tory party conference so I wonder if another one or 2 defecting MPs are lined up to defect before October 5th.
That is possible, or the announcement might have been brought forward to recapture the spotlight for Nigel Farage away from Tommy Robinson's march and Kemi's good week (not to mention the subject of this thread).
If Farage ends up in hot water over money all these 'last best hope for the Universe' idiots are going to look a bit, um, idiotic
Danny Kruger, my goodness. Blanche has a Reform MP.
Pity, though Kruger is very socially conservative and an evangelical Christian, anti abortion, anti euthanasia and anti same sex marriage and hostile to much of Islam and economically very small state so no great surprise
Perfect fit for the narrow minded far right attracted to Farage
I am very pleased he has gone as that is not my conservative party, though it could be yours
The Tory Party can’t keep affording to lose people. If the response is “good riddance” every time someone defects then bit by bit it loses that broad church status and starts to serve a dwindling number of interests.
With one half of the party feeling more affinity with the LibDems, and the other half more affinity with ReFuk, what is the point of the Conservatives?
It is now the party of economically conservative, socially liberal voters ie more economically conservative than the LDs and more socially liberal than Reform
Given the spread of views on those two subjects in both Rerform and the Lib Dems, the window you are talking about between them appears to me to be vanishingly small.
In July, Mr Kruger used a speech in the Commons to warn that Reform would 'spend money like drunken sailors' if they went into Government.
Is there on the record any sensible lengthy discussion between a proper economics journalist and a Reform economics/finance spokesperson about their current policy on tax/spend/debt/deficit?
I noticed recently Tice being allowed to get away with saying that they couldn't say now what their 2029 policy would be on these matters. If they are a potential party of government the voter is entitled to be interested in how they would do the hard stuff differently now.
No reform voter is going to like the answers that come out when reality is applied to that 2029 manifesto so no Reform Spokesman is going to provide details because they would be laughed at.
As I said a while back the best plan to deal with the boats would have been to offered Farage some control over the approach used so we could watch him flounder the way everyone else does. Some how or other he needs to be brought into things in a way that he can no longer scream from the sidelines..
He'd just say he was being hamstrung by the government.
Krugers defection is old news by tomorrow though. Defections are a one day wonder
True but in conference season it will unsettle Conservative backbenchers, ease the pressure on Starmer and take the shine of Kemi's week. In the longer term, Kruger will either professionalise Reform or become the 917th big hitter to fall out with Nigel Farage.
This feels too early if Farage wants to be the focus of the tory party conference so I wonder if another one or 2 defecting MPs are lined up to defect before October 5th.
That is possible, or the announcement might have been brought forward to recapture the spotlight for Nigel Farage away from Tommy Robinson's march and Kemi's good week (not to mention the subject of this thread).
Tommy’s march was very good news for Farage.
It made the far right look like a major force in British politics, and reinforced all Reform’s messages. And by not appearing at it, Farage got to pretend to worried floating voters that he’s a moderate and not one of that lot.
The pb Tories who did not bark in the night time. Is it just me who noticed that of all our party leaders, it is only Kemi who had a good week?
Keir Starmer – under attack from his own side over his lack of political judgement or even plain common sense when appointing and then backing up to the last moment Lord Mandelson who has now had to resign three times for what was, at least to a first approximation, the same pattern of behaviour, being entranced by men considerably richer than him: Geoffrey Robinson, the Hindujas, Jeffrey Epstein. (On second thoughts, who better to inveigle himself into the inner circle of a billionaire property developer and cryptocurrency grifter?)
Ed Davey – the honourable member for falling in the water is being criticised by his own side for irrelevant stunts.
Nigel Farage – stamp duty obviously but also risks being outflanked by Tommy Robinson who attracted somewhere north of 100,000 largely peaceful protestors to London, along with squillionaire cheque-writer Elon Musk.
Kemi Badenoch – widely praised for an excellent PMQs and now can lay claim to two top Labour scalps.
And where were pb's Conservatives? Arguing about crowd sizes and frantically trawling the interwebs for a culture war about the assassination of a man who this time last week they could not have picked out of a police line-up even if he wore his MAGA hat. Poor old Kemi.
I've written to Keir Starmer, Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage, urging them to join me in condemning Elon Musk's dangerous remarks inciting violence yesterday.
I demur. That scenario is how we get another Tory government. Under the name Reform.
It’s not inconceivable that Reform will become the Tories in due course. It happened in Canada.
If Reform win more seats at the next general election than the Tories very possible as long as we keep FPTP as in Canada.
If Labour were re elected though and we moved to Reform, with say the LDs providing confidence and supply, then the Tories could still win plenty of MPs even on just 10-15% of the vote. In Italy for example with PR Forza Italia is still around despite being overtaken by LN and Brothers of Italy, and in government with them and in Sweden the Moderates are still around and in government with the Sweden Democrats despite being overtaken by them.
In Germany, Spain and NZ centre right and populist and nationalist right parties all still exist as separate parties under PR, as is the case in Israel too. Even second ballot France still has a LRs rump around, though they are largely Macron supporting now against Melenchon's block and Le Pen and Bardella, with their most rightwing fringe having defected to Le Pen's RN
Trevor Phillips on Times Radio this morning said the three main themes of the march were 1) immigration; 2) pride in our country; and 3) christianity.
Which last I didn't see coming as England is quite some way along its post-reformation journey to complete atheism. Stig Abell countered that when people said "christianity" it was shorthand for times gone past (old maids..holy communion...etc).
To which he, Phillips, then went on to say that the/a main driving force of this christian resurgence was from immigrants.
Would be interested to know (though probably unknowable) how many of the marchers on Saturday attend religious events of any kind. In my own part of the world sectarian marchers tend to identify along religious lines but I hae ma doots about how much genuine religious observance is attached. The Christian nationalism (in the UK at least) seems emptily performative, though I'm willing to be surprused by news that Tommy Robinson cuts up his coke with a communion wafer.
Pro-Christian is an alternative way of saying anti-Muslim.
'I'm no of fan of Christ our saviour and lord, but at least he never said anything positive about Muslims.'
Phillips sounds a bit confused, it seems very unlikely that many immigrants, christian or otherwise, were on the TR march.
It's an attempt by the terminally online to import American style political Christianity, the Charlie Kirk tendency.
For a bunch of "patriots" they seem very keen on us copying America.
It is partly that but perhaps also that many marchers feel the loss not of Christianity per se but of what we might call cultural Christianity. They do not go to church but want to know it is there, and has not been turned into a mosque or posh flats.
ETA and replacing HMQ with HMK probably has not helped in this regard. Another mistake by Liz Truss.
If you watch the rally though, the Christianity they're pushing is not cultural Christianity that anyone in Britain would recognise. It wasn't a rousing rendition of Abide with Me, it was hyper evangelical Christianity that is being imported from America. When I was watching it some of the speakers were trying to get the audience to chant "Christ is King" and most of them just looked baffled
I imagine this will die a death soon, but if it doesn't, a shift will occur. There are a number of hyper evangelical outlets especially in the cities, with Christ is Lord and King mixed with awful loud music and hyperbolic long talks. It has a long tail right down to the person who waves their arms in the air during trad hymns and hugs a lot in the peace and is the only charismatic in the village.
But politically far right?? No. Absolutely not. They tend to be LD, Labour, Tory, and to have a lot of ethnicities in the flock. Some are nearly all black. They tend to be opposed to all other faiths because their faith is exclusive, but only in the same sense that religions in the modern world usually are - they are opposed nicely and politely. Quite a few are pacifists.
I think there are different types of Evangelicals though. I noticed that at the Saturday Rally a lot of the personnel were wearing 'Brotherhood of Christ' hoodies.
I agree. But overwhelmingly the preponderance of church attending evangelicals are politically non extreme.
As to 'Brotherhood of Christ' hoodies, if they are these:
The pb Tories who did not bark in the night time. Is it just me who noticed that of all our party leaders, it is only Kemi who had a good week?
Keir Starmer – under attack from his own side over his lack of political judgement or even plain common sense when appointing and then backing up to the last moment Lord Mandelson who has now had to resign three times for what was, at least to a first approximation, the same pattern of behaviour, being entranced by men considerably richer than him: Geoffrey Robinson, the Hindujas, Jeffrey Epstein. (On second thoughts, who better to inveigle himself into the inner circle of a billionaire property developer and cryptocurrency grifter?)
Ed Davey – the honourable member for falling in the water is being criticised by his own side for irrelevant stunts.
Nigel Farage – stamp duty obviously but also risks being outflanked by Tommy Robinson who attracted somewhere north of 100,000 largely peaceful protestors to London, along with squillionaire cheque-writer Elon Musk.
Kemi Badenoch – widely praised for an excellent PMQs and now can lay claim to two top Labour scalps.
And where were pb's Conservatives? Arguing about crowd sizes and frantically trawling the interwebs for a culture war about the assassination of a man who this time last week they could not have picked out of a police line-up even if he wore his MAGA hat. Poor old Kemi.
I've written to Keir Starmer, Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage, urging them to join me in condemning Elon Musk's dangerous remarks inciting violence yesterday.
This might be smart politics from Davey. Nigel doesn't want to be wholly aligned with the National Front, but he doesn't want to alienate too many of their sympathizers either (many, if not most, of whom will be lending him their vote). Nigel's main threat is from his right, so I suspect he'll toss Ed's letter into the bin without responding.
Danny Kruger, my goodness. Blanche has a Reform MP.
Pity, though Kruger is very socially conservative and an evangelical Christian, anti abortion, anti euthanasia and anti same sex marriage and hostile to much of Islam and economically very small state so no great surprise
Perfect fit for the narrow minded far right attracted to Farage
I am very pleased he has gone as that is not my conservative party, though it could be yours
The Tory Party can’t keep affording to lose people. If the response is “good riddance” every time someone defects then bit by bit it loses that broad church status and starts to serve a dwindling number of interests.
With one half of the party feeling more affinity with the LibDems, and the other half more affinity with ReFuk, what is the point of the Conservatives?
