@stodge the politics of economics no longer matter because people are spoiled and think that they deserve everything for nothing. It will come crashing down eventually.
Perhaps but at the moment the public consciousness is much more about "boats" and "migrants" than it is about the economic challenges in front of us which, if I'm being honest, are so enormous as to a) confound and b) leave anyone trying to consider them reaching for whatever helps.
Yes because people are under the misguided impression that stopping the boats is the remedy to all their perceived problems in a way that requires no sacrifice from their perspective as nobody is willing to sacrifice anything.
They are not going to be disabused of that idea unless and until the boats are stopped, though.
You’re right. But then it will just move onto the next thing.
Politics always does. But should a Reform government end up disappointing their voters in that manner, it will pull a rug from under a large slice of their support. And if Labour were to succeed in reducing the wave of small boats to back ground noise, then the terms of debate move back to the ceconomy.
It does seem a bit unfair that Mr Davey is being criticised. After all, he led the part to massive election success and unlike the big two, the Lib Dems seem to be a fairly happy and united party that doesn’t shoot at their feet all day long.
But, he has had an open goal - with both main parties falling apart, in theory he has the opportunity to pick up the social and economic liberals from both.
I would estimate that when Labour or the Conseratives were on 40%, in both cases, 15% of their vote was potential Lib Dems.
So a potential 25% (wild guess) of tribal voters who were potential Lib Dem’s.
With the disintegration of tribal voting, the Lib Dems should have been hoovering them up.
He needs to define LibDem’ism to the population at large. The Orange Book was an example of such a thesis. There are others.
The problem is that it is easy to oppose everything - say yes to all the potential voters. Which is how we end up with “build a zillion houses, but not here” NIMYism.
To take a stand is to take a risk. But without a coherent, unifying vision, the Lib Dems will be the party of 12% for the future.
Whilst the GE did represent electoral success I think the LDs settled for far less than they might have achieved then. They seem to be settling for even less now.
Hence the discontent.
In theory, Davey should have got the moderates from both main parties and be looking at 30%+ now.
We've been here before though. Remember when various MPs from Con and Lab looked around for a centrist alternative, and, finding none to their liking, formed Change UK? The Lib Dems are a much nichier taste than we might expect.
As I said above, the LibDems’ big chance comes along if and when people are compelled to vote for them to “keep Reform out”. If enough people are frightened or horrified by the prospect of Farage in power AND that looks reasonably likely AND the Tories remain looking like Reform fellow-travellers AND Labour remain discredited in government, then it may happen.
We need to actually offer policies for reform, not just a safe harbour in a storm.
I can look back at the manifesto last year and there was some really good stuff in it that nobody paid the slightest bit of attention to. Because retail politics is boring - why listen to someone talking to you about a new cooker when your whole kitchen is on fire.
Credit to you for being so open about the challenges your party faces. In my area, the LDs did very well in Wokingham and Maidenhead, but in Bracknell they got 11%. The latter seat contains Sandhurst where the LDs do well at local level, but the largest town is in the seat is Bracknell itself. This is a 60s and 70s new town and contains large ex-council, then right-to-buy estates. Very C2 white van man and not very ethnically diverse. What do the LDs have to offer to this type of demographic?
Bracknell twice returned 40 Conservative councillors, with no other party represented on the council. Now it's pencilled in as a Reform gain.
Here is the reality about today's politics:
40 Tory councillors. Half will retire / step away. A quarter will defect to Reform. The other quarter wouldn't be allowed into Reform.
So you will end up with a "new" Reform council led by old Tories as we now have in Lancashire.
Remember, the rise of Reform is all Starmer's fault.
Ukraine’s new “Long-range drone” hitting O&G facilities 1,500km into Russia, is basically a remote-controlled light aircraft, stuffed with fuel and explosives instead of a couple of humans.
It flies low and slow, for several hours at a time, yet the enemy still appears to be incapable of shooting it down.
I remember reading here that Russian air defence was so good that a SAM battery near Moscow would be able to shoot down any NATO planes over Ukraine.
That PBer also claimed that anti-tank missiles never worked.
It’s quite amazing how an actual war can challenge one’s assumptions about military capability!
One good one from earlier this year was the “anti-stealth” drone that the Ukranians were fielding, which definitely didn’t have any fancy new NATO tech in it, absolutely definitely not.
It’s a fast flying jet-powered small drone designed to look like a much larger MiG to russian radar, purely so the enemy wastes the serious air defence missiles taking them out. The drones cost something like $100k each, but the S300/400 air defence missiles are $5-10m each - and now they don’t have any left!
Old assumptions die hard. Many still assume that Russia has the military power of the Soviet Union in 1945.
FPT LDs still OK with their 'best pollster' YouGov but one or two dips below 2024 recently with other pollsters. Are they making any headway? I guess thats the question for Davey Doubters
That’s a grim poll for Labour. YouGov are generally their friendliest pollster IIRC
It is grim but i wouodnt say YG are their best, thats probably Opinium, Focaldata and Survation, although theres not much in it
I bow to your superior knowledge. I don’t follow them that closely so far from a GE
Get that dullard Starmer OUT
Fine but who replaces him?
Yvette Cooper has no charisma and poor judgement Reeves would be out of her depth as deputy leader of a county council Miliband is a has-been fanatic who has been killing the economy (though that probably makes him an ideal choice for Labour) Mahmood is unproven and has a poisoned chalice at the Home Office Burnham isn't even an MP Lammy hahaha
etc. etc.
Basically our fifth-rate PM would be replaced by one of a group of tenth-raters.
Can Labour, despite its core vote of ethnic minorities and welfare junkies, poll in the single digits? We may be about to find out.
It’s a fair point. Horribly fair. We might actually get someone worse
Of all those perhaps Cooper? It’s a forlorn hope. She’s not great. But at least we could say an exPBer is now PM
It is worrying we could get someone worse and also worrying that we could be stuck with a moribund government/economy/country for another 4 years.
What I would hope comes of this is that someone breaks the mould or the voters start demanding something different.
I don’t mean necessarily Reform different but the different should be that instead of every interview with opposition should no longer be acceptable to be “it would be crazy for me to lay out what our policies will be four years from election” as I’ve heard Tice and Stride effectively say over the last few weeks on Today. Ming Vase strategies shouldn’t be tolerated.
We need the opposition to lay out a vision, a clear vision now and explain how they hope to cost it, the benefits to the country, acknowledge some things may have to change dependent on the economy at the time but sell the country something positive to work towards, test it, argue it, win over the voters, don’t fear the government copying your ideas as if you sell it wall to wall then people will see you are serious and have a plan.
No more ming vases, just a workable plan to get us to growth and opportunities for the young.
It'll never happen, but something like a Royal Commission or agreement between all major parties to gradually reduce the deficit and then head into a surplus would be nice.
But I'm sure it's more important to just pass the ticking parcel onto the next government and hope it doesn't stop ticking when you're the one holding it.
LibDems are very visible and successful in about 100 constituencies. We are invisible in the rest.
If you live in a LibDem area, you know about it. If you don't you don't.
LibDems have very little national visibility. This partly because the LibDem strategy has been to concentrate on areas of geographic strength and downplay national visibility. It is also because the media, including the BBC, neglect the Lib Dems, either for partisan reasons or because we are not newsworthy. No scandals or defections.
With the current strategy, Lib Dems will be hard pressed to win 100 seats next time. But how to get national visibility? It is not about policies, - we have fistfuls of policies. Perhaps our more colourful personalities need to step up? Stunts aren't the answer. Scandals might be. Where is our Jeremy Thorpe? It needs to newsworthy. Perhaps the @RochdalePioneers approach nationally?
Are you sure you want Jeremy Thorpe style figure dogged by scandal?
I'm sure we don't! That was an ironic joke about the only way to get attention.
I don't think it would pull you back from the b-rinka of irrelevance.
LibDems are very visible and successful in about 100 constituencies. We are invisible in the rest.
If you live in a LibDem area, you know about it. If you don't you don't.
LibDems have very little national visibility. This partly because the LibDem strategy has been to concentrate on areas of geographic strength and downplay national visibility. It is also because the media, including the BBC, neglect the Lib Dems, either for partisan reasons or because we are not newsworthy. No scandals or defections.
With the current strategy, Lib Dems will be hard pressed to win 100 seats next time. But how to get national visibility? It is not about policies, - we have fistfuls of policies. Perhaps our more colourful personalities need to step up? Stunts aren't the answer. Scandals might be. Where is our Jeremy Thorpe? It needs to newsworthy. Perhaps the @RochdalePioneers approach nationally?
Are you sure you want Jeremy Thorpe style figure dogged by scandal?
If Rinkagate were a work of fiction, it would be dismissed as ridiculously far-fetched.
LibDems are very visible and successful in about 100 constituencies. We are invisible in the rest.
If you live in a LibDem area, you know about it. If you don't you don't.
LibDems have very little national visibility. This partly because the LibDem strategy has been to concentrate on areas of geographic strength and downplay national visibility. It is also because the media, including the BBC, neglect the Lib Dems, either for partisan reasons or because we are not newsworthy. No scandals or defections.
With the current strategy, Lib Dems will be hard pressed to win 100 seats next time. But how to get national visibility? It is not about policies, - we have fistfuls of policies. Perhaps our more colourful personalities need to step up? Stunts aren't the answer. Scandals might be. Where is our Jeremy Thorpe? It needs to newsworthy. Perhaps the @RochdalePioneers approach nationally?
Are you sure you want Jeremy Thorpe style figure dogged by scandal?
If Rinkagate were a work of fiction, it would be dismissed as ridiculously far-fetched.
Keir Starmer has at least got the idea of sending embarrassing individuals to France and failing miserably.
It does seem a bit unfair that Mr Davey is being criticised. After all, he led the part to massive election success and unlike the big two, the Lib Dems seem to be a fairly happy and united party that doesn’t shoot at their feet all day long.
But, he has had an open goal - with both main parties falling apart, in theory he has the opportunity to pick up the social and economic liberals from both.
I would estimate that when Labour or the Conseratives were on 40%, in both cases, 15% of their vote was potential Lib Dems.
So a potential 25% (wild guess) of tribal voters who were potential Lib Dem’s.
With the disintegration of tribal voting, the Lib Dems should have been hoovering them up.
He needs to define LibDem’ism to the population at large. The Orange Book was an example of such a thesis. There are others.
The problem is that it is easy to oppose everything - say yes to all the potential voters. Which is how we end up with “build a zillion houses, but not here” NIMYism.
To take a stand is to take a risk. But without a coherent, unifying vision, the Lib Dems will be the party of 12% for the future.
Whilst the GE did represent electoral success I think the LDs settled for far less than they might have achieved then. They seem to be settling for even less now.
Hence the discontent.
In theory, Davey should have got the moderates from both main parties and be looking at 30%+ now.
We've been here before though. Remember when various MPs from Con and Lab looked around for a centrist alternative, and, finding none to their liking, formed Change UK? The Lib Dems are a much nichier taste than we might expect.
As I said above, the LibDems’ big chance comes along if and when people are compelled to vote for them to “keep Reform out”. If enough people are frightened or horrified by the prospect of Farage in power AND that looks reasonably likely AND the Tories remain looking like Reform fellow-travellers AND Labour remain discredited in government, then it may happen.
We need to actually offer policies for reform, not just a safe harbour in a storm.
I can look back at the manifesto last year and there was some really good stuff in it that nobody paid the slightest bit of attention to. Because retail politics is boring - why listen to someone talking to you about a new cooker when your whole kitchen is on fire.
