I don't think those figures mean much - I don't know if "Europe" is in the political background as much as it was for us from rebates via Bruges via Maastricht to the Euro to Lisbon etc. We had 35 years of Europe being in our politics from Thatcher to Major to Blair to Brown to Cameron - each one of them had "issues" with the EEC and later the EU.
Arguably, it destroyed the Conservative Party - now, whether you think that's another "dividend" or not is up to you but I'm certain the party would not be where it is now otherwise but every party had a fracture on this issue of some degree.
Claims of the death of the Tory party are massively premature. They were in government last year and lost an election after 14 years in power. People were and still are sick of them. Add in the purge of the pro Europeans and a lot of ‘talent’ and centrism has gone from the MP roster. But. They are still polling more than Ed Daley’s apparently hugely sucessful Lib Dem’s, and pretty close to the party who won a huge majority last year.
Those who would welcome the extinction of conservatism should be careful what they wish. Conservative politics isn’t right wing nastiness. It’s personal responsibility, a state which lets individuals get on with their lives, but includes a safety net for those who struggle. It believes that those who can work, should. It believes in wealth creation, which aids all.
And if you have no conservatives, you risk being left with Reform.
There speaks a loyal Conservative.
The Conservatives clearly aren't "dead" but they aren't well - look at the results in Surrey last week. Towns like Caterham and Whyteleafe were once strongholds of the party - now, it's not just they are a close second to the LDs, they are a poor third .
Yes, you can be as waspish about the LDs as you like but in their historical context, 72 seats is a success, albeit for the most part built on the Conservative Party's collapse (but you can say the same about Labour, Reform and Green - we are all picking over the corpse of a once formidable electoral winning machine).
It’s personal responsibility, a state which lets individuals get on with their lives, but includes a safety net for those who struggle. It believes that those who can work, should. It believes in wealth creation, which aids all.
As the cobbler would tell you, time wounds all heels and in a couple of decades, there may be an opportunity for a "new" Conservative Party, predicated on the old principles of one nation Conservatism, to emerge and in all probability return to Government but that requires a clearout of augean proportions both of who are in the Party now and of their half-baked thinking.
I'm not a conservative, I'm a centrist who hangs to the right. I voted Lib Dem at the last election, voted to remain, despite being sceptical of the EU political project (something Ydoethur has made an excellent point above).
We seem to have very short memories on here. How long ago was it that Labour was dead? Yet now they are in power with a whopping majority. Of course the current Tory party is struggling. They were in power for 14 years, culminating in covid (not their fault) and the war in Ukraine (not their fault). They are paying the price for that and are now making some really poor choices, desperately flailing for anything that stops the rot.
But the challenge for wider politics is that what once motivated anti-EU feeling (hence UKIP) is now driving Reform. A sense of failure from the traditional parties. And thats all of them. I think any one in Labour or the Lib Dems who believed that their success last year was down to their brilliance and campaigning and people thinking they have the right policies are somewhat mistaken. It was very much a get the Tories out vote, across the board.
Many on PB will not like it, but a large number of people in the country simply think that immigration is too high and that this is the reason for all their ills.
Thats almost certainly not true, but it doesn't stop them believing it. My neighbour completely unprompted talks to me about Farage - 'He's right!', he says. My neighbour doesn't talk about politics in general, but Farage, ever the populist has once again found the right scab to pick at. How the grown ups counter it is crucial. The Tories seem to think being like Reform is the way - I don't, personally. Politicians are meant to lead the country - at the moment too many are following what the voters 'think' they want.
But ultimately the way to kill Farage and Reform is to get the economy growing, get peoples lives improving. Get the good times back. And part of that is to acknowledge that if we are borrowing 20 Billion to pay the bills a month, maybe we need to stop some spending. And look better are taxing fairly.
The one abiding Brexit bonus is that nearly a decade on, Remainers are still desperate to prove that there are no Brexit bonuses...
A bold claim under an article by a Remainer pointing out a Brexit bonus!
Seriously, I think there is a case for saying we did the rest of the EU a big favor by showing how effing stupid it was to leave the world's largest and most successful free trade association. Shame we had to pay the price, but from a broadly European standpoint you could well say Brexit was a good thing.