It is now the party of economically conservative, socially liberal voters ie more economically conservative than the LDs and more socially liberal than Reform
Given the spread of views on those two subjects in both Rerform and the Lib Dems, the window you are talking about between them appears to me to be vanishingly small.
Exactly.
The Tories are being crowded out. There’s not enough voters exclusively in that bracket to sustain them as a “big two” electoral force.
Trevor Phillips on Times Radio this morning said the three main themes of the march were 1) immigration; 2) pride in our country; and 3) christianity.
Which last I didn't see coming as England is quite some way along its post-reformation journey to complete atheism. Stig Abell countered that when people said "christianity" it was shorthand for times gone past (old maids..holy communion...etc).
To which he, Phillips, then went on to say that the/a main driving force of this christian resurgence was from immigrants.
Would be interested to know (though probably unknowable) how many of the marchers on Saturday attend religious events of any kind. In my own part of the world sectarian marchers tend to identify along religious lines but I hae ma doots about how much genuine religious observance is attached. The Christian nationalism (in the UK at least) seems emptily performative, though I'm willing to be surprused by news that Tommy Robinson cuts up his coke with a communion wafer.
Pro-Christian is an alternative way of saying anti-Muslim.
'I'm no of fan of Christ our saviour and lord, but at least he never said anything positive about Muslims.'
Phillips sounds a bit confused, it seems very unlikely that many immigrants, christian or otherwise, were on the TR march.
It's an attempt by the terminally online to import American style political Christianity, the Charlie Kirk tendency.
For a bunch of "patriots" they seem very keen on us copying America.
It is partly that but perhaps also that many marchers feel the loss not of Christianity per se but of what we might call cultural Christianity. They do not go to church but want to know it is there, and has not been turned into a mosque or posh flats.
ETA and replacing HMQ with HMK probably has not helped in this regard. Another mistake by Liz Truss.
If you watch the rally though, the Christianity they're pushing is not cultural Christianity that anyone in Britain would recognise. It wasn't a rousing rendition of Abide with Me, it was hyper evangelical Christianity that is being imported from America. When I was watching it some of the speakers were trying to get the audience to chant "Christ is King" and most of them just looked baffled
Except increasingly that is Christianity in Britain, as mainstream more liberal C of E and Methodist and Church of Scotland churches decline in numbers in the UK, as to a lesser extent does the Roman Catholic church, it is more US style radical conservative churches like the Pentescotals, Baptists and even the most evangelical Bible based C of E churches that are the ones still growing. Along with to a small degree conservative Eastern Orthodox churches
The thing about Farage's girlfriend is that the BBC article, when read in detail, contradicts the claim that her family was not rich enough for her to own the flat.
Her parents own a 300,000 euro flat in Strasbourg, but a family company owns a very valuable building that is estimated to generate an income of 95-110,000 euros a year. That building must be worth 2-2.5m euros. And, if they've been getting a rent like that for several years, the company should have hundreds of thousands of euros in its accounts.
That wasn't the figures I've seen about that building previously - it was a factor of 10 out with rent being 9,500 to 11,000 euros.
Equally it's the parents money so why suddenly is it being used to buy something in a poor part of the UK..
East Wiltshire was one of the few seats the Tories were going to hold according to many of the MRP studies recently.
Held comfortably in the May 25 vote, probably still a comfortable hold in 2029
I think Kruger may have a substantial personal vote.
I doubt it. East Wiltshire lost Devizes and was a new constituency, Kruger represented the old Devizes for one term and his vote held up in 2024 no better vs notional than Tories generally, worse in fact. Hes had no time to build up much of a personal following
Trevor Phillips on Times Radio this morning said the three main themes of the march were 1) immigration; 2) pride in our country; and 3) christianity.
Which last I didn't see coming as England is quite some way along its post-reformation journey to complete atheism. Stig Abell countered that when people said "christianity" it was shorthand for times gone past (old maids..holy communion...etc).
To which he, Phillips, then went on to say that the/a main driving force of this christian resurgence was from immigrants.
Would be interested to know (though probably unknowable) how many of the marchers on Saturday attend religious events of any kind. In my own part of the world sectarian marchers tend to identify along religious lines but I hae ma doots about how much genuine religious observance is attached. The Christian nationalism (in the UK at least) seems emptily performative, though I'm willing to be surprused by news that Tommy Robinson cuts up his coke with a communion wafer.
Pro-Christian is an alternative way of saying anti-Muslim.
'I'm no of fan of Christ our saviour and lord, but at least he never said anything positive about Muslims.'
Phillips sounds a bit confused, it seems very unlikely that many immigrants, christian or otherwise, were on the TR march.
It's an attempt by the terminally online to import American style political Christianity, the Charlie Kirk tendency.
For a bunch of "patriots" they seem very keen on us copying America.
It is partly that but perhaps also that many marchers feel the loss not of Christianity per se but of what we might call cultural Christianity. They do not go to church but want to know it is there, and has not been turned into a mosque or posh flats.
ETA and replacing HMQ with HMK probably has not helped in this regard. Another mistake by Liz Truss.
If you watch the rally though, the Christianity they're pushing is not cultural Christianity that anyone in Britain would recognise. It wasn't a rousing rendition of Abide with Me, it was hyper evangelical Christianity that is being imported from America. When I was watching it some of the speakers were trying to get the audience to chant "Christ is King" and most of them just looked baffled
I imagine this will die a death soon, but if it doesn't, a shift will occur. There are a number of hyper evangelical outlets especially in the cities, with Christ is Lord and King mixed with awful loud music and hyperbolic long talks. It has a long tail right down to the person who waves their arms in the air during trad hymns and hugs a lot in the peace and is the only charismatic in the village.
But politically far right?? No. Absolutely not. They tend to be LD, Labour, Tory, and to have a lot of ethnicities in the flock. Some are nearly all black. They tend to be opposed to all other faiths because their faith is exclusive, but only in the same sense that religions in the modern world usually are - they are opposed nicely and politely. Quite a few are pacifists.
I think there are different types of Evangelicals though. I noticed that at the Saturday Rally a lot of the personnel were wearing 'Brotherhood of Christ' hoodies.
I agree. But overwhelmingly the preponderance of church attending evangelicals are politically non extreme.
As to 'Brotherhood of Christ' hoodies, if they are these:
they have to progress a bit before making the evangelical mainstream.
"We have some Heavenly Tablets, some of which are copies of ancient tablets found today in museums. Some have been interpreted using an ancient process and are now in print in English and Spanish, with a Cantonese language translation underway. They together are the Book of Remembrance prophesied in Malachi 3:16. They are in a set of five volumes. The first is the Book of Remembrance: The First and Second Books of Achee. The second volume is the Book of Remembrance of Enoch. The third volume is the Book of Remembrance of our Ancient Grandmothers, the fourth volume is the Book of Remembrance of Melchizedek, and the fifth volume is The Book of Remembrance of Moses."
IIRC, those Books are not part of the mainstream canonical tradition?
The pb Tories who did not bark in the night time. Is it just me who noticed that of all our party leaders, it is only Kemi who had a good week?
Keir Starmer – under attack from his own side over his lack of political judgement or even plain common sense when appointing and then backing up to the last moment Lord Mandelson who has now had to resign three times for what was, at least to a first approximation, the same pattern of behaviour, being entranced by men considerably richer than him: Geoffrey Robinson, the Hindujas, Jeffrey Epstein. (On second thoughts, who better to inveigle himself into the inner circle of a billionaire property developer and cryptocurrency grifter?)
Ed Davey – the honourable member for falling in the water is being criticised by his own side for irrelevant stunts.
Nigel Farage – stamp duty obviously but also risks being outflanked by Tommy Robinson who attracted somewhere north of 100,000 largely peaceful protestors to London, along with squillionaire cheque-writer Elon Musk.
Kemi Badenoch – widely praised for an excellent PMQs and now can lay claim to two top Labour scalps.
And where were pb's Conservatives? Arguing about crowd sizes and frantically trawling the interwebs for a culture war about the assassination of a man who this time last week they could not have picked out of a police line-up even if he wore his MAGA hat. Poor old Kemi.
One swallow doesn’t make a summer and all that. Her performance at PMQs was noted but she had an open goal that even Diana Ross couldn’t miss. When she starts doing it week in week out and finds a strong coherent positioning for the party then she will get more support and confidence but she hasn’t been that inspiring so far, perhaps this will be the rocket boost she needs but one big PMQ win is just on PMQ win, and I don’t think anyone but the biggest Kemi supporter would try and claim the scalps as “hers”, the media took those scalps.
What was interesting about PMQs was that for the first time, Kemi did what we (and to be fair, some other outlets) have been urging for some time which is to ask direct questions about current issues, rather than her customary mini-speeches meandering through last week's news and thus inviting the Prime Minister to answer whichever insignificant subclause is easiest to bat away. Sadly, by the end she reverted to form.
Nonetheless, the girl done good and has a legitimate (if not uncontested) claim to both scalps. There is every reason to believe that immediately after PMQs, Starmer determined to find out what he should already have known about Lord Mandelson.
But again, where are her supporters? Liverpool fans are not questioning whether it should have been a penalty, they celebrate Salah's goal.
A thought for Kemi. A 4-step plan for PMQs:-
Listen to Leon and use ChatGPT (other LLMs are available).
Train it on Hansard's record of LotO Starmer cross-examining Boris over Partygate and other fibs, over several weeks.
Feed it a current, anti-Labour, news story.
Have ChatGPT write a question about that news, in the style of Keir Starmer.
Short, direct, and designed to lure the Prime Minister into admissions that could later be used against him.
East Wiltshire was one of the few seats the Tories were going to hold according to many of the MRP studies recently.
Only because, like Easy Grinstead, the other parties haven't established a clear contender. EG is a good bet for a LibDem gain next time; in EW with Labour in clear second but with the government as it is, the Tories might be lucky there.
It's a Tory seat with Reform in fourth place - at a guess, very unusual for that?
The thing about Farage's girlfriend is that the BBC article, when read in detail, contradicts the claim that her family was not rich enough for her to own the flat.