Credit to you for being so open about the challenges your party faces. In my area, the LDs did very well in Wokingham and Maidenhead, but in Bracknell they got 11%. The latter seat contains Sandhurst where the LDs do well at local level, but the largest town is in the seat is Bracknell itself. This is a 60s and 70s new town and contains large ex-council, then right-to-buy estates. Very C2 white van man and not very ethnically diverse. What do the LDs have to offer to this type of demographic?
Party HQ in Edinburgh are insistent that they want data from knocked doors. Great! So who is going to do that then. Our party structure is small and fragmented - the local party I am chair of has 22 members to cover a huge area. Most of the active members are pensioners. And I have more work than I know what to do with.
If we're going to bring in new members then we need to be visible. And we can't be visible by knocking doors one at a time through the winter. So I am going to do the logical thing - social media. See if that brings people in. And as we get into the campaign I want to channel John Major. Soapbox. Megaphone. Speak.
Will be interested to see how you get on. As you say, hard to do much with 22 members
Ukraine’s new “Long-range drone” hitting O&G facilities 1,500km into Russia, is basically a remote-controlled light aircraft, stuffed with fuel and explosives instead of a couple of humans.
It flies low and slow, for several hours at a time, yet the enemy still appears to be incapable of shooting it down.
It does seem a bit unfair that Mr Davey is being criticised. After all, he led the part to massive election success and unlike the big two, the Lib Dems seem to be a fairly happy and united party that doesn’t shoot at their feet all day long.
But, he has had an open goal - with both main parties falling apart, in theory he has the opportunity to pick up the social and economic liberals from both.
I would estimate that when Labour or the Conseratives were on 40%, in both cases, 15% of their vote was potential Lib Dems.
So a potential 25% (wild guess) of tribal voters who were potential Lib Dem’s.
With the disintegration of tribal voting, the Lib Dems should have been hoovering them up.
He needs to define LibDem’ism to the population at large. The Orange Book was an example of such a thesis. There are others.
The problem is that it is easy to oppose everything - say yes to all the potential voters. Which is how we end up with “build a zillion houses, but not here” NIMYism.
To take a stand is to take a risk. But without a coherent, unifying vision, the Lib Dems will be the party of 12% for the future.
Whilst the GE did represent electoral success I think the LDs settled for far less than they might have achieved then. They seem to be settling for even less now.
Hence the discontent.
In theory, Davey should have got the moderates from both main parties and be looking at 30%+ now.
We've been here before though. Remember when various MPs from Con and Lab looked around for a centrist alternative, and, finding none to their liking, formed Change UK? The Lib Dems are a much nichier taste than we might expect.
As I said above, the LibDems’ big chance comes along if and when people are compelled to vote for them to “keep Reform out”. If enough people are frightened or horrified by the prospect of Farage in power AND that looks reasonably likely AND the Tories remain looking like Reform fellow-travellers AND Labour remain discredited in government, then it may happen.
We need to actually offer policies for reform, not just a safe harbour in a storm.
I can look back at the manifesto last year and there was some really good stuff in it that nobody paid the slightest bit of attention to. Because retail politics is boring - why listen to someone talking to you about a new cooker when your whole kitchen is on fire.
Credit to you for being so open about the challenges your party faces. In my area, the LDs did very well in Wokingham and Maidenhead, but in Bracknell they got 11%. The latter seat contains Sandhurst where the LDs do well at local level, but the largest town is in the seat is Bracknell itself. This is a 60s and 70s new town and contains large ex-council, then right-to-buy estates. Very C2 white van man and not very ethnically diverse. What do the LDs have to offer to this type of demographic?
Bracknell twice returned 40 Conservative councillors, with no other party represented on the council. Now it's pencilled in as a Reform gain.
I would expect Reform to do very well in Bracknell town but not sure about the rest of the borough. Wouldn't surprise me if Ref come up a little short and need to do a deal with the Tories
Ukraine’s new “Long-range drone” hitting O&G facilities 1,500km into Russia, is basically a remote-controlled light aircraft, stuffed with fuel and explosives instead of a couple of humans.
It flies low and slow, for several hours at a time, yet the enemy still appears to be incapable of shooting it down.
I remember reading here that Russian air defence was so good that a SAM battery near Moscow would be able to shoot down any NATO planes over Ukraine.
That PBer also claimed that anti-tank missiles never worked.
It’s quite amazing how an actual war can challenge one’s assumptions about military capability!
One good one from earlier this year was the “anti-stealth” drone that the Ukranians were fielding, which definitely didn’t have any fancy new NATO tech in it, absolutely definitely not.
It’s a fast flying jet-powered small drone designed to look like a much larger MiG to russian radar, purely so the enemy wastes the serious air defence missiles taking them out. The drones cost something like $100k each, but the S300/400 air defence missiles are $5-10m each - and now they don’t have any left!
Old assumptions die hard. Many still assume that Russia has the military power of the Soviet Union in 1945.
Indeed so, and everyone also underestimates just how big and spread out is Russia. They have an awful lof of empty space which is undefendable even with thousands of air defences.
I wonder what the spread on Labour votes will be for 2028/9
2017 12.9m 2019 10.3m 2024 9.7m
Do we believe the guff that a load of tactical voters will come flocking back to them now they’re in trouble, or is it more likely we are looking at sub 8m?
I argued last evening those who think two party politics is dead have got it wrong.
The parties may end up with different names but ultimately it will resolve down to a binary choice - the big change is the nature of the faultline. For decades, it was economic - one side favoured lower taxes, less spending and regulation, the other saw the State as the provider, supported taxation and spending.
That line is no longer valid or has the priority it once did - the divide is now socio-cultural. If you are socially conservative, there's a party for you (possibly two) whereas if you have a more liberal mindset, there are three or four parties for you.
This has had two impacts - first, social conservatives and liberals who mixed together happily under the same economic programme in the Labour and Conservative parties have now flocked to Reform gutting both parties and leaving them shadows of the coalitions they once were.
The other question is whether there are enough social conservatives under FPTP to give Reform a majority on perhaps 30% of the vote - probably but if the liberally minded vote tactically, probably not.
It is the change in the faultline which has damaged Labour and the Conservatives - the politics of economics no longer matter, the politics of society and culture do.
This may be true, but can only stay true until the new party on one side of the new faultline has a go at running the country. At that point the old issues rear their heads whether people like it or not. And these old issues are in fact about how to run a national economy really well, and running it taking full account of debt, deficit, tax, spend, employment, global trade, the health of manufacturing and financial services, ag and fish.
Maybe an election can be won on the issue of a tiny % of migrants being boat people, but a country can't be run on it. The old verities return, and it won't take long.
Reform do not wish to talk about it. This is ominous.
FPT LDs still OK with their 'best pollster' YouGov but one or two dips below 2024 recently with other pollsters. Are they making any headway? I guess thats the question for Davey Doubters
That’s a grim poll for Labour. YouGov are generally their friendliest pollster IIRC
It is grim but i wouodnt say YG are their best, thats probably Opinium, Focaldata and Survation, although theres not much in it
I bow to your superior knowledge. I don’t follow them that closely so far from a GE
Get that dullard Starmer OUT
Fine but who replaces him?
Yvette Cooper has no charisma and poor judgement Reeves would be out of her depth as deputy leader of a county council Miliband is a has-been fanatic who has been killing the economy (though that probably makes him an ideal choice for Labour) Mahmood is unproven and has a poisoned chalice at the Home Office Burnham isn't even an MP Lammy hahaha
etc. etc.
Basically our fifth-rate PM would be replaced by one of a group of tenth-raters.
Can Labour, despite its core vote of ethnic minorities and welfare junkies, poll in the single digits? We may be about to find out.
It’s a fair point. Horribly fair. We might actually get someone worse
Of all those perhaps Cooper? It’s a forlorn hope. She’s not great. But at least we could say an exPBer is now PM
It is worrying we could get someone worse and also worrying that we could be stuck with a moribund government/economy/country for another 4 years.
What I would hope comes of this is that someone breaks the mould or the voters start demanding something different.
I don’t mean necessarily Reform different but the different should be that instead of every interview with opposition should no longer be acceptable to be “it would be crazy for me to lay out what our policies will be four years from election” as I’ve heard Tice and Stride effectively say over the last few weeks on Today. Ming Vase strategies shouldn’t be tolerated.
We need the opposition to lay out a vision, a clear vision now and explain how they hope to cost it, the benefits to the country, acknowledge some things may have to change dependent on the economy at the time but sell the country something positive to work towards, test it, argue it, win over the voters, don’t fear the government copying your ideas as if you sell it wall to wall then people will see you are serious and have a plan.
No more ming vases, just a workable plan to get us to growth and opportunities for the young.
You will absolutely not get that with Reform. Think about who will be voting for them. No way they will level with those voters before the election.
Ooh. Hotel just covered my entire booze bill. All those gin and tonics on the terrace. All those cannonau wines with the suckling pig. Probably €300
“All taken care of sir. There is no bill. Arrivederci”
Did I mention I love my job?
Are they trying to finish you off ?
This is why you can't trust travel writing: here's my glowing and entirely unbiased review of a hotel that gave me EUR300 of free drinks. Yeah, no thanks, I'll go with Trustpilot.
Ooh. Hotel just covered my entire booze bill. All those gin and tonics on the terrace. All those cannonau wines with the suckling pig. Probably €300
“All taken care of sir. There is no bill. Arrivederci”
Did I mention I love my job?
Are they trying to finish you off ?
This is why you can't trust travel writing: here's my glowing and entirely unbiased review of a hotel that gave me EUR300 of free drinks. Yeah, no thanks, I'll go with Trustpilot.
Wait until you hear how much the room and flights should have cost!
(To be fair, reputable travel journalists make it clear that they received hospitality, unlike many of the ‘independent’ reviewers and bloggers operating in the same space).
Pam Bondi's noxious claim that there's a "hate speech" exception to "free speech" - and you can thus be prosecuted for it - is not only a total distortion of the 1st Am's clear language.
I wonder what the spread on Labour votes will be for 2028/9
2017 12.9m 2019 10.3m 2024 9.7m
Do we believe the guff that a load of tactical voters will come flocking back to them now they’re in trouble, or is it more likely we are looking at sub 8m?
Lab and Tories both in the '6 millions' fighting for second in the popular vote
Ukraine’s new “Long-range drone” hitting O&G facilities 1,500km into Russia, is basically a remote-controlled light aircraft, stuffed with fuel and explosives instead of a couple of humans.
It flies low and slow, for several hours at a time, yet the enemy still appears to be incapable of shooting it down.
I remember reading here that Russian air defence was so good that a SAM battery near Moscow would be able to shoot down any NATO planes over Ukraine.
That PBer also claimed that anti-tank missiles never worked.
It’s quite amazing how an actual war can challenge one’s assumptions about military capability!
One good one from earlier this year was the “anti-stealth” drone that the Ukranians were fielding, which definitely didn’t have any fancy new NATO tech in it, absolutely definitely not.
It’s a fast flying jet-powered small drone designed to look like a much larger MiG to russian radar, purely so the enemy wastes the serious air defence missiles taking them out. The drones cost something like $100k each, but the S300/400 air defence missiles are $5-10m each - and now they don’t have any left!
Old assumptions die hard. Many still assume that Russia has the military power of the Soviet Union in 1945.
Indeed so, and everyone also underestimates just how big and spread out is Russia. They have an awful lof of empty space which is undefendable even with thousands of air defences.
That was also a point I made on the previous thread. Europe is better provided than Russia in that respect, and has a but less territory to cover, but we really don't have an answer to mass drone attacks either.
WRT to the header, the LD problem is not hard to discern, and can't be solved.