Absolutely, we did the rest of the EU a massive favour. Given the rise of global bullies like Trump, Putin and Xi I don't think anyone else in Europe would want to be as lonely as we are right now.
Given that EU foreign and defence policy requires the approval of Viktor Orban I'm not seeing the advantages.
Not for much longer, I suspect. (And that not only because he's likely to lose power.)
Yes, the idea that the UK (actually the GB) would be the first domino turned out to be spectacularly naive.
Meanwhile, what you could consider to be an actual, if unintended, Brexit benefit, of UK drivers’ details no longer being handed over to EU authorities wanting to pursue penalties for minor traffic offences such as speed cameras and the like, is soon coming to an end.
Remainers were spot on.
Within weeks of leaving the EU the UK experienced the biggest and deepest recession in our history, that is a fact.
I can't tell if this is a joke - but the UK didn't experience a recession after Brexit. Undoubtedly it hurt the economy, but there wasnt an immediate recession.
He’s trolling.
Brexit was in 2020 not 2016 and the recession was caused by the pandemic
Sorry but it happened on Brexit's watch. That's ultimately what counts.
You think only 49% of French and Italian voters saying they would vote to Remain before a campaign, and before Putin has a crack at shifting the dial, is a sign of cohesion and strength? Hmm…
I wonder what that number would have been in 2005?
The British number was over 50% pre-referendum campaign.
The cascade of other countries wanting to leave that Brexiteers confidently predicted doesn't seem to have happened.
You mean they were wrong about something? Wow, that almost never always happens...
An alternative view is that the EU was determined to show that Brexit was a bad idea
The one abiding Brexit bonus is that nearly a decade on, Remainers are still desperate to prove that there are no Brexit bonuses...
A bold claim under an article by a Remainer pointing out a Brexit bonus!
Seriously, I think there is a case for saying we did the rest of the EU a big favor by showing how effing stupid it was to leave the world's largest and most successful free trade association. Shame we had to pay the price, but from a broadly European standpoint you could well say Brexit was a good thing.
Absolutely, we did the rest of the EU a massive favour. Given the rise of global bullies like Trump, Putin and Xi I don't think anyone else in Europe would want to be as lonely as we are right now.
Given that EU foreign and defence policy requires the approval of Viktor Orban I'm not seeing the advantages.
Not for much longer, I suspect. (And that not only because he's likely to lose power.)
I've been reading comments like that for the past three years.
When the EU forces Ireland to increase defence spending and deploy troops to Eastern Europe will be the day it can be taken seriously on defence matters.
Grievance mongering Jocks update. Evidently a belated awareness that he needs to build bridges.
Andrew Bowie @AndrewBowie_MP Now confirmed Labour are giving Scotland only get a “Barnett Share” of the new Fishing Fund. That’s less than 8%. Despite landing 60% of Britain’s fish. Disgrace. They’ve screwed farmers. They’ve screwed oil workers. Now they’re screwing fishermen. Labour are screwing Scotland
If it's not a UK scheme, administered in Westminster, and so just involves handing money over to Holyrood, with no guarantee the money will be spent on the fishing industry, then it makes absolute sense to use the Barnett formula.
If its devolved then the Scottish fishing industry is Holyrood's responsibility.
My point was more about who is doing the grievance mongering.
I don't recall Mr Bowie's contributions regarding his own party's influence on the Scottish fishing industry, either pre or post Brexit (to get back on topic).
Rejoin is going to happen. Look at the US and spend a few months in the EU, We're watching the most happening club in the world having a ball and the only thing missing is us who have chosen to blackball ourselves........
Some political Party is going to pick up the baton and beg them to let us back in. Labour the Lib Dems and the Greens probably. The United colours of the centre left.,,,,,,,,,,We'll promise to behave like civilised members this time and to leave our blackshirts at the door,,,,,
The only objective for the Tories at the next election is to hang on to second place as the leading party to the right of Labour.
They will say anything and do anything to achieve that goal. If they achieve it then Farage will be 70 by the time of the general election afterwards (in 2034), and the Tories can reasonably hope that FPTP will make them the main choice for voters wishing to be rid of Labour.
The danger is that this strategy is doomed to failure, and all they're achieving is to make BNP policy more widely acceptable to Reform's benefit. No-one will believe that the Tories will reverse the immigration that happened when they were in government.