Her parents own a 300,000 euro flat in Strasbourg, but a family company owns a very valuable building that is estimated to generate an income of 95-110,000 euros a year. That building must be worth 2-2.5m euros. And, if they've been getting a rent like that for several years, the company should have hundreds of thousands of euros in its accounts.
Hold on. Does this take us back to @AnneJGP's question about tax? Huge cash gifts from Farage would not attract income tax here but France does have a gift tax on recipients.
Danny Kruger, my goodness. Blanche has a Reform MP.
Pity, though Kruger is very socially conservative and an evangelical Christian, anti abortion, anti euthanasia and anti same sex marriage and hostile to much of Islam and economically very small state so no great surprise
Perfect fit for the narrow minded far right attracted to Farage
I am very pleased he has gone as that is not my conservative party, though it could be yours
The Tory Party can’t keep affording to lose people. If the response is “good riddance” every time someone defects then bit by bit it loses that broad church status and starts to serve a dwindling number of interests.
With one half of the party feeling more affinity with the LibDems, and the other half more affinity with ReFuk, what is the point of the Conservatives?
It is now the party of economically conservative, socially liberal voters ie more economically conservative than the LDs and more socially liberal than Reform
Given the spread of views on those two subjects in both Rerform and the Lib Dems, the window you are talking about between them appears to me to be vanishingly small.
Enough still to give them 18% of the vote even under Kemi.
Though if the Tories did cease to exist it would boost the Orange Book wing of the LDs as well as Reform
Trevor Phillips on Times Radio this morning said the three main themes of the march were 1) immigration; 2) pride in our country; and 3) christianity.
Which last I didn't see coming as England is quite some way along its post-reformation journey to complete atheism. Stig Abell countered that when people said "christianity" it was shorthand for times gone past (old maids..holy communion...etc).
To which he, Phillips, then went on to say that the/a main driving force of this christian resurgence was from immigrants.
Would be interested to know (though probably unknowable) how many of the marchers on Saturday attend religious events of any kind. In my own part of the world sectarian marchers tend to identify along religious lines but I hae ma doots about how much genuine religious observance is attached. The Christian nationalism (in the UK at least) seems emptily performative, though I'm willing to be surprused by news that Tommy Robinson cuts up his coke with a communion wafer.
Pro-Christian is an alternative way of saying anti-Muslim.
'I'm no of fan of Christ our saviour and lord, but at least he never said anything positive about Muslims.'
Phillips sounds a bit confused, it seems very unlikely that many immigrants, christian or otherwise, were on the TR march.
It's an attempt by the terminally online to import American style political Christianity, the Charlie Kirk tendency.
For a bunch of "patriots" they seem very keen on us copying America.
It is partly that but perhaps also that many marchers feel the loss not of Christianity per se but of what we might call cultural Christianity. They do not go to church but want to know it is there, and has not been turned into a mosque or posh flats.
ETA and replacing HMQ with HMK probably has not helped in this regard. Another mistake by Liz Truss.
If you watch the rally though, the Christianity they're pushing is not cultural Christianity that anyone in Britain would recognise. It wasn't a rousing rendition of Abide with Me, it was hyper evangelical Christianity that is being imported from America. When I was watching it some of the speakers were trying to get the audience to chant "Christ is King" and most of them just looked baffled
I imagine this will die a death soon, but if it doesn't, a shift will occur. There are a number of hyper evangelical outlets especially in the cities, with Christ is Lord and King mixed with awful loud music and hyperbolic long talks. It has a long tail right down to the person who waves their arms in the air during trad hymns and hugs a lot in the peace and is the only charismatic in the village.
But politically far right?? No. Absolutely not. They tend to be LD, Labour, Tory, and to have a lot of ethnicities in the flock. Some are nearly all black. They tend to be opposed to all other faiths because their faith is exclusive, but only in the same sense that religions in the modern world usually are - they are opposed nicely and politely. Quite a few are pacifists.
I think there are different types of Evangelicals though. I noticed that at the Saturday Rally a lot of the personnel were wearing 'Brotherhood of Christ' hoodies.
I agree. But overwhelmingly the preponderance of church attending evangelicals are politically non extreme.
As to 'Brotherhood of Christ' hoodies, if they are these:
The pb Tories who did not bark in the night time. Is it just me who noticed that of all our party leaders, it is only Kemi who had a good week?
Keir Starmer – under attack from his own side over his lack of political judgement or even plain common sense when appointing and then backing up to the last moment Lord Mandelson who has now had to resign three times for what was, at least to a first approximation, the same pattern of behaviour, being entranced by men considerably richer than him: Geoffrey Robinson, the Hindujas, Jeffrey Epstein. (On second thoughts, who better to inveigle himself into the inner circle of a billionaire property developer and cryptocurrency grifter?)
Ed Davey – the honourable member for falling in the water is being criticised by his own side for irrelevant stunts.
Nigel Farage – stamp duty obviously but also risks being outflanked by Tommy Robinson who attracted somewhere north of 100,000 largely peaceful protestors to London, along with squillionaire cheque-writer Elon Musk.
Kemi Badenoch – widely praised for an excellent PMQs and now can lay claim to two top Labour scalps.
And where were pb's Conservatives? Arguing about crowd sizes and frantically trawling the interwebs for a culture war about the assassination of a man who this time last week they could not have picked out of a police line-up even if he wore his MAGA hat. Poor old Kemi.
One swallow doesn’t make a summer and all that. Her performance at PMQs was noted but she had an open goal that even Diana Ross couldn’t miss. When she starts doing it week in week out and finds a strong coherent positioning for the party then she will get more support and confidence but she hasn’t been that inspiring so far, perhaps this will be the rocket boost she needs but one big PMQ win is just on PMQ win, and I don’t think anyone but the biggest Kemi supporter would try and claim the scalps as “hers”, the media took those scalps.
What was interesting about PMQs was that for the first time, Kemi did what we (and to be fair, some other outlets) have been urging for some time which is to ask direct questions about current issues, rather than her customary mini-speeches meandering through last week's news and thus inviting the Prime Minister to answer whichever insignificant subclause is easiest to bat away. Sadly, by the end she reverted to form.
Nonetheless, the girl done good and has a legitimate (if not uncontested) claim to both scalps. There is every reason to believe that immediately after PMQs, Starmer determined to find out what he should already have known about Lord Mandelson.
But again, where are her supporters? Liverpool fans are not questioning whether it should have been a penalty, they celebrate Salah's goal.
A thought for Kemi. A 4-step plan for PMQs:-
Listen to Leon and use ChatGPT (other LLMs are available).
Train it on Hansard's record of LotO Starmer cross-examining Boris over Partygate and other fibs, over several weeks.
Feed it a current, anti-Labour, news story.
Have ChatGPT write a question about that news, in the style of Keir Starmer.
Short, direct, and designed to lure the Prime Minister into admissions that could later be used against him.
The next PMQs is on Wednesday 15th October so time for her to review her strategy
The thing about Farage's girlfriend is that the BBC article, when read in detail, contradicts the claim that her family was not rich enough for her to own the flat.
Her parents own a 300,000 euro flat in Strasbourg, but a family company owns a very valuable building that is estimated to generate an income of 95-110,000 euros a year. That building must be worth 2-2.5m euros. And, if they've been getting a rent like that for several years, the company should have hundreds of thousands of euros in its accounts.
That wasn't the figures I've seen about that building previously - it was a factor of 10 out with rent being 9,500 to 11,000 euros.
Equally it's the parents money so why suddenly is it being used to buy something in a poor part of the UK..
East Wiltshire was one of the few seats the Tories were going to hold according to many of the MRP studies recently.
Held comfortably in the May 25 vote, probably still a comfortable hold in 2029
I think Kruger may have a substantial personal vote.
I doubt it. East Wiltshire lost Devizes and was a new constituency, Kruger represented the old Devizes for one term and his vote held up in 2024 no better vs notional than Tories generally, worse in fact. Hes had no time to build up much of a personal following
The Feb 2025 Yougov MRP had East Wiltshire as Con 28%, Ref 27%, LD 19%,, Lab 18% so Ref probably slightly ahead on current polling. The name is a bit misleading as it also includes around 10K voters in Swindon Borough. Also the seat that includes Stonehenge
Kruger was a big beast inasmuch as there were any left in the Cons party. Good thinker, not my cup of tea but I get it.
Perhaps he thinks he can shape Reform around himself and the "drunken sailor spending" comment was one thing that made Reform approach him to define their spending plans rather than criticise them.
Trevor Phillips on Times Radio this morning said the three main themes of the march were 1) immigration; 2) pride in our country; and 3) christianity.
Which last I didn't see coming as England is quite some way along its post-reformation journey to complete atheism. Stig Abell countered that when people said "christianity" it was shorthand for times gone past (old maids..holy communion...etc).
To which he, Phillips, then went on to say that the/a main driving force of this christian resurgence was from immigrants.
Would be interested to know (though probably unknowable) how many of the marchers on Saturday attend religious events of any kind. In my own part of the world sectarian marchers tend to identify along religious lines but I hae ma doots about how much genuine religious observance is attached. The Christian nationalism (in the UK at least) seems emptily performative, though I'm willing to be surprused by news that Tommy Robinson cuts up his coke with a communion wafer.
Pro-Christian is an alternative way of saying anti-Muslim.
'I'm no of fan of Christ our saviour and lord, but at least he never said anything positive about Muslims.'
Phillips sounds a bit confused, it seems very unlikely that many immigrants, christian or otherwise, were on the TR march.
It's an attempt by the terminally online to import American style political Christianity, the Charlie Kirk tendency.
For a bunch of "patriots" they seem very keen on us copying America.
It is partly that but perhaps also that many marchers feel the loss not of Christianity per se but of what we might call cultural Christianity. They do not go to church but want to know it is there, and has not been turned into a mosque or posh flats.
ETA and replacing HMQ with HMK probably has not helped in this regard. Another mistake by Liz Truss.