No-one believes they are in with a chance of running the country, and in the current febrile climate their image is not one to propel interest or momentum. Worthy, boring and in play for under 100 seats maximum, almost all of them as a proxy for Labour for historical and cultural reasons, can command no interest.
Labour are interesting because they are a national party, in deep trouble, govern, and will lead the next government if Reform don't.
Reform are interesting because they might govern next.
Tories are interesting because after 200+ years they may be replaced and if Reform collapse are the only non-violent democratic party to take their place.
LDs, lovely though they all are, are none of these. No-one joins the LDs in order to run the country.
Ooh. Hotel just covered my entire booze bill. All those gin and tonics on the terrace. All those cannonau wines with the suckling pig. Probably €300
“All taken care of sir. There is no bill. Arrivederci”
Did I mention I love my job?
Are they trying to finish you off ?
This is why you can't trust travel writing: here's my glowing and entirely unbiased review of a hotel that gave me EUR300 of free drinks. Yeah, no thanks, I'll go with Trustpilot.
As if I’d be swayed by them buying all my drinks for five days. Pff. I get free stuff all the time. Means nothing
It’s a really fabulous hotel tho. Probably the best hotel in italy. Here’s the link
Pam Bondi's noxious claim that there's a "hate speech" exception to "free speech" - and you can thus be prosecuted for it - is not only a total distortion of the 1st Am's clear language.
I argued last evening those who think two party politics is dead have got it wrong.
The parties may end up with different names but ultimately it will resolve down to a binary choice - the big change is the nature of the faultline. For decades, it was economic - one side favoured lower taxes, less spending and regulation, the other saw the State as the provider, supported taxation and spending.
That line is no longer valid or has the priority it once did - the divide is now socio-cultural. If you are socially conservative, there's a party for you (possibly two) whereas if you have a more liberal mindset, there are three or four parties for you.
This has had two impacts - first, social conservatives and liberals who mixed together happily under the same economic programme in the Labour and Conservative parties have now flocked to Reform gutting both parties and leaving them shadows of the coalitions they once were.
The other question is whether there are enough social conservatives under FPTP to give Reform a majority on perhaps 30% of the vote - probably but if the liberally minded vote tactically, probably not.
It is the change in the faultline which has damaged Labour and the Conservatives - the politics of economics no longer matter, the politics of society and culture do.
This may be true, but can only stay true until the new party on one side of the new faultline has a go at running the country. At that point the old issues rear their heads whether people like it or not. And these old issues are in fact about how to run a national economy really well, and running it taking full account of debt, deficit, tax, spend, employment, global trade, the health of manufacturing and financial services, ag and fish.
Maybe an election can be won on the issue of a tiny % of migrants being boat people, but a country can't be run on it. The old verities return, and it won't take long.
Reform do not wish to talk about it. This is ominous.
Even better is what "no migration" does to the economy.
We have waves of migration when we have significant gaps in the labour force. We have one today. We don't want to work on farms or in factories. We've had 40 years of the right wing saying teachers are idiots and so attainment levels drop especially in the WWC. So we aren't well trained, especially in the things we need like medicine and engineering. And we have a declining birth rate and an ageing population.
So lets say Farage wins and we do move to no migration. What happens? Well there's a load of jobs we can't fill. "Send the scroungers to do it" will only last for a short time until people realise they are up for forced relocation to work on a farm. And we all get sicker as the NHS falls apart. Even better, we have less people working paying less taxes and circulating less money. So a big recession. Sound - what does Farage do then? Who does his movement scapegoat - the gays?
We absolutely need to invest in education skills and training. Invest in making proper jobs sexy again - construction, engineering, food. That will take vision and time and money. And we're prepared to invest none of that. But we want the brown people to go away because they are raping and murdering our women, taking our homes, stealing both the jobs and claiming benefits. So sayeth Musk and Yaxley-Robinson.
(Was Yvette Cooper really a PBer in the olden Days? What was her moniker?)
It was Snowflake. I'm not sure it was fully proven, but the person making the posts had the kind of in-depth knowledge of government policy that you would only get from serious, full-time, professional involvement.
Ooh. Hotel just covered my entire booze bill. All those gin and tonics on the terrace. All those cannonau wines with the suckling pig. Probably €300
“All taken care of sir. There is no bill. Arrivederci”
Did I mention I love my job?
This is oh so shallow Leon. Presumably you are well off in your job, so why do you care if someone pays your booze bill or not and why boast about it? Similarly with the travel. Most of us like going on holiday. Being retired I have or will go to France, Spain, Italy and Portugal this year, but on each trip I am so pleased to be coming home. When I was much much younger I travelled a lot and hated it because I had no home life and eventually made a quality of life decision to give that up for quality of life. Most of us would hate your life. We like seeing your reports and appreciate you like it, but most of us wouldn't want it. It definitely seems like a single person's life with no desire for roots in a home or community.
Good morning and do you know what all those extra civil servants are doing? I do.
Just had a large tax bill from HMRC who have gone back to 2011-2014 to indicate an underpayment of a few £'000 in each of these years. Fast forward to 2025 and 11 years of interest and penalties mounts up to a significant sum. The issue is they don't show their workings and for all I know I don't owe the underlying sums. They also don't indicate how to appeal/challenge the calculations they don't show so I'll now have to spend time trying to second guess what the hell they are on about.
I hope HMRC have better staff training than the ones I dealt with at DWP and local authorities.
Good morning and do you know what all those extra civil servants are doing? I do.
Just had a large tax bill from HMRC who have gone back to 2011-2014 to indicate an underpayment of a few £'000 in each of these years. Fast forward to 2025 and 11 years of interest and penalties mounts up to a significant sum. The issue is they don't show their workings and for all I know I don't owe the underlying sums. They also don't indicate how to appeal/challenge the calculations they don't show so I'll now have to spend time trying to second guess what the hell they are on about.
I hope HMRC have better staff training than the ones I dealt with at DWP and local authorities.
Time to talk to an accountant familiar with this stuff unfortunately. Bonne chance!
Ooh. Hotel just covered my entire booze bill. All those gin and tonics on the terrace. All those cannonau wines with the suckling pig. Probably €300
“All taken care of sir. There is no bill. Arrivederci”
Did I mention I love my job?
This is oh so shallow Leon. Presumably you are well off in your job, so why do you care if someone pays your booze bill or not and why boast about it? Similarly with the travel. Most of us like going on holiday. Being retired I have or will go to France, Spain, Italy and Portugal this year, but on each trip I am so pleased to be coming home. When I was much much younger I travelled a lot and hated it because I had no home life and eventually made a quality of life decision to give that up for quality of life. Most of us would hate your life. We like seeing your reports and appreciate you like it, but most of us wouldn't want it. It definitely seems like a single person's life with no desire for roots in a home or community.
I don't think it helps Starmer that he has no substantial power base or ultra-loyalists within the Labour Party. I recall reading an article mentioning that there is no such thing as "Starmerism" and that in itself is instructive, I think.
He doesn't really believe in anything (he's not even confidently wedded to pragmatism, which Blair and Thatcher both had, aside from their overarching orthodoxies). And that makes it hard to inspire loyalty.
Most other PMs had to build a base of loyal, fellow travellers within their party - look at Thatcher, Blair, Brown, Cameron, Johnson - all good examples of this. Starmer instead inherited a party where the most ambitious figures were desperate to stop losing, and as a result I suspect that a lot of this iron-fisted party management style that people lauded him for was a bit of luck - in that the party was so weary of defeat people just accepted it. Compare this to New Labour, where the same desperation existed but the architects of that project realised they needed more.
This is now coming back to bite him, because now he is politically short of friends, who is there to help him? Who are his loyal lieutenants ready to ride to the rescue? Burnham clearly now sees himself as a rival. Rayner wasn't a "ride or die" ally, often on leadership manoeuvres herself. Streeting also has one eye on the top job. The closest he has is Reeves, who is also utterly discredited - and even for her, he couldn't back her in the Commons as she sobbed next to him. He also simply doesn't have the ace up his sleeve that other PMs had - the underpinning vision, the ideology, the team moving towards a common goal - that saved them and gave them allies through their darker hours.
The Starmer story is one of a man who was parachuted into the top of politics, who got very lucky but who ultimately lacks the skills that make a good political leader.
Superb post @numbertwelve! And I recommend that @TheScreamingEagles should do what Mike Smithson OGH used to do when he spotted a similar post containing such an excellent and insightful political analysis and he should use it as the headline in this mornings new thread.
Agreed.
From a July 2021 header - the last sentence turned out to be wrong. But Labour has not really provided any good answers to the other questions. I'm not sure a change of personnel is really going to help.
Ooh. Hotel just covered my entire booze bill. All those gin and tonics on the terrace. All those cannonau wines with the suckling pig. Probably €300
“All taken care of sir. There is no bill. Arrivederci”
Did I mention I love my job?
This is oh so shallow Leon. Presumably you are well off in your job, so why do you care if someone pays your booze bill or not and why boast about it? Similarly with the travel. Most of us like going on holiday. Being retired I have or will go to France, Spain, Italy and Portugal this year, but on each trip I am so pleased to be coming home. When I was much much younger I travelled a lot and hated it because I had no home life and eventually made a quality of life decision to give that up for quality of life. Most of us would hate your life. We like seeing your reports and appreciate you like it, but most of us wouldn't want it. It definitely seems like a single person's life with no desire for roots in a home or community.
I saw her referred to yesterday as Pam Bondi, who plays The Attorney General of the United States on television...
She’s getting monstered by many on her own side over the “hate speech” comments.
Probably the most unpopular of Trump’s ministers, she’s the AG and is supposed to understand the law as it refers to such obvious topics as the first amendment.
https://x.com/trhlofficial/status/1967819736479306204 “Wrong. Hate speech does not exist. The issues are unprotected speech such as incitement, and whether an employer has the right to disassociate from a piece of shitt (they do).”
Overwhelming support for the State Pension increase on the BBC news article comments and on Facebook. The government can't touch the triple lock.
The reason being, of course, that those yet to retire have far more to look forward to from the triple lock than anyone already drawing their pension. Whether the economy can afford to keep non-workers comfortably off at the expense of wage slaves is a separate question. When the Coalition introduced the current policy (prompted by Lloyd George's successors, back around the cabinet table at long last) it seemed like a slow, gentle way to catch up with other European countries. 'If they can afford it, why can't we?' was the clarion call.
They can't afford it either. I despair. Nobody is willing to have an honest conversation with the voters about this. The fact is that governments have made unaffordable promises to their citizens about the amount the state will support them in their old age, right across the West. Until that issue is addressed workers will face ever higher taxes, all other public spending will wither away, and voter rage will continue to grow. Right now, government debt is a Ponzi scheme and we will face a financial crisis that will dwarf 2008 if this is not dealt with.
The triple lock has to be dropped in favour of a simple earnings link - pensioners need to understand in their bones that their personal prosperity is ultimately dependent on the prosperity of the nation: Without a thriving economy, there’s no economic output to fund their pensions.
It doesn’t matter what form the savings for those pensions took - the goods and services they rely on in the here and now have to come out of the nation’s collective GDP.
Overwhelming support for the State Pension increase on the BBC news article comments and on Facebook. The government can't touch the triple lock.
The reason being, of course, that those yet to retire have far more to look forward to from the triple lock than anyone already drawing their pension. Whether the economy can afford to keep non-workers comfortably off at the expense of wage slaves is a separate question. When the Coalition introduced the current policy (prompted by Lloyd George's successors, back around the cabinet table at long last) it seemed like a slow, gentle way to catch up with other European countries. 'If they can afford it, why can't we?' was the clarion call.