Lam is of course a long standing ally of Jenrick, if Jenrick became Tory leader before the next GE the Tories may as well merge with Farage's Reform anyway as there now looks to be little difference between Jenrick and Farage. Indeed Jenrick is 20 years younger than Farage and clearly wants to be Farage's successor as leader of the populist nationalist right and Farage all but anointed Jenrick his heir when he praised Jenrick's conference speech on his GB news show.
The danger for Kemi is if she goes further and further down the Jenrick policy route as she has over leaving the ECHR, scrapping net zero and now deporting immigrants, then Jenrick supporters will say they may as well have him do it more articulately and with more energy than she can.
If she sees significant Tory losses in the May local and devolved elections and the Tories remain at 15 to 20% in the polls she almost certainly will face a VONC and lose it. Most Tory MPs would then I suspect back Cleverly over Jenrick, probably by coronation, given the failure of Kemi's Jenrick lite policy. Some former Kemi backing MPs are also starting to move to Cleverly to stop Jenrick. Cleverly could then at least put clear blue water with Farage and Reform as well as Starmer and Labour and also would be more likely to get Labour and LD tactical votes in Conservative held seats to beat Reform
The one abiding Brexit bonus is that nearly a decade on, Remainers are still desperate to prove that there are no Brexit bonuses...
A bold claim under an article by a Remainer pointing out a Brexit bonus!
Seriously, I think there is a case for saying we did the rest of the EU a big favor by showing how effing stupid it was to leave the world's largest and most successful free trade association. Shame we had to pay the price, but from a broadly European standpoint you could well say Brexit was a good thing.
Absolutely, we did the rest of the EU a massive favour. Given the rise of global bullies like Trump, Putin and Xi I don't think anyone else in Europe would want to be as lonely as we are right now.
Given that EU foreign and defence policy requires the approval of Viktor Orban I'm not seeing the advantages.
Not for much longer, I suspect. (And that not only because he's likely to lose power.)
I've been reading comments like that for the past three years.
When the EU forces Ireland to increase defence spending and deploy troops to Eastern Europe will be the day it can be taken seriously on defence matters.
If the EU decided to organise it's defence on a Eurozone-style basis, where willing countries pooled their resources and policy without waiting for every country to join in, I think it could create something serious, just like the Euro.
I don't think that's likely to happen, because I don't think Poland is going to want to trust its defence decision-making to others, and if Poland isn't involved then it's pointless. But forcing Ireland to contribute isn't the yardstick for seriousness for the EU as a whole.
I don't think those figures mean much - I don't know if "Europe" is in the political background as much as it was for us from rebates via Bruges via Maastricht to the Euro to Lisbon etc. We had 35 years of Europe being in our politics from Thatcher to Major to Blair to Brown to Cameron - each one of them had "issues" with the EEC and later the EU.
Arguably, it destroyed the Conservative Party - now, whether you think that's another "dividend" or not is up to you but I'm certain the party would not be where it is now otherwise but every party had a fracture on this issue of some degree.
Claims of the death of the Tory party are massively premature. They were in government last year and lost an election after 14 years in power. People were and still are sick of them. Add in the purge of the pro Europeans and a lot of ‘talent’ and centrism has gone from the MP roster. But. They are still polling more than Ed Daley’s apparently hugely sucessful Lib Dem’s, and pretty close to the party who won a huge majority last year.
Those who would welcome the extinction of conservatism should be careful what they wish. Conservative politics isn’t right wing nastiness. It’s personal responsibility, a state which lets individuals get on with their lives, but includes a safety net for those who struggle. It believes that those who can work, should. It believes in wealth creation, which aids all.
And if you have no conservatives, you risk being left with Reform.
There speaks a loyal Conservative.
The Conservatives clearly aren't "dead" but they aren't well - look at the results in Surrey last week. Towns like Caterham and Whyteleafe were once strongholds of the party - now, it's not just they are a close second to the LDs, they are a poor third .
Yes, you can be as waspish about the LDs as you like but in their historical context, 72 seats is a success, albeit for the most part built on the Conservative Party's collapse (but you can say the same about Labour, Reform and Green - we are all picking over the corpse of a once formidable electoral winning machine).