If you watch the rally though, the Christianity they're pushing is not cultural Christianity that anyone in Britain would recognise. It wasn't a rousing rendition of Abide with Me, it was hyper evangelical Christianity that is being imported from America. When I was watching it some of the speakers were trying to get the audience to chant "Christ is King" and most of them just looked baffled
I imagine this will die a death soon, but if it doesn't, a shift will occur. There are a number of hyper evangelical outlets especially in the cities, with Christ is Lord and King mixed with awful loud music and hyperbolic long talks. It has a long tail right down to the person who waves their arms in the air during trad hymns and hugs a lot in the peace and is the only charismatic in the village.
But politically far right?? No. Absolutely not. They tend to be LD, Labour, Tory, and to have a lot of ethnicities in the flock. Some are nearly all black. They tend to be opposed to all other faiths because their faith is exclusive, but only in the same sense that religions in the modern world usually are - they are opposed nicely and politely. Quite a few are pacifists.
I think there are different types of Evangelicals though. I noticed that at the Saturday Rally a lot of the personnel were wearing 'Brotherhood of Christ' hoodies.
I agree. But overwhelmingly the preponderance of church attending evangelicals are politically non extreme.
As to 'Brotherhood of Christ' hoodies, if they are these:
they have to progress a bit before making the evangelical mainstream.
"We have some Heavenly Tablets, some of which are copies of ancient tablets found today in museums. Some have been interpreted using an ancient process and are now in print in English and Spanish, with a Cantonese language translation underway. They together are the Book of Remembrance prophesied in Malachi 3:16. They are in a set of five volumes. The first is the Book of Remembrance: The First and Second Books of Achee. The second volume is the Book of Remembrance of Enoch. The third volume is the Book of Remembrance of our Ancient Grandmothers, the fourth volume is the Book of Remembrance of Melchizedek, and the fifth volume is The Book of Remembrance of Moses."
IIRC, those Books are not part of the mainstream canonical tradition?
Indeed not. I look forward to the masked flaghangers attending the Brotherhood's exegeses of their sacred texts in cold church halls and taking notes and references.
Danny Kruger, my goodness. Blanche has a Reform MP.
Pity, though Kruger is very socially conservative and an evangelical Christian, anti abortion, anti euthanasia and anti same sex marriage and hostile to much of Islam and economically very small state so no great surprise
Perfect fit for the narrow minded far right attracted to Farage
I am very pleased he has gone as that is not my conservative party, though it could be yours
The Tory Party can’t keep affording to lose people. If the response is “good riddance” every time someone defects then bit by bit it loses that broad church status and starts to serve a dwindling number of interests.
With one half of the party feeling more affinity with the LibDems, and the other half more affinity with ReFuk, what is the point of the Conservatives?
It is now the party of economically conservative, socially liberal voters ie more economically conservative than the LDs and more socially liberal than Reform
Given the spread of views on those two subjects in both Rerform and the Lib Dems, the window you are talking about between them appears to me to be vanishingly small.
Enough still to give them 18% of the vote even under Kemi.
Though if the Tories did cease to exist it would boost the Orange Book wing of the LDs as well as Reform
If the Tories ceased to exist, I'd expect Reform to be on c.40%, and the Lib Dems on c.20%.
Danny Kruger, my goodness. Blanche has a Reform MP.
Pity, though Kruger is very socially conservative and an evangelical Christian, anti abortion, anti euthanasia and anti same sex marriage and hostile to much of Islam and economically very small state so no great surprise
I'm not surprised by Kruger. He is a lynchpin of National Conservatism in the UK, which integrates religion and culture wars into politics. And he has made at least one speech in Parliament along those lines.
Imo there are a series of former MPs who are on a similar track to various extents - JRM (though more from a JD Vance angle, where JRM is John Cleese and JD Vance was Ronnie Corbett, but is now Ronnie Barker - he did not know his place), Miriam Cates, Daniel Kawczynski. Lee Anderson, of course, made the jump some time ago - though I think he was partly an opportunist.
Of sitting MPs, possibly Esther McVey. Or Suella Braverman as we have discussed - though there may be personal conflicts with Farage.
At a more "senior" level, Liz Truss and Michael Gove .. maybe. But Farage's need to dominate may interfere with those.
I'm not sure about Jenrick and Philp and Lam, who use the rhetoric.
Trevor Phillips on Times Radio this morning said the three main themes of the march were 1) immigration; 2) pride in our country; and 3) christianity.
Which last I didn't see coming as England is quite some way along its post-reformation journey to complete atheism. Stig Abell countered that when people said "christianity" it was shorthand for times gone past (old maids..holy communion...etc).
To which he, Phillips, then went on to say that the/a main driving force of this christian resurgence was from immigrants.
Would be interested to know (though probably unknowable) how many of the marchers on Saturday attend religious events of any kind. In my own part of the world sectarian marchers tend to identify along religious lines but I hae ma doots about how much genuine religious observance is attached. The Christian nationalism (in the UK at least) seems emptily performative, though I'm willing to be surprused by news that Tommy Robinson cuts up his coke with a communion wafer.
Pro-Christian is an alternative way of saying anti-Muslim.
'I'm no of fan of Christ our saviour and lord, but at least he never said anything positive about Muslims.'
Phillips sounds a bit confused, it seems very unlikely that many immigrants, christian or otherwise, were on the TR march.
It's an attempt by the terminally online to import American style political Christianity, the Charlie Kirk tendency.
For a bunch of "patriots" they seem very keen on us copying America.
It is partly that but perhaps also that many marchers feel the loss not of Christianity per se but of what we might call cultural Christianity. They do not go to church but want to know it is there, and has not been turned into a mosque or posh flats.
ETA and replacing HMQ with HMK probably has not helped in this regard. Another mistake by Liz Truss.
If you watch the rally though, the Christianity they're pushing is not cultural Christianity that anyone in Britain would recognise. It wasn't a rousing rendition of Abide with Me, it was hyper evangelical Christianity that is being imported from America. When I was watching it some of the speakers were trying to get the audience to chant "Christ is King" and most of them just looked baffled
I was confirmed into the C of E by the Bishop of Durham and was a server for a few years attending many communion sevices, and at one time was able to recite the whole communion service without reference to the prayer book
My wife was a member of the Brethren, but found them too extreme not least when they would not allow a piano at our wedding, notwithstanding my wife had played regularly at the Deep Sea Fisherman's Mission
It resulted in us being married in the Church of Scotland
We both have Christian upbringings and outlooks, but simply reject narrow minded prejudiced opinions largely taken out of contact from the Bible
I do wonder if these so called Christians really stop and ask
'What would Jesus do?'
He'd be deported. He's a trouble maker from the Middle East.
East Wiltshire was one of the few seats the Tories were going to hold according to many of the MRP studies recently.
Only because, like Easy Grinstead, the other parties haven't established a clear contender. EG is a good bet for a LibDem gain next time; in EW with Labour in clear second but with the government as it is, the Tories might be lucky there.
It's a Tory seat with Reform in fourth place - at a guess, very unusual for that?
Croydon South, Arundel and South Downs, Farnham and Borden, the 5 Scottish seats (4th or 5th), Runnymede, Spelthorne, Windsor, Beaconsfield, Mid Bucks. ive stopped there. Not too rare
This may have screwed RR's prospects of getting a big slice of the SMR market. If they can't get a landmark order in their home market, then why will anyone beat an oath to their door ?
The regulatory reform is a very good idea, but I'm unconvinced by this bit of the government spin. ...The government said this streamlined approach would help British exports, with Rolls-Royce in the process of getting its small modular reactor design approved in the US...
The thing about Farage's girlfriend is that the BBC article, when read in detail, contradicts the claim that her family was not rich enough for her to own the flat.
Her parents own a 300,000 euro flat in Strasbourg, but a family company owns a very valuable building that is estimated to generate an income of 95-110,000 euros a year. That building must be worth 2-2.5m euros. And, if they've been getting a rent like that for several years, the company should have hundreds of thousands of euros in its accounts.
That wasn't the figures I've seen about that building previously - it was a factor of 10 out with rent being 9,500 to 11,000 euros.
Equally it's the parents money so why suddenly is it being used to buy something in a poor part of the UK..
It's hardly straightforward, and lots of opportunities for money from unusual sources to make its way in.
East Wiltshire was one of the few seats the Tories were going to hold according to many of the MRP studies recently.
Only because, like Easy Grinstead, the other parties haven't established a clear contender. EG is a good bet for a LibDem gain next time; in EW with Labour in clear second but with the government as it is, the Tories might be lucky there.
It's a Tory seat with Reform in fourth place - at a guess, very unusual for that?
The LDs may get Easy Grinstead but I wouldn't put money on them taking Tricky Grinstead...
Kruger was a big beast inasmuch as there were any left in the Cons party. Good thinker, not my cup of tea but I get it.
Perhaps he thinks he can shape Reform around himself and the "drunken sailor spending" comment was one thing that made Reform approach him to define their spending plans rather than criticise them.
LOL. It has at least stopped his criticism. The rest is probably more magical thinking.
East Wiltshire was one of the few seats the Tories were going to hold according to many of the MRP studies recently.
Held comfortably in the May 25 vote, probably still a comfortable hold in 2029
I think Kruger may have a substantial personal vote.
I doubt it. East Wiltshire lost Devizes and was a new constituency, Kruger represented the old Devizes for one term and his vote held up in 2024 no better vs notional than Tories generally, worse in fact. Hes had no time to build up much of a personal following
The Feb 2025 Yougov MRP had East Wiltshire as Con 28%, Ref 27%, LD 19%,, Lab 18% so Ref probably slightly ahead on current polling. The name is a bit misleading as it also includes around 10K voters in Swindon Borough. Also the seat that includes Stonehenge
The thing about Farage's girlfriend is that the BBC article, when read in detail, contradicts the claim that her family was not rich enough for her to own the flat.
Her parents own a 300,000 euro flat in Strasbourg, but a family company owns a very valuable building that is estimated to generate an income of 95-110,000 euros a year. That building must be worth 2-2.5m euros. And, if they've been getting a rent like that for several years, the company should have hundreds of thousands of euros in its accounts.