They can't afford it either. I despair. Nobody is willing to have an honest conversation with the voters about this. The fact is that governments have made unaffordable promises to their citizens about the amount the state will support them in their old age, right across the West. Until that issue is addressed workers will face ever higher taxes, all other public spending will wither away, and voter rage will continue to grow. Right now, government debt is a Ponzi scheme and we will face a financial crisis that will dwarf 2008 if this is not dealt with.
The triple lock has to be dropped in favour of a simple earnings link - pensioners need to understand in their bones that their personal prosperity is ultimately dependent on the prosperity of the nation: Without a thriving economy, there’s no economic output to fund their pensions.
It doesn’t matter what form the savings for those pensions took - the goods and services they rely on in the here and now have to come out of the nation’s collective GDP.
The most problematic portion of the triple lock is the earnings link as it is usually earnings growth that is the highest of the three numbers. As the ratio of pensioners to workers keeps going up it means that, unless pensioners' incomes go up more lowly than earnings growth, their overall demand on the public purse will keep rising. Fifteen years ago there were four working age people to support each pensioner. Now there are three. In fifty years there will be two. Pensions are only part of the story. There is also the soaring cost of health and social care. This a recipe for a bankrupt state and the collapse of the public debt markets that underpin our financial system. When will the public wake up to this? It's madness.
Overwhelming support for the State Pension increase on the BBC news article comments and on Facebook. The government can't touch the triple lock.
The reason being, of course, that those yet to retire have far more to look forward to from the triple lock than anyone already drawing their pension. Whether the economy can afford to keep non-workers comfortably off at the expense of wage slaves is a separate question. When the Coalition introduced the current policy (prompted by Lloyd George's successors, back around the cabinet table at long last) it seemed like a slow, gentle way to catch up with other European countries. 'If they can afford it, why can't we?' was the clarion call.
They can't afford it either. I despair. Nobody is willing to have an honest conversation with the voters about this. The fact is that governments have made unaffordable promises to their citizens about the amount the state will support them in their old age, right across the West. Until that issue is addressed workers will face ever higher taxes, all other public spending will wither away, and voter rage will continue to grow. Right now, government debt is a Ponzi scheme and we will face a financial crisis that will dwarf 2008 if this is not dealt with.
The triple lock has to be dropped in favour of a simple earnings link - pensioners need to understand in their bones that their personal prosperity is ultimately dependent on the prosperity of the nation: Without a thriving economy, there’s no economic output to fund their pensions.
It doesn’t matter what form the savings for those pensions took - the goods and services they rely on in the here and now have to come out of the nation’s collective GDP.
The problem the UK has is demographic. We pay for pensions etc out of current receipts. So, the babyboomer generation who were more numerous, paid for less generous pension provision for the less numerous generations above them. the more numerous babyboomer generation are now getting more generous pension provision paid for by the less numerous working generations below them.
this is only going to work if the more numerous and more wealthy demographic is taxed a bit more.
(Was Yvette Cooper really a PBer in the olden Days? What was her moniker?)
It was Snowflake. I'm not sure it was fully proven, but the person making the posts had the kind of in-depth knowledge of government policy that you would only get from serious, full-time, professional involvement.
Fascinating! Thanks very much. I remember Snowflake wel.
Maria Caulfield, ex conservative mp defects to Reform
Apparently a month ago but announced this morning
It is interesting that a number of ex conservatives want to join Reform and as Sky suggests, Farage needs to be careful as this could eventually turn Reform more into Tory party
Conspiracy theory - a reverse takeover of Reform is happening and in time does this evolve into a newly formed reform conservative party to take on the left at the next GE ?
Here is the trend: 1) The dam is breaking open. Once defection to refuk becomes normalised then surely a succession of Tories will follow. They want to remain MPs and will justify the switch as "reform are the true Tories now" 2) The more Tory MPs join the fukers saying "reform are the true Tories now" the harder it is for Farage to argue that Reform are the antidote to the uniparty. Fed up with faux Tories who want to hug a hoody? Have you seen our new head of strategy? Here to explain why we're not the Tories is Sir Jake Berry and Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg. Next we have a seminar or "why Boris Johnson was a traitor", led by Nadine Dorries
Also on the socially conservative end of things, IIRC.
If the Reform Revolution happens, I wouldn't want to be on the record as a decadent sex memoirist. Not first up against the wall (I accept that will the the Centrist Dads and am mostly resigned to my fate) but somewhere in about week 3.
I predicted last year that if this were to start, there would be a rush to be among the first out the door, in the hope of Farage's future patronage.
There's a tipping point behind which all those who aren't prepared to go down with the ship (IDS, perhaps, or HYUFD ?) will put their careers before whatever principles they might have, or think they have.
Overwhelming support for the State Pension increase on the BBC news article comments and on Facebook. The government can't touch the triple lock.
The reason being, of course, that those yet to retire have far more to look forward to from the triple lock than anyone already drawing their pension. Whether the economy can afford to keep non-workers comfortably off at the expense of wage slaves is a separate question. When the Coalition introduced the current policy (prompted by Lloyd George's successors, back around the cabinet table at long last) it seemed like a slow, gentle way to catch up with other European countries. 'If they can afford it, why can't we?' was the clarion call.
They can't afford it either. I despair. Nobody is willing to have an honest conversation with the voters about this. The fact is that governments have made unaffordable promises to their citizens about the amount the state will support them in their old age, right across the West. Until that issue is addressed workers will face ever higher taxes, all other public spending will wither away, and voter rage will continue to grow. Right now, government debt is a Ponzi scheme and we will face a financial crisis that will dwarf 2008 if this is not dealt with.
The triple lock has to be dropped in favour of a simple earnings link - pensioners need to understand in their bones that their personal prosperity is ultimately dependent on the prosperity of the nation: Without a thriving economy, there’s no economic output to fund their pensions.
It doesn’t matter what form the savings for those pensions took - the goods and services they rely on in the here and now have to come out of the nation’s collective GDP.
The most problematic portion of the triple lock is the earnings link as it is usually earnings growth that is the highest of the three numbers. As the ratio of pensioners to workers keeps going up it means that, unless pensioners' incomes go up more lowly than earnings growth, their overall demand on the public purse will keep rising. Fifteen years ago there were four working age people to support each pensioner. Now there are three. In fifty years there will be two. Pensions are only part of the story. There is also the soaring cost of health and social care. This a recipe for a bankrupt state and the collapse of the public debt markets that underpin our financial system. When will the public wake up to this? It's madness.
It’s the combination of the earnings link & the inflation link & the 2.5% floor that makes the triple lock completely insane. It guarantees that pensions go up & up regardless of what happens to the rest of the economy.
The earnings link may or may not be affordable in the long term, but the combination is fatal.
Overwhelming support for the State Pension increase on the BBC news article comments and on Facebook. The government can't touch the triple lock.
The reason being, of course, that those yet to retire have far more to look forward to from the triple lock than anyone already drawing their pension. Whether the economy can afford to keep non-workers comfortably off at the expense of wage slaves is a separate question. When the Coalition introduced the current policy (prompted by Lloyd George's successors, back around the cabinet table at long last) it seemed like a slow, gentle way to catch up with other European countries. 'If they can afford it, why can't we?' was the clarion call.
They can't afford it either. I despair. Nobody is willing to have an honest conversation with the voters about this. The fact is that governments have made unaffordable promises to their citizens about the amount the state will support them in their old age, right across the West. Until that issue is addressed workers will face ever higher taxes, all other public spending will wither away, and voter rage will continue to grow. Right now, government debt is a Ponzi scheme and we will face a financial crisis that will dwarf 2008 if this is not dealt with.
The triple lock has to be dropped in favour of a simple earnings link - pensioners need to understand in their bones that their personal prosperity is ultimately dependent on the prosperity of the nation: Without a thriving economy, there’s no economic output to fund their pensions.
It doesn’t matter what form the savings for those pensions took - the goods and services they rely on in the here and now have to come out of the nation’s collective GDP.
The most problematic portion of the triple lock is the earnings link as it is usually earnings growth that is the highest of the three numbers. As the ratio of pensioners to workers keeps going up it means that, unless pensioners' incomes go up more lowly than earnings growth, their overall demand on the public purse will keep rising. Fifteen years ago there were four working age people to support each pensioner. Now there are three. In fifty years there will be two. Pensions are only part of the story. There is also the soaring cost of health and social care. This a recipe for a bankrupt state and the collapse of the public debt markets that underpin our financial system. When will the public wake up to this? It's madness.
It’s the combination of the earnings link & the inflation link & the 2.5% floor that makes the triple lock completely insane. It guarantees that pensions go up & up regardless of what happens to the rest of the economy.
The earnings link may or may not be affordable in the long term, but the combination is fatal.
Agreed. The whole thing is insane. Another piece of Osborne stupidity. Generous state pensions are a great thing to have, but so are public services for younger people, infrastructure investment and moderate taxes. The political settlement of the last few decades has been that all of the latter must be sacrificed for the former. It can't go on.
I predicted last year that if this were to start, there would be a rush to be among the first out the door, in the hope of Farage's future patronage.
There's a tipping point behind which all those who aren't prepared to go down with the ship (IDS, perhaps, or HYUFD ?) will put their careers before whatever principles they might have, or think they have.
Relevant to the header- if the fruitcakes etc all bugger off to Reform, what do the moderates do? The options I see are to celebrate getting their party back (ignoring how tiny that party would be), and sell off the scraps for parts before seeking sanctuary in some sort of National Liberal setup, only in reverse.
I argued last evening those who think two party politics is dead have got it wrong.
The parties may end up with different names but ultimately it will resolve down to a binary choice - the big change is the nature of the faultline. For decades, it was economic - one side favoured lower taxes, less spending and regulation, the other saw the State as the provider, supported taxation and spending.
That line is no longer valid or has the priority it once did - the divide is now socio-cultural. If you are socially conservative, there's a party for you (possibly two) whereas if you have a more liberal mindset, there are three or four parties for you.
This has had two impacts - first, social conservatives and liberals who mixed together happily under the same economic programme in the Labour and Conservative parties have now flocked to Reform gutting both parties and leaving them shadows of the coalitions they once were.
The other question is whether there are enough social conservatives under FPTP to give Reform a majority on perhaps 30% of the vote - probably but if the liberally minded vote tactically, probably not.
It is the change in the faultline which has damaged Labour and the Conservatives - the politics of economics no longer matter, the politics of society and culture do.
This may be true, but can only stay true until the new party on one side of the new faultline has a go at running the country. At that point the old issues rear their heads whether people like it or not. And these old issues are in fact about how to run a national economy really well, and running it taking full account of debt, deficit, tax, spend, employment, global trade, the health of manufacturing and financial services, ag and fish.
Maybe an election can be won on the issue of a tiny % of migrants being boat people, but a country can't be run on it. The old verities return, and it won't take long.
Reform do not wish to talk about it. This is ominous.
Even better is what "no migration" does to the economy.
We have waves of migration when we have significant gaps in the labour force. We have one today. We don't want to work on farms or in factories. We've had 40 years of the right wing saying teachers are idiots and so attainment levels drop especially in the WWC. So we aren't well trained, especially in the things we need like medicine and engineering. And we have a declining birth rate and an ageing population.
So lets say Farage wins and we do move to no migration. What happens? Well there's a load of jobs we can't fill. "Send the scroungers to do it" will only last for a short time until people realise they are up for forced relocation to work on a farm. And we all get sicker as the NHS falls apart. Even better, we have less people working paying less taxes and circulating less money. So a big recession. Sound - what does Farage do then? Who does his movement scapegoat - the gays?