It’s personal responsibility, a state which lets individuals get on with their lives, but includes a safety net for those who struggle. It believes that those who can work, should. It believes in wealth creation, which aids all.
As the cobbler would tell you, time wounds all heels and in a couple of decades, there may be an opportunity for a "new" Conservative Party, predicated on the old principles of one nation Conservatism, to emerge and in all probability return to Government but that requires a clearout of augean proportions both of who are in the Party now and of their half-baked thinking.
I'm not a conservative, I'm a centrist who hangs to the right. I voted Lib Dem at the last election, voted to remain, despite being sceptical of the EU political project (something Ydoethur has made an excellent point above).
We seem to have very short memories on here. How long ago was it that Labour was dead? Yet now they are in power with a whopping majority. Of course the current Tory party is struggling. They were in power for 14 years, culminating in covid (not their fault) and the war in Ukraine (not their fault). They are paying the price for that and are now making some really poor choices, desperately flailing for anything that stops the rot.
But the challenge for wider politics is that what once motivated anti-EU feeling (hence UKIP) is now driving Reform. A sense of failure from the traditional parties. And thats all of them. I think any one in Labour or the Lib Dems who believed that their success last year was down to their brilliance and campaigning and people thinking they have the right policies are somewhat mistaken. It was very much a get the Tories out vote, across the board.
Many on PB will not like it, but a large number of people in the country simply think that immigration is too high and that this is the reason for all their ills.
Thats almost certainly not true, but it doesn't stop them believing it. My neighbour completely unprompted talks to me about Farage - 'He's right!', he says. My neighbour doesn't talk about politics in general, but Farage, ever the populist has once again found the right scab to pick at. How the grown ups counter it is crucial. The Tories seem to think being like Reform is the way - I don't, personally. Politicians are meant to lead the country - at the moment too many are following what the voters 'think' they want.
But ultimately the way to kill Farage and Reform is to get the economy growing, get peoples lives improving. Get the good times back. And part of that is to acknowledge that if we are borrowing 20 Billion to pay the bills a month, maybe we need to stop some spending. And look better are taxing fairly.
"A centrist who hangs to the right", used to be the very definition of Conservative member and voter.
The one abiding Brexit bonus is that nearly a decade on, Remainers are still desperate to prove that there are no Brexit bonuses...
A bold claim under an article by a Remainer pointing out a Brexit bonus!
Seriously, I think there is a case for saying we did the rest of the EU a big favor by showing how effing stupid it was to leave the world's largest and most successful free trade association. Shame we had to pay the price, but from a broadly European standpoint you could well say Brexit was a good thing.
Absolutely, we did the rest of the EU a massive favour. Given the rise of global bullies like Trump, Putin and Xi I don't think anyone else in Europe would want to be as lonely as we are right now.
Given that EU foreign and defence policy requires the approval of Viktor Orban I'm not seeing the advantages.
Not for much longer, I suspect. (And that not only because he's likely to lose power.)
I've been reading comments like that for the past three years.
When the EU forces Ireland to increase defence spending and deploy troops to Eastern Europe will be the day it can be taken seriously on defence matters.
If the EU decided to organise it's defence on a Eurozone-style basis, where willing countries pooled their resources and policy without waiting for every country to join in, I think it could create something serious, just like the Euro.
I don't think that's likely to happen, because I don't think Poland is going to want to trust its defence decision-making to others, and if Poland isn't involved then it's pointless. But forcing Ireland to contribute isn't the yardstick for seriousness for the EU as a whole.
Effectively NATO is now an EU army anyway, plus the UK, Canada, Norway, Iceland and Turkey, given Trump's effective lack of US support for NATO and neutrality over the Russia and Ukraine war
The one abiding Brexit bonus is that nearly a decade on, Remainers are still desperate to prove that there are no Brexit bonuses...
A bold claim under an article by a Remainer pointing out a Brexit bonus!
Seriously, I think there is a case for saying we did the rest of the EU a big favor by showing how effing stupid it was to leave the world's largest and most successful free trade association. Shame we had to pay the price, but from a broadly European standpoint you could well say Brexit was a good thing.
Absolutely, we did the rest of the EU a massive favour. Given the rise of global bullies like Trump, Putin and Xi I don't think anyone else in Europe would want to be as lonely as we are right now.