That wasn't the figures I've seen about that building previously - it was a factor of 10 out with rent being 9,500 to 11,000 euros.
Equally it's the parents money so why suddenly is it being used to buy something in a poor part of the UK..
Trevor Phillips on Times Radio this morning said the three main themes of the march were 1) immigration; 2) pride in our country; and 3) christianity.
Which last I didn't see coming as England is quite some way along its post-reformation journey to complete atheism. Stig Abell countered that when people said "christianity" it was shorthand for times gone past (old maids..holy communion...etc).
To which he, Phillips, then went on to say that the/a main driving force of this christian resurgence was from immigrants.
Would be interested to know (though probably unknowable) how many of the marchers on Saturday attend religious events of any kind. In my own part of the world sectarian marchers tend to identify along religious lines but I hae ma doots about how much genuine religious observance is attached. The Christian nationalism (in the UK at least) seems emptily performative, though I'm willing to be surprused by news that Tommy Robinson cuts up his coke with a communion wafer.
Pro-Christian is an alternative way of saying anti-Muslim.
'I'm no of fan of Christ our saviour and lord, but at least he never said anything positive about Muslims.'
Phillips sounds a bit confused, it seems very unlikely that many immigrants, christian or otherwise, were on the TR march.
It's an attempt by the terminally online to import American style political Christianity, the Charlie Kirk tendency.
For a bunch of "patriots" they seem very keen on us copying America.
It is partly that but perhaps also that many marchers feel the loss not of Christianity per se but of what we might call cultural Christianity. They do not go to church but want to know it is there, and has not been turned into a mosque or posh flats.
ETA and replacing HMQ with HMK probably has not helped in this regard. Another mistake by Liz Truss.
If you watch the rally though, the Christianity they're pushing is not cultural Christianity that anyone in Britain would recognise. It wasn't a rousing rendition of Abide with Me, it was hyper evangelical Christianity that is being imported from America. When I was watching it some of the speakers were trying to get the audience to chant "Christ is King" and most of them just looked baffled
I imagine this will die a death soon, but if it doesn't, a shift will occur. There are a number of hyper evangelical outlets especially in the cities, with Christ is Lord and King mixed with awful loud music and hyperbolic long talks. It has a long tail right down to the person who waves their arms in the air during trad hymns and hugs a lot in the peace and is the only charismatic in the village.
But politically far right?? No. Absolutely not. They tend to be LD, Labour, Tory, and to have a lot of ethnicities in the flock. Some are nearly all black. They tend to be opposed to all other faiths because their faith is exclusive, but only in the same sense that religions in the modern world usually are - they are opposed nicely and politely. Quite a few are pacifists.
I think there are different types of Evangelicals though. I noticed that at the Saturday Rally a lot of the personnel were wearing 'Brotherhood of Christ' hoodies.
I agree. But overwhelmingly the preponderance of church attending evangelicals are politically non extreme.
As to 'Brotherhood of Christ' hoodies, if they are these:
they have to progress a bit before making the evangelical mainstream.
"We have some Heavenly Tablets, some of which are copies of ancient tablets found today in museums. Some have been interpreted using an ancient process and are now in print in English and Spanish, with a Cantonese language translation underway. They together are the Book of Remembrance prophesied in Malachi 3:16. They are in a set of five volumes. The first is the Book of Remembrance: The First and Second Books of Achee. The second volume is the Book of Remembrance of Enoch. The third volume is the Book of Remembrance of our Ancient Grandmothers, the fourth volume is the Book of Remembrance of Melchizedek, and the fifth volume is The Book of Remembrance of Moses."
IIRC, those Books are not part of the mainstream canonical tradition?
Indeed not. I look forward to the masked flaghangers attending the Brotherhood's exegeses of their sacred texts in cold church halls and taking notes and references.
Also, if my quick glance was correct, communitarian, agrarian, living in self-supporting communities and eschewing trade with the outside except in livestock. Might make sense in the Mid-West but in the UK, not so sure. Other stuff as well whose practical implications could be significant.
Kruger was a big beast inasmuch as there were any left in the Cons party. Good thinker, not my cup of tea but I get it.
Perhaps he thinks he can shape Reform around himself and the "drunken sailor spending" comment was one thing that made Reform approach him to define their spending plans rather than criticise them.
I doubt Nigel gives a flying fig about spending plans. His voters are all convinced that the mass expulsion of immigrants will rectify every financial problem. When that particular panacea fails to work under a Reform government, its leadership (as they did with Brexit) will just move on to something else.
Danny Kruger, my goodness. Blanche has a Reform MP.
Pity, though Kruger is very socially conservative and an evangelical Christian, anti abortion, anti euthanasia and anti same sex marriage and hostile to much of Islam and economically very small state so no great surprise
I'm not surprised by Kruger. He is a lynchpin of National Conservatism in the UK, which integrates religion and culture wars into politics. And he has made at least one speech in Parliament along those lines.
Imo there are a series of former MPs who are on a similar track to various extents - JRM (though more from a JD Vance angle, where JRM is John Cleese and JD Vance was Ronnie Corbett, but is now Ronnie Barker - he did not know his place), Miriam Cates, Daniel Kawczynski. Lee Anderson, of course, made the jump some time ago - though I think he was partly an opportunist.
Of sitting MPs, possibly Esther McVey. Or Suella Braverman as we have discussed - though there may be personal conflicts with Farage.
At a more "senior" level, Liz Truss and Michael Gove .. maybe. But Farage's need to dominate may interfere with those.
I'm not sure about Jenrick and Philp and Lam, who use the rhetoric.
I think the remaining Rwanda rebels are:
Bob Blackman - head of the 22 committee. Seat isn't Reform friendly Suella Braverman - could see this Chris Chope - possibly too old at 78. IDS - unlikely as former leader Mark Francois - could see this John Hayes - Maybe Robert Jenrick - more likely to be next Con leader Caroline Johnson - Maybe Wendy Morton - maybe Neil O'Brien - ? Greg Smith - ? Desmond Swayne - could see this. Too old at 69?
East Wiltshire was one of the few seats the Tories were going to hold according to many of the MRP studies recently.
Held comfortably in the May 25 vote, probably still a comfortable hold in 2029
I think Kruger may have a substantial personal vote.
I doubt it. East Wiltshire lost Devizes and was a new constituency, Kruger represented the old Devizes for one term and his vote held up in 2024 no better vs notional than Tories generally, worse in fact. Hes had no time to build up much of a personal following
He benefitted from a split vote, too. 35.7%. Reform were fourth on 16.7%.
Kruger was a big beast inasmuch as there were any left in the Cons party. Good thinker, not my cup of tea but I get it.
Perhaps he thinks he can shape Reform around himself and the "drunken sailor spending" comment was one thing that made Reform approach him to define their spending plans rather than criticise them.
I doubt Nigel gives a flying fig about spending plans. His voters are all convinced that the mass expulsion of immigrants will rectify every financial problem. When that particular panacea fails to work under a Reform government, its leadership (as they did with Brexit) will just move on to something else.
(Guardian) ..The last question at the press conference came from my colleague Aletha Adu.
Q: [To Kruger] Do you take back your claim that Reform UK would spend money like drunken sailors?
Kruger said he was confident that the party would be able to come up with fully-costed, workable plans.
He said when he criticised Reform’s spending plans recently, he was referring to their welfare plans. But at the Reform conference, Farage committed the party to welfare reform, he said.
...
Farage ended by saying there would be a press conference next week where “we will show you how we propose to save huge amounts of money”.
Trevor Phillips on Times Radio this morning said the three main themes of the march were 1) immigration; 2) pride in our country; and 3) christianity.
Which last I didn't see coming as England is quite some way along its post-reformation journey to complete atheism. Stig Abell countered that when people said "christianity" it was shorthand for times gone past (old maids..holy communion...etc).
To which he, Phillips, then went on to say that the/a main driving force of this christian resurgence was from immigrants.
Would be interested to know (though probably unknowable) how many of the marchers on Saturday attend religious events of any kind. In my own part of the world sectarian marchers tend to identify along religious lines but I hae ma doots about how much genuine religious observance is attached. The Christian nationalism (in the UK at least) seems emptily performative, though I'm willing to be surprused by news that Tommy Robinson cuts up his coke with a communion wafer.
Pro-Christian is an alternative way of saying anti-Muslim.
'I'm no of fan of Christ our saviour and lord, but at least he never said anything positive about Muslims.'
Phillips sounds a bit confused, it seems very unlikely that many immigrants, christian or otherwise, were on the TR march.
It's an attempt by the terminally online to import American style political Christianity, the Charlie Kirk tendency.
For a bunch of "patriots" they seem very keen on us copying America.
It is partly that but perhaps also that many marchers feel the loss not of Christianity per se but of what we might call cultural Christianity. They do not go to church but want to know it is there, and has not been turned into a mosque or posh flats.
ETA and replacing HMQ with HMK probably has not helped in this regard. Another mistake by Liz Truss.
If you watch the rally though, the Christianity they're pushing is not cultural Christianity that anyone in Britain would recognise. It wasn't a rousing rendition of Abide with Me, it was hyper evangelical Christianity that is being imported from America. When I was watching it some of the speakers were trying to get the audience to chant "Christ is King" and most of them just looked baffled
I imagine this will die a death soon, but if it doesn't, a shift will occur. There are a number of hyper evangelical outlets especially in the cities, with Christ is Lord and King mixed with awful loud music and hyperbolic long talks. It has a long tail right down to the person who waves their arms in the air during trad hymns and hugs a lot in the peace and is the only charismatic in the village.
But politically far right?? No. Absolutely not. They tend to be LD, Labour, Tory, and to have a lot of ethnicities in the flock. Some are nearly all black. They tend to be opposed to all other faiths because their faith is exclusive, but only in the same sense that religions in the modern world usually are - they are opposed nicely and politely. Quite a few are pacifists.
I think there are different types of Evangelicals though. I noticed that at the Saturday Rally a lot of the personnel were wearing 'Brotherhood of Christ' hoodies.