We absolutely need to invest in education skills and training. Invest in making proper jobs sexy again - construction, engineering, food. That will take vision and time and money. And we're prepared to invest none of that. But we want the brown people to go away because they are raping and murdering our women, taking our homes, stealing both the jobs and claiming benefits. So sayeth Musk and Yaxley-Robinson.
"We've had 40 years of the right wing saying teachers are idiots" - any substantiation for that rather odd claim? I think people on the right have suggested that teachers tend to be on the left, and worry about them infecting children with woke, but I don't think they have been characterised as idiots.
We have a broader culture that values the arts far more than STEM. It should never be acceptable to say "I'm no good at maths' and laugh about it. When Paxman was presenting University Challenge he would sneer at students not knowing some obscure musical composition or writer, or basically anything from the arts and then stumble over pronouncing a basic science term.
The answer to farming is NOT more low paid manual work, its increasing productivity by better ways of working, whether that is growing salad 365 days a year indoors with green electricity, or using robots to harvest crops.
Reform rapidly becoming just a chicken run for failing Tories.
Labour need to hammer this home on social media.
Its ridiculous. Anderson stands there with a straight face and says they'll only take the very best, Yusuf with some nonsense about limited lifeboats and the very next day they announce theyve been scratching about in the Tories bins for another ex MP looking for a gig.
Ukraine’s new “Long-range drone” hitting O&G facilities 1,500km into Russia, is basically a remote-controlled light aircraft, stuffed with fuel and explosives instead of a couple of humans.
It flies low and slow, for several hours at a time, yet the enemy still appears to be incapable of shooting it down.
Reform rapidly becoming just a chicken run for failing Tories.
Labour need to hammer this home on social media.
Its ridiculous. Anderson stands there with a straight face and says they'll only take the very best, Yusuf with some nonsense about limited lifeboats and the very next day they announce theyve been scratching about in the Tories bins for another ex MP looking for a gig.
Loudly saying something to cover their doing something very different?
Maybe Reform are going to be a proper political party.
Reform rapidly becoming just a chicken run for failing Tories.
Labour need to hammer this home on social media.
Its ridiculous. Anderson stands there with a straight face and says they'll only take the very best, Yusuf with some nonsense about limited lifeboats and the very next day they announce theyve been scratching about in the Tories bins for another ex MP looking for a gig.
Cauldfield joined a month ago, but if ex Tories join reform in any numbers reform will eventually become a quasi-tory party
Reform rapidly becoming just a chicken run for failing Tories.
Labour need to hammer this home on social media.
Its ridiculous. Anderson stands there with a straight face and says they'll only take the very best, Yusuf with some nonsense about limited lifeboats and the very next day they announce theyve been scratching about in the Tories bins for another ex MP looking for a gig.
Loudly saying something to cover their doing something very different?
Maybe Reform are going to be a proper political party.
Theyve got plenty experienced in concession speeches now so they are prepared for the worst
Ukraine’s new “Long-range drone” hitting O&G facilities 1,500km into Russia, is basically a remote-controlled light aircraft, stuffed with fuel and explosives instead of a couple of humans.
It flies low and slow, for several hours at a time, yet the enemy still appears to be incapable of shooting it down.
Their ground to air missiles are protecting Putin's palaces rather than their means of generating cash to pay for the war. Nero, eat your heart out...
Apparently so. Meanwhile the russian economy is bleeding out, and discussion of the forthcoming collapse is not only happening but being reported on in Moscow.
But hey, putin’s dacha by the sea should be fine, it has a billion-dollar S400 system protecting it.
Reform rapidly becoming just a chicken run for failing Tories.
Labour need to hammer this home on social media.
Its ridiculous. Anderson stands there with a straight face and says they'll only take the very best, Yusuf with some nonsense about limited lifeboats and the very next day they announce theyve been scratching about in the Tories bins for another ex MP looking for a gig.
Reform rapidly becoming just a chicken run for failing Tories.
Labour need to hammer this home on social media.
Its ridiculous. Anderson stands there with a straight face and says they'll only take the very best, Yusuf with some nonsense about limited lifeboats and the very next day they announce theyve been scratching about in the Tories bins for another ex MP looking for a gig.
Cauldfield joined a month ago, but if ex Tories join reform in any numbers reform will eventually become a quasi-tory party
It already is. Every single MP and most of their councillors are ex Tories
Reform rapidly becoming just a chicken run for failing Tories.
Labour need to hammer this home on social media.
Its ridiculous. Anderson stands there with a straight face and says they'll only take the very best, Yusuf with some nonsense about limited lifeboats and the very next day they announce theyve been scratching about in the Tories bins for another ex MP looking for a gig.
Reform rapidly becoming just a chicken run for failing Tories.
Labour need to hammer this home on social media.
Its ridiculous. Anderson stands there with a straight face and says they'll only take the very best, Yusuf with some nonsense about limited lifeboats and the very next day they announce theyve been scratching about in the Tories bins for another ex MP looking for a gig.
Cauldfield joined a month ago, but if ex Tories join reform in any numbers reform will eventually become a quasi-tory party
What would be the tipping point number for you to consider voting for them?
Reform rapidly becoming just a chicken run for failing Tories.
Labour need to hammer this home on social media.
Its ridiculous. Anderson stands there with a straight face and says they'll only take the very best, Yusuf with some nonsense about limited lifeboats and the very next day they announce theyve been scratching about in the Tories bins for another ex MP looking for a gig.
Your party is dying. Sorry
You are premature on your observation
It is 4 years to the next GE and a lot can happen in that time
Reform rapidly becoming just a chicken run for failing Tories.
Labour need to hammer this home on social media.
Its ridiculous. Anderson stands there with a straight face and says they'll only take the very best, Yusuf with some nonsense about limited lifeboats and the very next day they announce theyve been scratching about in the Tories bins for another ex MP looking for a gig.
Cauldfield joined a month ago, but if ex Tories join reform in any numbers reform will eventually become a quasi-tory party
What would be the tipping point number for you to consider voting for them?
Farage gone and sensible economic and immigration policies
I argued last evening those who think two party politics is dead have got it wrong.
The parties may end up with different names but ultimately it will resolve down to a binary choice - the big change is the nature of the faultline. For decades, it was economic - one side favoured lower taxes, less spending and regulation, the other saw the State as the provider, supported taxation and spending.
That line is no longer valid or has the priority it once did - the divide is now socio-cultural. If you are socially conservative, there's a party for you (possibly two) whereas if you have a more liberal mindset, there are three or four parties for you.
This has had two impacts - first, social conservatives and liberals who mixed together happily under the same economic programme in the Labour and Conservative parties have now flocked to Reform gutting both parties and leaving them shadows of the coalitions they once were.
The other question is whether there are enough social conservatives under FPTP to give Reform a majority on perhaps 30% of the vote - probably but if the liberally minded vote tactically, probably not.
It is the change in the faultline which has damaged Labour and the Conservatives - the politics of economics no longer matter, the politics of society and culture do.
This may be true, but can only stay true until the new party on one side of the new faultline has a go at running the country. At that point the old issues rear their heads whether people like it or not. And these old issues are in fact about how to run a national economy really well, and running it taking full account of debt, deficit, tax, spend, employment, global trade, the health of manufacturing and financial services, ag and fish.
Maybe an election can be won on the issue of a tiny % of migrants being boat people, but a country can't be run on it. The old verities return, and it won't take long.
Reform do not wish to talk about it. This is ominous.
Even better is what "no migration" does to the economy.
We have waves of migration when we have significant gaps in the labour force. We have one today. We don't want to work on farms or in factories. We've had 40 years of the right wing saying teachers are idiots and so attainment levels drop especially in the WWC. So we aren't well trained, especially in the things we need like medicine and engineering. And we have a declining birth rate and an ageing population.
So lets say Farage wins and we do move to no migration. What happens? Well there's a load of jobs we can't fill. "Send the scroungers to do it" will only last for a short time until people realise they are up for forced relocation to work on a farm. And we all get sicker as the NHS falls apart. Even better, we have less people working paying less taxes and circulating less money. So a big recession. Sound - what does Farage do then? Who does his movement scapegoat - the gays?
We absolutely need to invest in education skills and training. Invest in making proper jobs sexy again - construction, engineering, food. That will take vision and time and money. And we're prepared to invest none of that. But we want the brown people to go away because they are raping and murdering our women, taking our homes, stealing both the jobs and claiming benefits. So sayeth Musk and Yaxley-Robinson.
"We've had 40 years of the right wing saying teachers are idiots" - any substantiation for that rather odd claim? I think people on the right have suggested that teachers tend to be on the left, and worry about them infecting children with woke, but I don't think they have been characterised as idiots.
We have a broader culture that values the arts far more than STEM. It should never be acceptable to say "I'm no good at maths' and laugh about it. When Paxman was presenting University Challenge he would sneer at students not knowing some obscure musical composition or writer, or basically anything from the arts and then stumble over pronouncing a basic science term.
The answer to farming is NOT more low paid manual work, its increasing productivity by better ways of working, whether that is growing salad 365 days a year indoors with green electricity, or using robots to harvest crops.
On education? Endless attacks by The Sun, Daily Mail and various Tories. When tabloid-reading parents are fed an endless attack on the education system is it any wonder they don't care if their kids achieve in school?
On farming the robot pickers are vastly expensive and most farmers are low on cash. As for electricity that needs to be cheap, and thanks to the right's war on "Net Zero" we have the highest energy prices anywhere in Europe.
Reform rapidly becoming just a chicken run for failing Tories.
Labour need to hammer this home on social media.
Its ridiculous. Anderson stands there with a straight face and says they'll only take the very best, Yusuf with some nonsense about limited lifeboats and the very next day they announce theyve been scratching about in the Tories bins for another ex MP looking for a gig.
Your party is dying. Sorry
And metastisising into yours.
Yes possibly
There is a danger here for Reform, but also an opportunity. One of the main and more forceful accusations against them is a “lack of experience, intellect, economic nous”. The easiest way to counter that is to recruit hundreds of serious Tories - job done
But of course they don’t want to do so much they become “the Tories rebranded”
I suggest however that the water will find it own level, naturally. All the wanky woke Tories - the worst kind - will never join Farage. He has no fear of Dominic Grieve or Rory Stewart or Duchess Warsi coming over. So the sweet spot should arrive anyway
@leon. You didn't respond to my question. I don't believe you are deluded enough to think everyone would like to do your job. I think most people would like to do it for a year or two, particularly when young and unattached, but most people want to settle down and would grow to hate it. I'm rich enough that I could travel for the rest of my life, but I don't. I like to travel, but in limited doses. My wife even less so, hence I make some trips without her. I spent so much time in smart hotels on expenses when I was younger I now prefer pubs, B&Bs and quirky stuff (on my recent trip it was all B&Bs, plus the prison and convent for interest). I also get very bored with sight seeing and I have never been a beach person. All my holidays when younger were active holidays. I can do less of that now. Again another reason I would not want to do what you do. I would come back very fat and with a damaged liver. I don't know how you survive that. A specific reason why I have never been on a cruise.
So why the lol? What did I write that deserved a lol? I was even kind about you. After all it is horses for courses and you are single and obviously love it, but you are deluded if you think most other people want to do it. I suspect the only ones that do, are those who haven't experienced such stuff and once they do experience it there is only so much most can enjoy and eventually crave to settle down. Interestingly for me that came much later in life than most (so I am more like you than you think). I didn't settle down until I was 40. For most it is much earlier.
Reform rapidly becoming just a chicken run for failing Tories.
Labour need to hammer this home on social media.
Its ridiculous. Anderson stands there with a straight face and says they'll only take the very best, Yusuf with some nonsense about limited lifeboats and the very next day they announce theyve been scratching about in the Tories bins for another ex MP looking for a gig.