Given that EU foreign and defence policy requires the approval of Viktor Orban I'm not seeing the advantages.
On a related note do those people who advocate a EU defence role understand that it would mean paying more to get less ?
That is the policy of the Greens for those PBers who have expressed their interest in the party recently.
The overall spend for a joint defence capability for a region should be less than the aggregate spend of each part of the region doing it for themselves. Synergies, economies of scale etc.
I don't think those figures mean much - I don't know if "Europe" is in the political background as much as it was for us from rebates via Bruges via Maastricht to the Euro to Lisbon etc. We had 35 years of Europe being in our politics from Thatcher to Major to Blair to Brown to Cameron - each one of them had "issues" with the EEC and later the EU.
Arguably, it destroyed the Conservative Party - now, whether you think that's another "dividend" or not is up to you but I'm certain the party would not be where it is now otherwise but every party had a fracture on this issue of some degree.
Claims of the death of the Tory party are massively premature. They were in government last year and lost an election after 14 years in power. People were and still are sick of them. Add in the purge of the pro Europeans and a lot of ‘talent’ and centrism has gone from the MP roster. But. They are still polling more than Ed Daley’s apparently hugely sucessful Lib Dem’s, and pretty close to the party who won a huge majority last year.
Those who would welcome the extinction of conservatism should be careful what they wish. Conservative politics isn’t right wing nastiness. It’s personal responsibility, a state which lets individuals get on with their lives, but includes a safety net for those who struggle. It believes that those who can work, should. It believes in wealth creation, which aids all.
And if you have no conservatives, you risk being left with Reform.
There speaks a loyal Conservative.
The Conservatives clearly aren't "dead" but they aren't well - look at the results in Surrey last week. Towns like Caterham and Whyteleafe were once strongholds of the party - now, it's not just they are a close second to the LDs, they are a poor third .
Yes, you can be as waspish about the LDs as you like but in their historical context, 72 seats is a success, albeit for the most part built on the Conservative Party's collapse (but you can say the same about Labour, Reform and Green - we are all picking over the corpse of a once formidable electoral winning machine).
It’s personal responsibility, a state which lets individuals get on with their lives, but includes a safety net for those who struggle. It believes that those who can work, should. It believes in wealth creation, which aids all.
As the cobbler would tell you, time wounds all heels and in a couple of decades, there may be an opportunity for a "new" Conservative Party, predicated on the old principles of one nation Conservatism, to emerge and in all probability return to Government but that requires a clearout of augean proportions both of who are in the Party now and of their half-baked thinking.
I'm not a conservative, I'm a centrist who hangs to the right. I voted Lib Dem at the last election, voted to remain, despite being sceptical of the EU political project (something Ydoethur has made an excellent point above).
We seem to have very short memories on here. How long ago was it that Labour was dead? Yet now they are in power with a whopping majority. Of course the current Tory party is struggling. They were in power for 14 years, culminating in covid (not their fault) and the war in Ukraine (not their fault). They are paying the price for that and are now making some really poor choices, desperately flailing for anything that stops the rot.
But the challenge for wider politics is that what once motivated anti-EU feeling (hence UKIP) is now driving Reform. A sense of failure from the traditional parties. And thats all of them. I think any one in Labour or the Lib Dems who believed that their success last year was down to their brilliance and campaigning and people thinking they have the right policies are somewhat mistaken. It was very much a get the Tories out vote, across the board.
Many on PB will not like it, but a large number of people in the country simply think that immigration is too high and that this is the reason for all their ills.
Thats almost certainly not true, but it doesn't stop them believing it. My neighbour completely unprompted talks to me about Farage - 'He's right!', he says. My neighbour doesn't talk about politics in general, but Farage, ever the populist has once again found the right scab to pick at. How the grown ups counter it is crucial. The Tories seem to think being like Reform is the way - I don't, personally. Politicians are meant to lead the country - at the moment too many are following what the voters 'think' they want.
But ultimately the way to kill Farage and Reform is to get the economy growing, get peoples lives improving. Get the good times back. And part of that is to acknowledge that if we are borrowing 20 Billion to pay the bills a month, maybe we need to stop some spending. And look better are taxing fairly.