I agree. But overwhelmingly the preponderance of church attending evangelicals are politically non extreme.
As to 'Brotherhood of Christ' hoodies, if they are these:
they have to progress a bit before making the evangelical mainstream.
"We have some Heavenly Tablets, some of which are copies of ancient tablets found today in museums. Some have been interpreted using an ancient process and are now in print in English and Spanish, with a Cantonese language translation underway. They together are the Book of Remembrance prophesied in Malachi 3:16. They are in a set of five volumes. The first is the Book of Remembrance: The First and Second Books of Achee. The second volume is the Book of Remembrance of Enoch. The third volume is the Book of Remembrance of our Ancient Grandmothers, the fourth volume is the Book of Remembrance of Melchizedek, and the fifth volume is The Book of Remembrance of Moses."
IIRC, those Books are not part of the mainstream canonical tradition?
The Book of Remembrance of Enoch is somewhat redolent.
Danny Kruger, my goodness. Blanche has a Reform MP.
Pity, though Kruger is very socially conservative and an evangelical Christian, anti abortion, anti euthanasia and anti same sex marriage and hostile to much of Islam and economically very small state so no great surprise
I'm not surprised by Kruger. He is a lynchpin of National Conservatism in the UK, which integrates religion and culture wars into politics. And he has made at least one speech in Parliament along those lines.
Imo there are a series of former MPs who are on a similar track to various extents - JRM (though more from a JD Vance angle, where JRM is John Cleese and JD Vance was Ronnie Corbett, but is now Ronnie Barker - he did not know his place), Miriam Cates, Daniel Kawczynski. Lee Anderson, of course, made the jump some time ago - though I think he was partly an opportunist.
Of sitting MPs, possibly Esther McVey. Or Suella Braverman as we have discussed - though there may be personal conflicts with Farage.
At a more "senior" level, Liz Truss and Michael Gove .. maybe. But Farage's need to dominate may interfere with those.
I'm not sure about Jenrick and Philp and Lam, who use the rhetoric.
Braverman ruled it out last week at her press conference which Tice was at
Kruger was a big beast inasmuch as there were any left in the Cons party. Good thinker, not my cup of tea but I get it.
Perhaps he thinks he can shape Reform around himself and the "drunken sailor spending" comment was one thing that made Reform approach him to define their spending plans rather than criticise them.
I doubt Nigel gives a flying fig about spending plans. His voters are all convinced that the mass expulsion of immigrants will rectify every financial problem. When that particular panacea fails to work under a Reform government, its leadership (as they did with Brexit) will just move on to something else.
The Farage Party will fail because they don't have any answers aside from "blame the others!". And when the current group of 'others' have been expelled or controlled, there will be a new group to blame.
What amuses me are those PBers who think that they are immune to this - that their friends, or even family, may not be seen as convenient scapegoats.
Betting on Ange's replacement continues to move one way on Betfair, albeit to small amounts.
Lucy Powell 1.32 Bridget Phillipson 4
or in old money, 1/3 and 3/1, giving implied chances of 75 per cent and 25 per cent respectively.
Are there any Labour members on here who have a view? For what it’s worth, I wonder if Phillipson is value. Yes, she is of course “of the government” (but then Powell was until just over a week ago), but I think she is more impressive as a politician than Powell; though neither are my cup of tea.
It’s difficult to me to guess this one, it would be useful to have an idea of the strength of feeling of the membership against choosing the candidate currently in government.
Danny Kruger, my goodness. Blanche has a Reform MP.
Pity, though Kruger is very socially conservative and an evangelical Christian, anti abortion, anti euthanasia and anti same sex marriage and hostile to much of Islam and economically very small state so no great surprise
I'm not surprised by Kruger. He is a lynchpin of National Conservatism in the UK, which integrates religion and culture wars into politics. And he has made at least one speech in Parliament along those lines.
Imo there are a series of former MPs who are on a similar track to various extents - JRM (though more from a JD Vance angle, where JRM is John Cleese and JD Vance was Ronnie Corbett, but is now Ronnie Barker - he did not know his place), Miriam Cates, Daniel Kawczynski. Lee Anderson, of course, made the jump some time ago - though I think he was partly an opportunist.
Of sitting MPs, possibly Esther McVey. Or Suella Braverman as we have discussed - though there may be personal conflicts with Farage.
At a more "senior" level, Liz Truss and Michael Gove .. maybe. But Farage's need to dominate may interfere with those.
I'm not sure about Jenrick and Philp and Lam, who use the rhetoric.
I think the remaining Rwanda rebels are:
Bob Blackman - head of the 22 committee. Seat isn't Reform friendly Suella Braverman - could see this Chris Chope - possibly too old at 78. IDS - unlikely as former leader Mark Francois - could see this John Hayes - Maybe Robert Jenrick - more likely to be next Con leader Caroline Johnson - Maybe Wendy Morton - maybe Neil O'Brien - ? Greg Smith - ? Desmond Swayne - could see this. Too old at 69?
Braverman ruled it out last week, François was furious about a by election loss in Essex recently to Reform. IDS no chance, hes Tory to the bone. Jenrick definitely no after the Yusuf stuff and wants to lead the Tories
Kruger was a big beast inasmuch as there were any left in the Cons party. Good thinker, not my cup of tea but I get it.
Perhaps he thinks he can shape Reform around himself and the "drunken sailor spending" comment was one thing that made Reform approach him to define their spending plans rather than criticise them.
I doubt Nigel gives a flying fig about spending plans. His voters are all convinced that the mass expulsion of immigrants will rectify every financial problem. When that particular panacea fails to work under a Reform government, its leadership (as they did with Brexit) will just move on to something else.
(Guardian) ..The last question at the press conference came from my colleague Aletha Adu.
Q: [To Kruger] Do you take back your claim that Reform UK would spend money like drunken sailors?
Kruger said he was confident that the party would be able to come up with fully-costed, workable plans.
He said when he criticised Reform’s spending plans recently, he was referring to their welfare plans. But at the Reform conference, Farage committed the party to welfare reform, he said.
...
Farage ended by saying there would be a press conference next week where “we will show you how we propose to save huge amounts of money”.
Nigel needs to be careful there. What stops Labour from nicking his ideas?
Krugers defection is old news by tomorrow though. Defections are a one day wonder
True but in conference season it will unsettle Conservative backbenchers, ease the pressure on Starmer and take the shine of Kemi's week. In the longer term, Kruger will either professionalise Reform or become the 917th big hitter to fall out with Nigel Farage.
This feels too early if Farage wants to be the focus of the tory party conference so I wonder if another one or 2 defecting MPs are lined up to defect before October 5th.
That is possible, or the announcement might have been brought forward to recapture the spotlight for Nigel Farage away from Tommy Robinson's march and Kemi's good week (not to mention the subject of this thread).
Tommy’s march was very good news for Farage.
It made the far right look like a major force in British politics, and reinforced all Reform’s messages. And by not appearing at it, Farage got to pretend to worried floating voters that he’s a moderate and not one of that lot.
I think that's right. So long as he doesn't lose the racist vote en bloc to an EDL type party to his right Farage benefits from the contrast. The thing he probably fears most is a Tory revival. He needs them below 20 in the voteshare and preferably nearer 10.
Kruger was a big beast inasmuch as there were any left in the Cons party. Good thinker, not my cup of tea but I get it.
Perhaps he thinks he can shape Reform around himself and the "drunken sailor spending" comment was one thing that made Reform approach him to define their spending plans rather than criticise them.
I doubt Nigel gives a flying fig about spending plans. His voters are all convinced that the mass expulsion of immigrants will rectify every financial problem. When that particular panacea fails to work under a Reform government, its leadership (as they did with Brexit) will just move on to something else.
(Guardian) ..The last question at the press conference came from my colleague Aletha Adu.
Q: [To Kruger] Do you take back your claim that Reform UK would spend money like drunken sailors?
Kruger said he was confident that the party would be able to come up with fully-costed, workable plans.
He said when he criticised Reform’s spending plans recently, he was referring to their welfare plans. But at the Reform conference, Farage committed the party to welfare reform, he said.
...
Farage ended by saying there would be a press conference next week where “we will show you how we propose to save huge amounts of money”.
Nigel needs to be careful there. What stops Labour from nicking his ideas?
Kruger was a big beast inasmuch as there were any left in the Cons party. Good thinker, not my cup of tea but I get it.
Perhaps he thinks he can shape Reform around himself and the "drunken sailor spending" comment was one thing that made Reform approach him to define their spending plans rather than criticise them.
I doubt Nigel gives a flying fig about spending plans. His voters are all convinced that the mass expulsion of immigrants will rectify every financial problem. When that particular panacea fails to work under a Reform government, its leadership (as they did with Brexit) will just move on to something else.
(Guardian) ..The last question at the press conference came from my colleague Aletha Adu.
Q: [To Kruger] Do you take back your claim that Reform UK would spend money like drunken sailors?
Kruger said he was confident that the party would be able to come up with fully-costed, workable plans.
He said when he criticised Reform’s spending plans recently, he was referring to their welfare plans. But at the Reform conference, Farage committed the party to welfare reform, he said.
...
Farage ended by saying there would be a press conference next week where “we will show you how we propose to save huge amounts of money”.
"This fine snakeoil will remove all our financial worries."
Should we consider another possibility for Tory MPs who can see their party circulating the plug-hole? Might some of them be tempted to defect leftwards, to the Lib Dems, or Labour? A few months ago I might have suggested one or two considering the Greens, but Mr Polanski has put the tin lid on that.
But, if the Tory Partty is in terminal decline (still unclear) and if some Tory MPs are careerist hacks (undoubtedly) then perhaps the remnants of the One Nation tendency might move elsewhere other than ReformUK.
Kruger was a big beast inasmuch as there were any left in the Cons party. Good thinker, not my cup of tea but I get it.
Perhaps he thinks he can shape Reform around himself and the "drunken sailor spending" comment was one thing that made Reform approach him to define their spending plans rather than criticise them.
There are of course two separate questions about Reform: Can they win the election? And, secondly, How will they govern?