Cauldfield joined a month ago, but if ex Tories join reform in any numbers reform will eventually become a quasi-tory party
It already is. Every single MP and most of their councillors are ex Tories
F1: imagine being productive and forgetting about banging on about F1...
Anyway, ep36 of Undercutters looks ahead to Azerbaijan, a circuit I rather like, and I ramble a little about the McLaren strategy call and why (unlike, seemingly, most others) I found it very unsurprising.
@leon. You didn't respond to my question. I don't believe you are deluded enough to think everyone would like to do your job. I think most people would like to do it for a year or two, particularly when young and unattached, but most people want to settle down and would grow to hate it. I'm rich enough that I could travel for the rest of my life, but I don't. I like to travel, but in limited doses. My wife even less so, hence I make some trips without her. I spent so much time in smart hotels on expenses when I was younger I now prefer pubs, B&Bs and quirky stuff (on my recent trip it was all B&Bs, plus the prison and convent for interest). I also get very bored with sight seeing and I have never been a beach person. All my holidays when younger were active holidays. I can do less of that now. Again another reason I would not want to do what you do. I would come back very fat and with a damaged liver. I don't know how you survive that. A specific reason why I have never been on a cruise.
So why the lol? What did I write that deserved a lol? I was even kind about you. After all it is horses for courses and you are single and obviously love it, but you are deluded if you think most other people want to do it. I suspect the only ones that do, are those who haven't experienced such stuff and once they do experience it there is only so much most can enjoy and eventually crave to settle down. Interestingly for me that came much later in life than most (so I am more like you than you think). I didn't settle down until I was 40. For most it is much earlier.
Leon is incapable of stretching his gigantic intellect enough to understand that other people may want different things from life to him. That what he sees as a brilliant life might seem shite to people who want something else.
Reform rapidly becoming just a chicken run for failing Tories.
Labour need to hammer this home on social media.
Its ridiculous. Anderson stands there with a straight face and says they'll only take the very best, Yusuf with some nonsense about limited lifeboats and the very next day they announce theyve been scratching about in the Tories bins for another ex MP looking for a gig.
Your party is dying. Sorry
And metastisising into yours.
Yes possibly
There is a danger here for Reform, but also an opportunity. One of the main and more forceful accusations against them is a “lack of experience, intellect, economic nous”. The easiest way to counter that is to recruit hundreds of serious Tories - job done
But of course they don’t want to do so much they become “the Tories rebranded”
I suggest however that the water will find it own level, naturally. All the wanky woke Tories - the worst kind - will never join Farage. He has no fear of Dominic Grieve or Rory Stewart or Duchess Warsi coming over. So the sweet spot should arrive anyway
The main danger is holding on to DNV to Reform switchers. They are going to be very quickly turned off by a 2019 to 2024 Tory party rebrand under Farage as you note and there's a floor for the Tories in respect of votes switching to Reform which I suspect we are close to (but not yet at) beyond which Tory defections of any stripe become counter productive
Reform rapidly becoming just a chicken run for failing Tories.
Labour need to hammer this home on social media.
Its ridiculous. Anderson stands there with a straight face and says they'll only take the very best, Yusuf with some nonsense about limited lifeboats and the very next day they announce theyve been scratching about in the Tories bins for another ex MP looking for a gig.
Cauldfield joined a month ago, but if ex Tories join reform in any numbers reform will eventually become a quasi-tory party
It already is. Every single MP and most of their councillors are ex Tories
Maria Caulfield, ex conservative mp defects to Reform
Apparently a month ago but announced this morning
It is interesting that a number of ex conservatives want to join Reform and as Sky suggests, Farage needs to be careful as this could eventually turn Reform more into Tory party
Conspiracy theory - a reverse takeover of Reform is happening and in time does this evolve into a newly formed reform conservative party to take on the left at the next GE ?
Reform being consumed by the Tories and Nigel spat out at the end - or he'll flounce again.
New Party: I can't believe it's not Reform - a lightweight spread of interests coalescing around Nige.
@leon. You didn't respond to my question. I don't believe you are deluded enough to think everyone would like to do your job. I think most people would like to do it for a year or two, particularly when young and unattached, but most people want to settle down and would grow to hate it. I'm rich enough that I could travel for the rest of my life, but I don't. I like to travel, but in limited doses. My wife even less so, hence I make some trips without her. I spent so much time in smart hotels on expenses when I was younger I now prefer pubs, B&Bs and quirky stuff (on my recent trip it was all B&Bs, plus the prison and convent for interest). I also get very bored with sight seeing and I have never been a beach person. All my holidays when younger were active holidays. I can do less of that now. Again another reason I would not want to do what you do. I would come back very fat and with a damaged liver. I don't know how you survive that. A specific reason why I have never been on a cruise.
So why the lol? What did I write that deserved a lol? I was even kind about you. After all it is horses for courses and you are single and obviously love it, but you are deluded if you think most other people want to do it. I suspect the only ones that do, are those who haven't experienced such stuff and once they do experience it there is only so much most can enjoy and eventually crave to settle down. Interestingly for me that came much later in life than most (so I am more like you than you think). I didn't settle down until I was 40. For most it is much earlier.
I lol’d because of the absurd over reaction. Now you’ve over reacted even more
This has been a brilliantly surreal trip to Sardinia, and not just coz I’ve got £££££ of free stuff (tho that never ceases to be fun, I’m happy to say)
Yesterday as I was tucking into the lamb stomach sac cheese and my guide was eating casu marzu, my guide (27, female) sad in a very offhand way “ah, I’ve got another maggot on my phone”
Which kind of summed it all up. What a great trip
Here is the stomach cheese, with a traditional Sardinian knife (one of which I am about to go and buy)
Reform rapidly becoming just a chicken run for failing Tories.
Labour need to hammer this home on social media.
Its ridiculous. Anderson stands there with a straight face and says they'll only take the very best, Yusuf with some nonsense about limited lifeboats and the very next day they announce theyve been scratching about in the Tories bins for another ex MP looking for a gig.
Cauldfield joined a month ago, but if ex Tories join reform in any numbers reform will eventually become a quasi-tory party
It already is. Every single MP and most of their councillors are ex Tories
Farage?
According to his Wikipedia bio, he was a member of the Conservative Party from 1978 to 1992.
Are they of the "anyone can do a legal challenge to delay a process for a bit, even if the case is pretty shlonky" type (embarassing, but business as usual and not a problem in the medium term) or "this sinks the policy" type?
Reform rapidly becoming just a chicken run for failing Tories.
Labour need to hammer this home on social media.
Its ridiculous. Anderson stands there with a straight face and says they'll only take the very best, Yusuf with some nonsense about limited lifeboats and the very next day they announce theyve been scratching about in the Tories bins for another ex MP looking for a gig.
Cauldfield joined a month ago, but if ex Tories join reform in any numbers reform will eventually become a quasi-tory party
It already is. Every single MP and most of their councillors are ex Tories
Farage?
Was a Tory in his early days
I think it's a bit of stretch to say he was a Tory. I mean, yes, he was associated with the party decades ago but he only really became prominent through UKIP.
Just as Hyufd once voted Plaid, or Big-G Labour, but we don't think of them as 'ex-Nat' or 'ex-Labour.'
I argued last evening those who think two party politics is dead have got it wrong.
The parties may end up with different names but ultimately it will resolve down to a binary choice - the big change is the nature of the faultline. For decades, it was economic - one side favoured lower taxes, less spending and regulation, the other saw the State as the provider, supported taxation and spending.
That line is no longer valid or has the priority it once did - the divide is now socio-cultural. If you are socially conservative, there's a party for you (possibly two) whereas if you have a more liberal mindset, there are three or four parties for you.
This has had two impacts - first, social conservatives and liberals who mixed together happily under the same economic programme in the Labour and Conservative parties have now flocked to Reform gutting both parties and leaving them shadows of the coalitions they once were.
The other question is whether there are enough social conservatives under FPTP to give Reform a majority on perhaps 30% of the vote - probably but if the liberally minded vote tactically, probably not.
It is the change in the faultline which has damaged Labour and the Conservatives - the politics of economics no longer matter, the politics of society and culture do.
This may be true, but can only stay true until the new party on one side of the new faultline has a go at running the country. At that point the old issues rear their heads whether people like it or not. And these old issues are in fact about how to run a national economy really well, and running it taking full account of debt, deficit, tax, spend, employment, global trade, the health of manufacturing and financial services, ag and fish.
Maybe an election can be won on the issue of a tiny % of migrants being boat people, but a country can't be run on it. The old verities return, and it won't take long.
Reform do not wish to talk about it. This is ominous.
Even better is what "no migration" does to the economy.
We have waves of migration when we have significant gaps in the labour force. We have one today. We don't want to work on farms or in factories. We've had 40 years of the right wing saying teachers are idiots and so attainment levels drop especially in the WWC. So we aren't well trained, especially in the things we need like medicine and engineering. And we have a declining birth rate and an ageing population.
So lets say Farage wins and we do move to no migration. What happens? Well there's a load of jobs we can't fill. "Send the scroungers to do it" will only last for a short time until people realise they are up for forced relocation to work on a farm. And we all get sicker as the NHS falls apart. Even better, we have less people working paying less taxes and circulating less money. So a big recession. Sound - what does Farage do then? Who does his movement scapegoat - the gays?
We absolutely need to invest in education skills and training. Invest in making proper jobs sexy again - construction, engineering, food. That will take vision and time and money. And we're prepared to invest none of that. But we want the brown people to go away because they are raping and murdering our women, taking our homes, stealing both the jobs and claiming benefits. So sayeth Musk and Yaxley-Robinson.
"We've had 40 years of the right wing saying teachers are idiots" - any substantiation for that rather odd claim? I think people on the right have suggested that teachers tend to be on the left, and worry about them infecting children with woke, but I don't think they have been characterised as idiots.
We have a broader culture that values the arts far more than STEM. It should never be acceptable to say "I'm no good at maths' and laugh about it. When Paxman was presenting University Challenge he would sneer at students not knowing some obscure musical composition or writer, or basically anything from the arts and then stumble over pronouncing a basic science term.
The answer to farming is NOT more low paid manual work, its increasing productivity by better ways of working, whether that is growing salad 365 days a year indoors with green electricity, or using robots to harvest crops.
On education? Endless attacks by The Sun, Daily Mail and various Tories. When tabloid-reading parents are fed an endless attack on the education system is it any wonder they don't care if their kids achieve in school?
On farming the robot pickers are vastly expensive and most farmers are low on cash. As for electricity that needs to be cheap, and thanks to the right's war on "Net Zero" we have the highest energy prices anywhere in Europe.
BIB - But not attacks saying teachers are idiots.
industry has had to be transformed - the old nationalised industries have been replaced. Farming has seen a huge amount of innovation - I am of the country and know it well. Most farmers don't own a combine - they rent them. Yes farming has financial challenges - that partly the market driving it, and partly the consumer not valuing quality food enough. And I am afraid that sometimes farms are not longer economic- partly because so much has become automated or improved with tech that the land doesn't need as much in man hours. Its common now for farming couples to have one of more jobs outside of the farm too. And farms tend to get bigger.
And come off it - its not the rights war on net zero that's causing high energy prices - its our own decisions to close down energy supplies locally and import from elsewhere. Thats one of the more bonkers things you've ever said.
Sir Keir’s ‘Lots in, none out’ scheme working a treat!
Skilfully negotiated Chagos style
He’s supposed to be a lawyer of some repute, does he not understand why all previous efforts at deporting people failed?
Or did he think that his Labour deportations are good deportations, as opposed to the evil Tory deportations, and so the “human rights” NGOs and legal industry would stand down and give him a free pass?