"A centrist who hangs to the right", used to be the very definition of Conservative member and voter.
I'm rejecting being a Conservative, not a conservative (if that makes sense?). I'm not a tribal party member.*
Rejoin is going to happen. Look at the US and spend a few months in the EU, We're watching the most happening club in the world having a ball and the only thing missing is us who have chosen to blackball ourselves........
Some political Party is going to pick up the baton and beg them to let us back in. Labour the Lib Dems and the Greens probably. The United colours of the centre left.,,,,,,,,,,We'll promise to behave like civilised members this time and to leave our blackshirts at the door,,,,,
The only things happening in Europe are economic stagnation, generational inequality and political turmoil.
That you're drivelling on about 'blackshirts' when you have a FN deputy is baffling.
So I bought a Chinese car and it has all these totally broken safety features that you can't turn off (or you can but they come back on again when you reboot the car) like showing a really annoying flashing 40km/h icon when you're on the motorway and it sees a speed limit sign on a slip-road. Apparently these are due to Euro NCAP regulations. I'm considering starting a campaign for China and Japan to leave the EU.
The one abiding Brexit bonus is that nearly a decade on, Remainers are still desperate to prove that there are no Brexit bonuses...
A bold claim under an article by a Remainer pointing out a Brexit bonus!
Seriously, I think there is a case for saying we did the rest of the EU a big favor by showing how effing stupid it was to leave the world's largest and most successful free trade association. Shame we had to pay the price, but from a broadly European standpoint you could well say Brexit was a good thing.
Absolutely, we did the rest of the EU a massive favour. Given the rise of global bullies like Trump, Putin and Xi I don't think anyone else in Europe would want to be as lonely as we are right now.
Given that EU foreign and defence policy requires the approval of Viktor Orban I'm not seeing the advantages.
Controversial view, but the UK being outside the EU structures has been very useful in dealing with the Ukraine war, because it’s made it mostly an issue for individual countries, rather than a starting point of trying to arrange a primarily EU-level response which, at the start of the war, would have been like herding cats.
Especially with the East Politics crowd running Germany at the time.
Remember flights carrying weapons to Ukraine having to fly round German airspace?
So I bought a Chinese car and it has all these totally broken safety features that you can't turn off (or you can but they come back on again when you reboot the car) like showing a really annoying flashing 40km/h icon when you're on the motorway and it sees a speed limit sign on a slip-road. Apparently these are due to Euro NCAP regulations. I'm considering starting a campaign for China and Japan to leave the EU.
I don't think those figures mean much - I don't know if "Europe" is in the political background as much as it was for us from rebates via Bruges via Maastricht to the Euro to Lisbon etc. We had 35 years of Europe being in our politics from Thatcher to Major to Blair to Brown to Cameron - each one of them had "issues" with the EEC and later the EU.
Arguably, it destroyed the Conservative Party - now, whether you think that's another "dividend" or not is up to you but I'm certain the party would not be where it is now otherwise but every party had a fracture on this issue of some degree.
Claims of the death of the Tory party are massively premature. They were in government last year and lost an election after 14 years in power. People were and still are sick of them. Add in the purge of the pro Europeans and a lot of ‘talent’ and centrism has gone from the MP roster. But. They are still polling more than Ed Daley’s apparently hugely sucessful Lib Dem’s, and pretty close to the party who won a huge majority last year.
Those who would welcome the extinction of conservatism should be careful what they wish. Conservative politics isn’t right wing nastiness. It’s personal responsibility, a state which lets individuals get on with their lives, but includes a safety net for those who struggle. It believes that those who can work, should. It believes in wealth creation, which aids all.
And if you have no conservatives, you risk being left with Reform.
There speaks a loyal Conservative.
The Conservatives clearly aren't "dead" but they aren't well - look at the results in Surrey last week. Towns like Caterham and Whyteleafe were once strongholds of the party - now, it's not just they are a close second to the LDs, they are a poor third .
Yes, you can be as waspish about the LDs as you like but in their historical context, 72 seats is a success, albeit for the most part built on the Conservative Party's collapse (but you can say the same about Labour, Reform and Green - we are all picking over the corpse of a once formidable electoral winning machine).