People who join them because they can win are not all that interesting. If people start joining them because they can help sort a programme which can deal with the hard questions, they would be interesting.
The hard questions are almost always the ones you don't intend to ask or be asked in public. For Reform the hard questions are not about boats and migration - with massive effort they can if they really want to more or less close our borders.
The hard questions are about: Growth, investment, borrowing, debt, deficit, tax, spend, the post WWII social democratic consensus in which the Reform voters of Clacton, Boston and Skegness get free stuff that they like.
Personally I don't think Reform are the sort of threat Trump is; I don't think they plan to abolish free and fair elections, but the hard questions they are not dealing with are quite enough for now. Decent journalists need to get on the case and not let go.
The thing about Farage's girlfriend is that the BBC article, when read in detail, contradicts the claim that her family was not rich enough for her to own the flat.
Her parents own a 300,000 euro flat in Strasbourg, but a family company owns a very valuable building that is estimated to generate an income of 95-110,000 euros a year. That building must be worth 2-2.5m euros. And, if they've been getting a rent like that for several years, the company should have hundreds of thousands of euros in its accounts.
That wasn't the figures I've seen about that building previously - it was a factor of 10 out with rent being 9,500 to 11,000 euros.
Equally it's the parents money so why suddenly is it being used to buy something in a poor part of the UK..
Frinton is lovely, it’s certainly not a poor part of the UK, it’s probably one of the richer parts of the SE
The thing about Farage's girlfriend is that the BBC article, when read in detail, contradicts the claim that her family was not rich enough for her to own the flat.
Her parents own a 300,000 euro flat in Strasbourg, but a family company owns a very valuable building that is estimated to generate an income of 95-110,000 euros a year. That building must be worth 2-2.5m euros. And, if they've been getting a rent like that for several years, the company should have hundreds of thousands of euros in its accounts.
That wasn't the figures I've seen about that building previously - it was a factor of 10 out with rent being 9,500 to 11,000 euros.
Equally it's the parents money so why suddenly is it being used to buy something in a poor part of the UK..
Frinton is lovely, it’s certainly not a poor part of the UK, it’s probably one of the richer parts of the SE
Someone I used to work with was told off by a policeman in Frinton for eating crisps in the street.
Should we consider another possibility for Tory MPs who can see their party circulating the plug-hole? Might some of them be tempted to defect leftwards, to the Lib Dems, or Labour? A few months ago I might have suggested one or two considering the Greens, but Mr Polanski has put the tin lid on that.
But, if the Tory Partty is in terminal decline (still unclear) and if some Tory MPs are careerist hacks (undoubtedly) then perhaps the remnants of the One Nation tendency might move elsewhere other than ReformUK.
It’s hard to see them going to Labour on current trajectories. That’s a frying pan to the fire move.
The thing about Farage's girlfriend is that the BBC article, when read in detail, contradicts the claim that her family was not rich enough for her to own the flat.
Her parents own a 300,000 euro flat in Strasbourg, but a family company owns a very valuable building that is estimated to generate an income of 95-110,000 euros a year. That building must be worth 2-2.5m euros. And, if they've been getting a rent like that for several years, the company should have hundreds of thousands of euros in its accounts.
That wasn't the figures I've seen about that building previously - it was a factor of 10 out with rent being 9,500 to 11,000 euros.
Equally it's the parents money so why suddenly is it being used to buy something in a poor part of the UK..
Frinton is lovely, it’s certainly not a poor part of the UK, it’s probably one of the richer parts of the SE
Old joke. Harwich for the Continent. Frinton for the incontinent.
The thing about Farage's girlfriend is that the BBC article, when read in detail, contradicts the claim that her family was not rich enough for her to own the flat.
Her parents own a 300,000 euro flat in Strasbourg, but a family company owns a very valuable building that is estimated to generate an income of 95-110,000 euros a year. That building must be worth 2-2.5m euros. And, if they've been getting a rent like that for several years, the company should have hundreds of thousands of euros in its accounts.
That wasn't the figures I've seen about that building previously - it was a factor of 10 out with rent being 9,500 to 11,000 euros.
Equally it's the parents money so why suddenly is it being used to buy something in a poor part of the UK..
Frinton is lovely, it’s certainly not a poor part of the UK, it’s probably one of the richer parts of the SE
Old joke. Harwich for the Continent. Frinton for the incontinent.
Farage is a big positive for Reform but that’s also a weakness for their election chances if his popularity falls .
The party is a one man band . For that reason I wouldn’t be writing off the Tories just yet .
They've led in the polls in the last 6 or 7 months, the 'Tories are finished' stuff is laughable. Immediacy bias. They might disintegrate. They might also win 160 seats next time and be either jointly in government or the opposition to a minority Reform or Labour administration.
Krugers defection is old news by tomorrow though. Defections are a one day wonder
True but in conference season it will unsettle Conservative backbenchers, ease the pressure on Starmer and take the shine of Kemi's week. In the longer term, Kruger will either professionalise Reform or become the 917th big hitter to fall out with Nigel Farage.
This feels too early if Farage wants to be the focus of the tory party conference so I wonder if another one or 2 defecting MPs are lined up to defect before October 5th.
That is possible, or the announcement might have been brought forward to recapture the spotlight for Nigel Farage away from Tommy Robinson's march and Kemi's good week (not to mention the subject of this thread).
Tommy’s march was very good news for Farage.
It made the far right look like a major force in British politics, and reinforced all Reform’s messages. And by not appearing at it, Farage got to pretend to worried floating voters that he’s a moderate and not one of that lot.
I think that's right. So long as he doesn't lose the racist vote en bloc to an EDL type party to his right Farage benefits from the contrast. The thing he probably fears most is a Tory revival. He needs them below 20 in the voteshare and preferably nearer 10.
Yes, Musk is looking like absolute poison while Lozza Fox and co. just appear educationally subnormal. Nigel has nothing to fear from that leadership, but will want to appear the fatherly custodian of its supporters' hopes and dreams.
Danny Kruger, my goodness. Blanche has a Reform MP.
Pity, though Kruger is very socially conservative and an evangelical Christian, anti abortion, anti euthanasia and anti same sex marriage and hostile to much of Islam and economically very small state so no great surprise
I'm not surprised by Kruger. He is a lynchpin of National Conservatism in the UK, which integrates religion and culture wars into politics. And he has made at least one speech in Parliament along those lines.
Imo there are a series of former MPs who are on a similar track to various extents - JRM (though more from a JD Vance angle, where JRM is John Cleese and JD Vance was Ronnie Corbett, but is now Ronnie Barker - he did not know his place), Miriam Cates, Daniel Kawczynski. Lee Anderson, of course, made the jump some time ago - though I think he was partly an opportunist.
Of sitting MPs, possibly Esther McVey. Or Suella Braverman as we have discussed - though there may be personal conflicts with Farage.
At a more "senior" level, Liz Truss and Michael Gove .. maybe. But Farage's need to dominate may interfere with those.
I'm not sure about Jenrick and Philp and Lam, who use the rhetoric.
I think the remaining Rwanda rebels are:
Bob Blackman - head of the 22 committee. Seat isn't Reform friendly Suella Braverman - could see this Chris Chope - possibly too old at 78. IDS - unlikely as former leader Mark Francois - could see this John Hayes - Maybe Robert Jenrick - more likely to be next Con leader Caroline Johnson - Maybe Wendy Morton - maybe Neil O'Brien - ? Greg Smith - ? Desmond Swayne - could see this. Too old at 69?
My list is based on MPs/former MPs who have associated with NatCon and CPAC.
I'd add that those former MPs could pick and choose their seats if Farage wants them, and he's very much been focused on ex-Conservatives who still want to be in politics, or have something to do. To my mind he is trying to find a solution to the top to bottom incompetence of RefUK people, and find some politcial experience to provide a framework as he hopes RefUK will grow.
I would also add Philippa Stroud as a former MP now in the Lords who is of considerable influence in Think Tank Land. She is Chief Exec of the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship, which is linked to Jordan Peterson, and of which Danny Kruger and some other interesting people are on the advisory board. She had some controversy when she started in the Commons as her husband is a senior pastor in a Restorationist Church organisation which has in the past endorsed complementarian beliefs (I'm not sure where they in their doctrines now), but that was at least in part finger poking from lefties to cause media embarrassment.
She could be RefUK's first peer, or may choose to continue to be an eminence grise. She is quite formidable.
Kruger was a big beast inasmuch as there were any left in the Cons party. Good thinker, not my cup of tea but I get it.
Perhaps he thinks he can shape Reform around himself and the "drunken sailor spending" comment was one thing that made Reform approach him to define their spending plans rather than criticise them.
I doubt Nigel gives a flying fig about spending plans. His voters are all convinced that the mass expulsion of immigrants will rectify every financial problem. When that particular panacea fails to work under a Reform government, its leadership (as they did with Brexit) will just move on to something else.
That won't quite do. If Reform win 326 seats - which they might - they are tied to the mast of governing, and like all political parties will want to win 4/5 years later. So they have to have a plan for the engine room of the state as well as the periphery. Ie, a plan which can be implemented about growth, investment, tax, spend, debt, deficit, NHS, welfare state, pensions, defence. And each part has to cohere with each other part.
For about a year (ask Starmer) you can just blame everyone else, but not after that.
So the most interesting question is politics is not: Can they win? (Yes) but Can they govern, and how?
The pb Tories who did not bark in the night time. Is it just me who noticed that of all our party leaders, it is only Kemi who had a good week?
Keir Starmer – under attack from his own side over his lack of political judgement or even plain common sense when appointing and then backing up to the last moment Lord Mandelson who has now had to resign three times for what was, at least to a first approximation, the same pattern of behaviour, being entranced by men considerably richer than him: Geoffrey Robinson, the Hindujas, Jeffrey Epstein. (On second thoughts, who better to inveigle himself into the inner circle of a billionaire property developer and cryptocurrency grifter?)
Ed Davey – the honourable member for falling in the water is being criticised by his own side for irrelevant stunts.