Reform rapidly becoming just a chicken run for failing Tories.
Labour need to hammer this home on social media.
Its ridiculous. Anderson stands there with a straight face and says they'll only take the very best, Yusuf with some nonsense about limited lifeboats and the very next day they announce theyve been scratching about in the Tories bins for another ex MP looking for a gig.
Cauldfield joined a month ago, but if ex Tories join reform in any numbers reform will eventually become a quasi-tory party
It already is. Every single MP and most of their councillors are ex Tories
Surely this is inevitable, Reform is a party of the right. Until recently, the only mass membership party of the right was the Tories. So anyone interested in politics but with right wing views is likely to have been a Tory.
Reform rapidly becoming just a chicken run for failing Tories.
Labour need to hammer this home on social media.
Its ridiculous. Anderson stands there with a straight face and says they'll only take the very best, Yusuf with some nonsense about limited lifeboats and the very next day they announce theyve been scratching about in the Tories bins for another ex MP looking for a gig.
Cauldfield joined a month ago, but if ex Tories join reform in any numbers reform will eventually become a quasi-tory party
It already is. Every single MP and most of their councillors are ex Tories
Farage?
Farage is a serial looser who got lucky - but then so did Starmer / Labour. The Tories New Reform really were that poor
Are they of the "anyone can do a legal challenge to delay a process for a bit, even if the case is pretty shlonky" type (embarassing, but business as usual and not a problem in the medium term) or "this sinks the policy" type?
They would have sent them by Eurostar, but train cancelled due to hand-wringers on the line.
Looking at the gov't docs, the "earnings" portion of the triple lock is calculated by average earning growth from May to July - how on earth does that work ?
Reform rapidly becoming just a chicken run for failing Tories.
Labour need to hammer this home on social media.
Its ridiculous. Anderson stands there with a straight face and says they'll only take the very best, Yusuf with some nonsense about limited lifeboats and the very next day they announce theyve been scratching about in the Tories bins for another ex MP looking for a gig.
Cauldfield joined a month ago, but if ex Tories join reform in any numbers reform will eventually become a quasi-tory party
It already is. Every single MP and most of their councillors are ex Tories
Farage?
Was a Tory in his early days
I think it's a bit of stretch to say he was a Tory. I mean, yes, he was associated with the party decades ago but he only really became prominent through UKIP.
Just as Hyufd once voted Plaid, or Big-G Labour, but we don't think of them as 'ex-Nat' or 'ex-Labour.'
A member for 14 years before helping found UKIP. Thats an ex Tory, not a one time voter. Prominence isnt really the issue
I argued last evening those who think two party politics is dead have got it wrong.
The parties may end up with different names but ultimately it will resolve down to a binary choice - the big change is the nature of the faultline. For decades, it was economic - one side favoured lower taxes, less spending and regulation, the other saw the State as the provider, supported taxation and spending.
That line is no longer valid or has the priority it once did - the divide is now socio-cultural. If you are socially conservative, there's a party for you (possibly two) whereas if you have a more liberal mindset, there are three or four parties for you.
This has had two impacts - first, social conservatives and liberals who mixed together happily under the same economic programme in the Labour and Conservative parties have now flocked to Reform gutting both parties and leaving them shadows of the coalitions they once were.
The other question is whether there are enough social conservatives under FPTP to give Reform a majority on perhaps 30% of the vote - probably but if the liberally minded vote tactically, probably not.
It is the change in the faultline which has damaged Labour and the Conservatives - the politics of economics no longer matter, the politics of society and culture do.
This may be true, but can only stay true until the new party on one side of the new faultline has a go at running the country. At that point the old issues rear their heads whether people like it or not. And these old issues are in fact about how to run a national economy really well, and running it taking full account of debt, deficit, tax, spend, employment, global trade, the health of manufacturing and financial services, ag and fish.
Maybe an election can be won on the issue of a tiny % of migrants being boat people, but a country can't be run on it. The old verities return, and it won't take long.
Reform do not wish to talk about it. This is ominous.
Even better is what "no migration" does to the economy.
We have waves of migration when we have significant gaps in the labour force. We have one today. We don't want to work on farms or in factories. We've had 40 years of the right wing saying teachers are idiots and so attainment levels drop especially in the WWC. So we aren't well trained, especially in the things we need like medicine and engineering. And we have a declining birth rate and an ageing population.
So lets say Farage wins and we do move to no migration. What happens? Well there's a load of jobs we can't fill. "Send the scroungers to do it" will only last for a short time until people realise they are up for forced relocation to work on a farm. And we all get sicker as the NHS falls apart. Even better, we have less people working paying less taxes and circulating less money. So a big recession. Sound - what does Farage do then? Who does his movement scapegoat - the gays?
We absolutely need to invest in education skills and training. Invest in making proper jobs sexy again - construction, engineering, food. That will take vision and time and money. And we're prepared to invest none of that. But we want the brown people to go away because they are raping and murdering our women, taking our homes, stealing both the jobs and claiming benefits. So sayeth Musk and Yaxley-Robinson.
"We've had 40 years of the right wing saying teachers are idiots" - any substantiation for that rather odd claim? I think people on the right have suggested that teachers tend to be on the left, and worry about them infecting children with woke, but I don't think they have been characterised as idiots.
We have a broader culture that values the arts far more than STEM. It should never be acceptable to say "I'm no good at maths' and laugh about it. When Paxman was presenting University Challenge he would sneer at students not knowing some obscure musical composition or writer, or basically anything from the arts and then stumble over pronouncing a basic science term.
The answer to farming is NOT more low paid manual work, its increasing productivity by better ways of working, whether that is growing salad 365 days a year indoors with green electricity, or using robots to harvest crops.
On education? Endless attacks by The Sun, Daily Mail and various Tories. When tabloid-reading parents are fed an endless attack on the education system is it any wonder they don't care if their kids achieve in school?
On farming the robot pickers are vastly expensive and most farmers are low on cash. As for electricity that needs to be cheap, and thanks to the right's war on "Net Zero" we have the highest energy prices anywhere in Europe.
BIB - But not attacks saying teachers are idiots.
industry has had to be transformed - the old nationalised industries have been replaced. Farming has seen a huge amount of innovation - I am of the country and know it well. Most farmers don't own a combine - they rent them. Yes farming has financial challenges - that partly the market driving it, and partly the consumer not valuing quality food enough. And I am afraid that sometimes farms are not longer economic- partly because so much has become automated or improved with tech that the land doesn't need as much in man hours. Its common now for farming couples to have one of more jobs outside of the farm too. And farms tend to get bigger.
And come off it - its not the rights war on net zero that's causing high energy prices - its our own decisions to close down energy supplies locally and import from elsewhere. Thats one of the more bonkers things you've ever said.
Why is our leccy so expensive? Because 98% of the time we price based on gas. And not a stored price, the spot price. Why not stored? Because *the Tories* allowed the storage capacity to be removed.
Which energy supplies locally do you refer to? Coal? Declined for years, killed off by Heseltine, with a switch to imported coal for the remaining life of the coal power stations. Gas? Burnt off post privatisation - the "dash for gas" in the newly marketised sector. Nuclear? We're now reliant on a choice of foreign governments.
What have the Tories done on energy? Launched net zero, attacked oil and gas. Then attacked wind. Now they pretend they always backed oil and gas despite years of doing the opposite. I'm not saying the idiot Miliband is good, but how we got here is entirely on the Tories.
@leon. You didn't respond to my question. I don't believe you are deluded enough to think everyone would like to do your job. I think most people would like to do it for a year or two, particularly when young and unattached, but most people want to settle down and would grow to hate it. I'm rich enough that I could travel for the rest of my life, but I don't. I like to travel, but in limited doses. My wife even less so, hence I make some trips without her. I spent so much time in smart hotels on expenses when I was younger I now prefer pubs, B&Bs and quirky stuff (on my recent trip it was all B&Bs, plus the prison and convent for interest). I also get very bored with sight seeing and I have never been a beach person. All my holidays when younger were active holidays. I can do less of that now. Again another reason I would not want to do what you do. I would come back very fat and with a damaged liver. I don't know how you survive that. A specific reason why I have never been on a cruise.
So why the lol? What did I write that deserved a lol? I was even kind about you. After all it is horses for courses and you are single and obviously love it, but you are deluded if you think most other people want to do it. I suspect the only ones that do, are those who haven't experienced such stuff and once they do experience it there is only so much most can enjoy and eventually crave to settle down. Interestingly for me that came much later in life than most (so I am more like you than you think). I didn't settle down until I was 40. For most it is much earlier.
I lol’d because of the absurd over reaction. Now you’ve over reacted even more
This has been a brilliantly surreal trip to Sardinia, and not just coz I’ve got £££££ of free stuff (tho that never ceases to be fun, I’m happy to say)
Yesterday as I was tucking into the lamb stomach sac cheese and my guide was eating casu marzu, my guide (27, female) sad in a very offhand way “ah, I’ve got another maggot on my phone”
Which kind of summed it all up. What a great trip
Here is the stomach cheese, with a traditional Sardinian knife (one of which I am about to go and buy)
You are weird. Not only did I not over react, I didn't react at all. I was just having a conversation. I posted again because your lol made no sense whatsoever. I had no idea what the lol meant. The only thing i could guess was that you thought the whole of PB were envious of your travels. I didn't want to assume that because it was unfair to make that assumption, hence asked you to elaborate without adding anything else. I still have no idea.
It is definitely a bit weird when someone just talks to you they are over reacting about something (I mean how? Where?) yet even you will accept you are the king of over reactions.
Just to get clear: Do you think everyone here is envious of your trips? And if so why do you think that all of those who can afford to do it, don't? I do believe (and hope) you don't believe that.
I do really enjoy the travelogue from you and your stories have whet my appetite for a few places.
Newsnight yesterday featured a discussion about Elon Musk, and all 3 guests on the programme had almost exactly the same opinions.
And two reasons why: Attacking democratic government from afar is bad Doing so when you need said democratic governments to licence your technology is crazy
Comments
But should a Reform government end up disappointing their voters in that manner, it will pull a rug from under a large slice of their support.
And if Labour were to succeed in reducing the wave of small boats to back ground noise, then the terms of debate move back to the ceconomy.
What I would hope comes of this is that someone breaks the mould or the voters start demanding something different.
I don’t mean necessarily Reform different but the different should be that instead of every interview with opposition should no longer be acceptable to be “it would be crazy for me to lay out what our policies will be four years from election” as I’ve heard Tice and Stride effectively say over the last few weeks on Today. Ming Vase strategies shouldn’t be tolerated.
We need the opposition to lay out a vision, a clear vision now and explain how they hope to cost it, the benefits to the country, acknowledge some things may have to change dependent on the economy at the time but sell the country something positive to work towards, test it, argue it, win over the voters, don’t fear the government copying your ideas as if you sell it wall to wall then people will see you are serious and have a plan.
No more ming vases, just a workable plan to get us to growth and opportunities for the young.
2017 12.9m
2019 10.3m
2024 9.7m
Do we believe the guff that a load of tactical voters will come flocking back to them now they’re in trouble, or is it more likely we are looking at sub 8m?
Maybe an election can be won on the issue of a tiny % of migrants being boat people, but a country can't be run on it. The old verities return, and it won't take long.
Reform do not wish to talk about it. This is ominous.
(To be fair, reputable travel journalists make it clear that they received hospitality, unlike many of the ‘independent’ reviewers and bloggers operating in the same space).
"Employers, you have an obligation to get rid of people who are saying horrible things.” - Pam Bondi
https://x.com/SpencerHakimian/status/1967763240580243967
Pam Bondi's noxious claim that there's a "hate speech" exception to "free speech" - and you can thus be prosecuted for it - is not only a total distortion of the 1st Am's clear language.
It's also a theory SCOTUS has rejected, and was the foundation of left-liberal censorship.
https://x.com/ggreenwald/status/1967766464783585504
The law is very different in the UK, of course.
And Republican politicians like Vance are fond of condemning us for that.
Europe is better provided than Russia in that respect, and has a but less territory to cover, but we really don't have an answer to mass drone attacks either.
This stuff cuts both ways.
No-one believes they are in with a chance of running the country, and in the current febrile climate their image is not one to propel interest or momentum. Worthy, boring and in play for under 100 seats maximum, almost all of them as a proxy for Labour for historical and cultural reasons, can command no interest.
Labour are interesting because they are a national party, in deep trouble, govern, and will lead the next government if Reform don't.
Reform are interesting because they might govern next.
Tories are interesting because after 200+ years they may be replaced and if Reform collapse are the only non-violent democratic party to take their place.
LDs, lovely though they all are, are none of these. No-one joins the LDs in order to run the country.
It’s a really fabulous hotel tho. Probably the best hotel in italy. Here’s the link
https://www.sugologone.it/en/
https://x.com/theserfstv/status/1967716256779522318
We have waves of migration when we have significant gaps in the labour force. We have one today. We don't want to work on farms or in factories. We've had 40 years of the right wing saying teachers are idiots and so attainment levels drop especially in the WWC. So we aren't well trained, especially in the things we need like medicine and engineering. And we have a declining birth rate and an ageing population.
So lets say Farage wins and we do move to no migration. What happens? Well there's a load of jobs we can't fill. "Send the scroungers to do it" will only last for a short time until people realise they are up for forced relocation to work on a farm. And we all get sicker as the NHS falls apart. Even better, we have less people working paying less taxes and circulating less money. So a big recession. Sound - what does Farage do then? Who does his movement scapegoat - the gays?
We absolutely need to invest in education skills and training. Invest in making proper jobs sexy again - construction, engineering, food. That will take vision and time and money. And we're prepared to invest none of that. But we want the brown people to go away because they are raping and murdering our women, taking our homes, stealing both the jobs and claiming benefits. So sayeth Musk and Yaxley-Robinson.
Just had a large tax bill from HMRC who have gone back to 2011-2014 to indicate an underpayment of a few £'000 in each of these years. Fast forward to 2025 and 11 years of interest and penalties mounts up to a significant sum. The issue is they don't show their workings and for all I know I don't owe the underlying sums. They also don't indicate how to appeal/challenge the calculations they don't show so I'll now have to spend time trying to second guess what the hell they are on about.
I hope HMRC have better staff training than the ones I dealt with at DWP and local authorities.
In fact I’ve just seen the cathedral of Nuoro as well
In fifteen minutes. Avanti
From a July 2021 header - the last sentence turned out to be wrong. But Labour has not really provided any good answers to the other questions. I'm not sure a change of personnel is really going to help.
Probably the most unpopular of Trump’s ministers, she’s the AG and is supposed to understand the law as it refers to such obvious topics as the first amendment.
https://x.com/trhlofficial/status/1967819736479306204
“Wrong. Hate speech does not exist. The issues are unprotected speech such as incitement, and whether an employer has the right to disassociate from a piece of shitt (they do).”
It doesn’t matter what form the savings for those pensions took - the goods and services they rely on in the here and now have to come out of the nation’s collective GDP.
https://x.com/YTJustGetATesla/status/1967888195787559390
https://x.com/SkyNews/status/1967887860436217896
Maria Caulfield is latest to join Nigel Farage’s party after Danny Kruger defected on Monday
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2025/09/16/former-tory-health-minister-maria-caulfield-defects-reform/ (£££)
We pay for pensions etc out of current receipts.
So,
the babyboomer generation who were more numerous, paid for less generous pension provision for the less numerous generations above them.
the more numerous babyboomer generation are now getting more generous pension provision paid for by the less numerous working generations below them.
this is only going to work if the more numerous and more wealthy demographic is taxed a bit more.
But a joke wielding the power of the Federal Government.
Maria Caulfield, ex conservative mp defects to Reform
Apparently a month ago but announced this morning
It is interesting that a number of ex conservatives want to join Reform and as Sky suggests, Farage needs to be careful as this could eventually turn Reform more into Tory party
Conspiracy theory - a reverse takeover of Reform is happening and in time does this evolve into a newly formed reform conservative party to take on the left at the next GE ?
1) The dam is breaking open. Once defection to refuk becomes normalised then surely a succession of Tories will follow. They want to remain MPs and will justify the switch as "reform are the true Tories now"
2) The more Tory MPs join the fukers saying "reform are the true Tories now" the harder it is for Farage to argue that Reform are the antidote to the uniparty. Fed up with faux Tories who want to hug a hoody? Have you seen our new head of strategy? Here to explain why we're not the Tories is Sir Jake Berry and Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg. Next we have a seminar or "why Boris Johnson was a traitor", led by Nadine Dorries
If the Reform Revolution happens, I wouldn't want to be on the record as a decadent sex memoirist. Not first up against the wall (I accept that will the the Centrist Dads and am mostly resigned to my fate) but somewhere in about week 3.
There's a tipping point behind which all those who aren't prepared to go down with the ship (IDS, perhaps, or HYUFD ?) will put their careers before whatever principles they might have, or think they have.
The earnings link may or may not be affordable in the long term, but the combination is fatal.
Labour need to hammer this home on social media.
We have a broader culture that values the arts far more than STEM. It should never be acceptable to say "I'm no good at maths' and laugh about it. When Paxman was presenting University Challenge he would sneer at students not knowing some obscure musical composition or writer, or basically anything from the arts and then stumble over pronouncing a basic science term.
The answer to farming is NOT more low paid manual work, its increasing productivity by better ways of working, whether that is growing salad 365 days a year indoors with green electricity, or using robots to harvest crops.
Maybe Reform are going to be a proper political party.
But hey, putin’s dacha by the sea should be fine, it has a billion-dollar S400 system protecting it.
It is 4 years to the next GE and a lot can happen in that time
Quality effort
On farming the robot pickers are vastly expensive and most farmers are low on cash. As for electricity that needs to be cheap, and thanks to the right's war on "Net Zero" we have the highest energy prices anywhere in Europe.
There is a danger here for Reform, but also an opportunity. One of the main and more forceful accusations against them is a “lack of experience, intellect, economic nous”. The easiest way to counter that is to recruit hundreds of serious Tories - job done
But of course they don’t want to do so much they become “the Tories rebranded”
I suggest however that the water will find it own level, naturally. All the wanky woke Tories - the worst kind - will never join Farage. He has no fear of Dominic Grieve or Rory Stewart or Duchess Warsi coming over. So the sweet spot should arrive anyway
So why the lol? What did I write that deserved a lol? I was even kind about you. After all it is horses for courses and you are single and obviously love it, but you are deluded if you think most other people want to do it. I suspect the only ones that do, are those who haven't experienced such stuff and once they do experience it there is only so much most can enjoy and eventually crave to settle down. Interestingly for me that came much later in life than most (so I am more like you than you think). I didn't settle down until I was 40. For most it is much earlier.
Westminster Voting Intention:
RFM: 29% (+2)
LAB: 20% (-2)
CON: 17% (=)
LDM: 15% (=)
GRN: 10% (-2)
SNP: 3% (=)
Via @YouGov, 14-15 Sep.
Changes w/ 7-8 Sep."
https://x.com/ElectionMapsUK/status/1967884358838264124
Anyway, ep36 of Undercutters looks ahead to Azerbaijan, a circuit I rather like, and I ramble a little about the McLaren strategy call and why (unlike, seemingly, most others) I found it very unsurprising.
Podbean: https://undercutters.podbean.com/e/f1-2025-azerbaijan-preview-and-predictions/
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/f1-2025-azerbaijan-preview-and-predictions/id1786574257?i=1000727009932
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/283ouPsXbJwU41CwiQYkGl
Amazon: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/bcfe213b-55fb-408a-a823-dc6693ee9f78/episodes/e518db20-f703-48af-b169-e88b71783033/undercutters---f1-podcast-f1-2025-azerbaijan-preview-and-predictions
Transcript: https://morrisf1.blogspot.com/2025/09/f1-2025-azerbaijan-preview-and.html
Skilfully negotiated Chagos style
@DPJHodges
Another disaster for the government. And an entirely predictable one.
Quote
Noa Hoffman
@hoffman_noa
·
36m
The second planned “one in, one out” deportation flight has taken off without a single boat migrant on board
But don't worry, smashing the gangs is going very well and the France deal is a game changer!
https://thesun.co.uk/news/36721651/second-deportation-flight/
11:23 AM · Sep 16, 2025"
https://x.com/DPJHodges/status/1967897179206586713
Not worse; not better. Just different.
New Party: I can't believe it's not Reform - a lightweight spread of interests coalescing around Nige.
This has been a brilliantly surreal trip to Sardinia, and not just coz I’ve got £££££ of free stuff (tho that never ceases to be fun, I’m happy to say)
Yesterday as I was tucking into the lamb stomach sac cheese and my guide was eating casu marzu, my guide (27, female) sad in a very offhand way “ah, I’ve got another maggot on my phone”
Which kind of summed it all up. What a great trip
Here is the stomach cheese, with a traditional Sardinian knife (one of which I am about to go and buy)
Are they of the "anyone can do a legal challenge to delay a process for a bit, even if the case is pretty shlonky" type (embarassing, but business as usual and not a problem in the medium term) or "this sinks the policy" type?
Just as Hyufd once voted Plaid, or Big-G Labour, but we don't think of them as 'ex-Nat' or 'ex-Labour.'
industry has had to be transformed - the old nationalised industries have been replaced. Farming has seen a huge amount of innovation - I am of the country and know it well. Most farmers don't own a combine - they rent them. Yes farming has financial challenges - that partly the market driving it, and partly the consumer not valuing quality food enough. And I am afraid that sometimes farms are not longer economic- partly because so much has become automated or improved with tech that the land doesn't need as much in man hours. Its common now for farming couples to have one of more jobs outside of the farm too. And farms tend to get bigger.
And come off it - its not the rights war on net zero that's causing high energy prices - its our own decisions to close down energy supplies locally and import from elsewhere. Thats one of the more bonkers things you've ever said.
Or did he think that his Labour deportations are good deportations, as opposed to the evil Tory deportations, and so the “human rights” NGOs and legal industry would stand down and give him a free pass?
ToriesNew Reform really were that poor(He says, trying to deflect from the fall in Labour support!)
Which energy supplies locally do you refer to? Coal? Declined for years, killed off by Heseltine, with a switch to imported coal for the remaining life of the coal power stations. Gas? Burnt off post privatisation - the "dash for gas" in the newly marketised sector. Nuclear? We're now reliant on a choice of foreign governments.
What have the Tories done on energy? Launched net zero, attacked oil and gas. Then attacked wind. Now they pretend they always backed oil and gas despite years of doing the opposite. I'm not saying the idiot Miliband is good, but how we got here is entirely on the Tories.
It is definitely a bit weird when someone just talks to you they are over reacting about something (I mean how? Where?) yet even you will accept you are the king of over reactions.
Just to get clear: Do you think everyone here is envious of your trips? And if so why do you think that all of those who can afford to do it, don't? I do believe (and hope) you don't believe that.
I do really enjoy the travelogue from you and your stories have whet my appetite for a few places.
Attacking democratic government from afar is bad
Doing so when you need said democratic governments to licence your technology is crazy