Nigel Farage – stamp duty obviously but also risks being outflanked by Tommy Robinson who attracted somewhere north of 100,000 largely peaceful protestors to London, along with squillionaire cheque-writer Elon Musk.
Kemi Badenoch – widely praised for an excellent PMQs and now can lay claim to two top Labour scalps.
And where were pb's Conservatives? Arguing about crowd sizes and frantically trawling the interwebs for a culture war about the assassination of a man who this time last week they could not have picked out of a police line-up even if he wore his MAGA hat. Poor old Kemi.
I've written to Keir Starmer, Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage, urging them to join me in condemning Elon Musk's dangerous remarks inciting violence yesterday.
Kruger was a big beast inasmuch as there were any left in the Cons party. Good thinker, not my cup of tea but I get it.
Perhaps he thinks he can shape Reform around himself and the "drunken sailor spending" comment was one thing that made Reform approach him to define their spending plans rather than criticise them.
I doubt Nigel gives a flying fig about spending plans. His voters are all convinced that the mass expulsion of immigrants will rectify every financial problem. When that particular panacea fails to work under a Reform government, its leadership (as they did with Brexit) will just move on to something else.
(Guardian) ..The last question at the press conference came from my colleague Aletha Adu.
Q: [To Kruger] Do you take back your claim that Reform UK would spend money like drunken sailors?
Kruger said he was confident that the party would be able to come up with fully-costed, workable plans.
He said when he criticised Reform’s spending plans recently, he was referring to their welfare plans. But at the Reform conference, Farage committed the party to welfare reform, he said.
...
Farage ended by saying there would be a press conference next week where “we will show you how we propose to save huge amounts of money”.
Nigel needs to be careful there. What stops Labour from nicking his ideas?
I think he'll guard against that by making sure they're not worth nicking.
Comments
As I said a while back the best plan to deal with the boats would have been to offered Farage some control over the approach used so we could watch him flounder the way everyone else does. Some how or other he needs to be brought into things in a way that he can no longer scream from the sidelines..
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bpA_5a0miWk
I think they would face an immediate test from the bond market if they won, and their response would be to slash spending in ways that will make voters in places like Mr Tice's Skegness constituency feel extremely betrayed.
Her parents own a 300,000 euro flat in Strasbourg, but a family company owns a very valuable building that is estimated to generate an income of 95-110,000 euros a year. That building must be worth 2-2.5m euros. And, if they've been getting a rent like that for several years, the company should have hundreds of thousands of euros in its accounts.
Not a good idea.
"I am in the Social Media phase of building on Social Media"
It made the far right look like a major force in British politics, and reinforced all Reform’s messages. And by not appearing at it, Farage got to pretend to worried floating voters that he’s a moderate and not one of that lot.
If Labour were re elected though and we moved to Reform, with say the LDs providing confidence and supply, then the Tories could still win plenty of MPs even on just 10-15% of the vote. In Italy for example with PR Forza Italia is still around despite being overtaken by LN and Brothers of Italy, and in government with them and in Sweden the Moderates are still around and in government with the Sweden Democrats despite being overtaken by them.
In Germany, Spain and NZ centre right and populist and nationalist right parties all still exist as separate parties under PR, as is the case in Israel too. Even second ballot France still has a LRs rump around, though they are largely Macron supporting now against Melenchon's block and Le Pen and Bardella, with their most rightwing fringe having defected to Le Pen's RN
Meanwhile, lunch is pork ribs cooked in a well-greased soapstone pot; the traditional dish of...where? (No, not Hicksville USA)
As to 'Brotherhood of Christ' hoodies, if they are these:
https://brotherhoodofchristchurch.org/what-we-believe/
they have to progress a bit before making the evangelical mainstream.
The Tories are being crowded out. There’s not enough voters exclusively in that bracket to sustain them as a “big two” electoral force.
Equally it's the parents money so why suddenly is it being used to buy something in a poor part of the UK..
There are flags.
IIRC, those Books are not part of the mainstream canonical tradition?
- Listen to Leon and use ChatGPT (other LLMs are available).
- Train it on Hansard's record of LotO Starmer cross-examining Boris over Partygate and other fibs, over several weeks.
- Feed it a current, anti-Labour, news story.
- Have ChatGPT write a question about that news, in the style of Keir Starmer.
Short, direct, and designed to lure the Prime Minister into admissions that could later be used against him.It's a Tory seat with Reform in fourth place - at a guess, very unusual for that?
Though if the Tories did cease to exist it would boost the Orange Book wing of the LDs as well as Reform
Most people are demanding a by-election. One post out of about forty is supportive, it says:
"Good man, seen sence[sic]"
The news was posted on Facebook by a chap called Trevor. I used to deliver mail to him. His wife is called Trevalene. They're known as the Trevs
Well, in god for starters, I'm very much assuming.
The Article says 8-9,000 euros per month.
Clacton has prosperous districts. It's not just Jaywick.
Perhaps he thinks he can shape Reform around himself and the "drunken sailor spending" comment was one thing that made Reform approach him to define their spending plans rather than criticise them.
I can be nice and get ignored. Or I can shout a few home truths and get listened to.
Imo there are a series of former MPs who are on a similar track to various extents - JRM (though more from a JD Vance angle, where JRM is John Cleese and JD Vance was Ronnie Corbett, but is now Ronnie Barker - he did not know his place), Miriam Cates, Daniel Kawczynski. Lee Anderson, of course, made the jump some time ago - though I think he was partly an opportunist.
Of sitting MPs, possibly Esther McVey. Or Suella Braverman as we have discussed - though there may be personal conflicts with Farage.
At a more "senior" level, Liz Truss and Michael Gove .. maybe. But Farage's need to dominate may interfere with those.
I'm not sure about Jenrick and Philp and Lam, who use the rhetoric.
ICE, ICE, baby...
If they can't get a landmark order in their home market, then why will anyone beat an oath to their door ?
UK and US line up string of deals to build modular nuclear reactors in Britain
Agreements include plan to build 12 reactors in Hartlepool with Centrica, creating 2,500 jobs, and fast-tracking UK and US safety checks
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/sep/15/uk-and-us-line-up-string-of-deals-to-build-modular-nuclear-reactors-in-britain
The regulatory reform is a very good idea, but I'm unconvinced by this bit of the government spin.
...The government said this streamlined approach would help British exports, with Rolls-Royce in the process of getting its small modular reactor design approved in the US...
It has at least stopped his criticism. The rest is probably more magical thinking.
Lab 23
Ref 22
LD 19
In MiCs most recent MRP from July
Bob Blackman - head of the 22 committee. Seat isn't Reform friendly
Suella Braverman - could see this
Chris Chope - possibly too old at 78.
IDS - unlikely as former leader
Mark Francois - could see this
John Hayes - Maybe
Robert Jenrick - more likely to be next Con leader
Caroline Johnson - Maybe
Wendy Morton - maybe
Neil O'Brien - ?
Greg Smith - ?
Desmond Swayne - could see this. Too old at 69?
Lucy Powell 1.32
Bridget Phillipson 4
or in old money, 1/3 and 3/1, giving implied chances of 75 per cent and 25 per cent respectively.
35.7%. Reform were fourth on 16.7%.
..The last question at the press conference came from my colleague Aletha Adu.
Q: [To Kruger] Do you take back your claim that Reform UK would spend money like drunken sailors?
Kruger said he was confident that the party would be able to come up with fully-costed, workable plans.
He said when he criticised Reform’s spending plans recently, he was referring to their welfare plans. But at the Reform conference, Farage committed the party to welfare reform, he said.
...
Farage ended by saying there would be a press conference next week where “we will show you how we propose to save huge amounts of money”.
What amuses me are those PBers who think that they are immune to this - that their friends, or even family, may not be seen as convenient scapegoats.
It’s difficult to me to guess this one, it would be useful to have an idea of the strength of feeling of the membership against choosing the candidate currently in government.
Swayne the most likely
https://www.shetland.org/geopark/geology/rocks-minerals/rocks-as-resources/catpund-soapstone-quarry
But, if the Tory Partty is in terminal decline (still unclear) and if some Tory MPs are careerist hacks (undoubtedly) then perhaps the remnants of the One Nation tendency might move elsewhere other than ReformUK.
People who join them because they can win are not all that interesting. If people start joining them because they can help sort a programme which can deal with the hard questions, they would be interesting.
The hard questions are almost always the ones you don't intend to ask or be asked in public. For Reform the hard questions are not about boats and migration - with massive effort they can if they really want to more or less close our borders.
The hard questions are about: Growth, investment, borrowing, debt, deficit, tax, spend, the post WWII social democratic consensus in which the Reform voters of Clacton, Boston and Skegness get free stuff that they like.
Personally I don't think Reform are the sort of threat Trump is; I don't think they plan to abolish free and fair elections, but the hard questions they are not dealing with are quite enough for now. Decent journalists need to get on the case and not let go.
The party is a one man band . For that reason I wouldn’t be writing off the Tories just yet .
Lib Dems more plausible, to me.
I'd add that those former MPs could pick and choose their seats if Farage wants them, and he's very much been focused on ex-Conservatives who still want to be in politics, or have something to do. To my mind he is trying to find a solution to the top to bottom incompetence of RefUK people, and find some politcial experience to provide a framework as he hopes RefUK will grow.
I would also add Philippa Stroud as a former MP now in the Lords who is of considerable influence in Think Tank Land. She is Chief Exec of the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship, which is linked to Jordan Peterson, and of which Danny Kruger and some other interesting people are on the advisory board. She had some controversy when she started in the Commons as her husband is a senior pastor in a Restorationist Church organisation which has in the past endorsed complementarian beliefs (I'm not sure where they in their doctrines now), but that was at least in part finger poking from lefties to cause media embarrassment.
She could be RefUK's first peer, or may choose to continue to be an eminence grise. She is quite formidable.
For about a year (ask Starmer) you can just blame everyone else, but not after that.
So the most interesting question is politics is not: Can they win? (Yes) but Can they govern, and how?
https://x.com/DPJHodges/status/1967559443249578276?s=19