It’s personal responsibility, a state which lets individuals get on with their lives, but includes a safety net for those who struggle. It believes that those who can work, should. It believes in wealth creation, which aids all.
As the cobbler would tell you, time wounds all heels and in a couple of decades, there may be an opportunity for a "new" Conservative Party, predicated on the old principles of one nation Conservatism, to emerge and in all probability return to Government but that requires a clearout of augean proportions both of who are in the Party now and of their half-baked thinking.
I'm not a conservative, I'm a centrist who hangs to the right. I voted Lib Dem at the last election, voted to remain, despite being sceptical of the EU political project (something Ydoethur has made an excellent point above).
We seem to have very short memories on here. How long ago was it that Labour was dead? Yet now they are in power with a whopping majority. Of course the current Tory party is struggling. They were in power for 14 years, culminating in covid (not their fault) and the war in Ukraine (not their fault). They are paying the price for that and are now making some really poor choices, desperately flailing for anything that stops the rot.
But the challenge for wider politics is that what once motivated anti-EU feeling (hence UKIP) is now driving Reform. A sense of failure from the traditional parties. And thats all of them. I think any one in Labour or the Lib Dems who believed that their success last year was down to their brilliance and campaigning and people thinking they have the right policies are somewhat mistaken. It was very much a get the Tories out vote, across the board.
Many on PB will not like it, but a large number of people in the country simply think that immigration is too high and that this is the reason for all their ills.
Thats almost certainly not true, but it doesn't stop them believing it. My neighbour completely unprompted talks to me about Farage - 'He's right!', he says. My neighbour doesn't talk about politics in general, but Farage, ever the populist has once again found the right scab to pick at. How the grown ups counter it is crucial. The Tories seem to think being like Reform is the way - I don't, personally. Politicians are meant to lead the country - at the moment too many are following what the voters 'think' they want.
But ultimately the way to kill Farage and Reform is to get the economy growing, get peoples lives improving. Get the good times back. And part of that is to acknowledge that if we are borrowing 20 Billion to pay the bills a month, maybe we need to stop some spending. And look better are taxing fairly.
There is nothing wrong or surprising with thinking immigration is too high. Given the levels of infrastructure and housing I agree it was too high, under the Conservative government, led by the same people now moaning that immigration is too high.
There is plenty wrong with suggesting that people who have arrived lawfully and lived here for decades need to be deported. Without giving any indication of criteria or process than do they fit in with Lam's view of coherence. That is just cheap racism that scares and unsettles millions of our citizens.
The one abiding Brexit bonus is that nearly a decade on, Remainers are still desperate to prove that there are no Brexit bonuses...
A bold claim under an article by a Remainer pointing out a Brexit bonus!
Seriously, I think there is a case for saying we did the rest of the EU a big favor by showing how effing stupid it was to leave the world's largest and most successful free trade association. Shame we had to pay the price, but from a broadly European standpoint you could well say Brexit was a good thing.
Absolutely, we did the rest of the EU a massive favour. Given the rise of global bullies like Trump, Putin and Xi I don't think anyone else in Europe would want to be as lonely as we are right now.
Given that EU foreign and defence policy requires the approval of Viktor Orban I'm not seeing the advantages.
Not for much longer, I suspect. (And that not only because he's likely to lose power.)
I've been reading comments like that for the past three years.
When the EU forces Ireland to increase defence spending and deploy troops to Eastern Europe will be the day it can be taken seriously on defence matters.
If the EU decided to organise it's defence on a Eurozone-style basis, where willing countries pooled their resources and policy without waiting for every country to join in, I think it could create something serious, just like the Euro.
I don't think that's likely to happen, because I don't think Poland is going to want to trust its defence decision-making to others, and if Poland isn't involved then it's pointless. But forcing Ireland to contribute isn't the yardstick for seriousness for the EU as a whole.
The problems with EU defence policy are that
- the pitch for years has been to create a NATO like headquarters, but not spend more on defence. So you’d end up getting less actual defence, since you need to pay for the it - Who decides? Would one country be able to veto action? Qualified majority?
The first problem may be going away. The second is not.
It is fairly clear that, if provided with a veto, Germany would have vetoed military aid from the EU to Ukraine before the invasion.
So I bought a Chinese car and it has all these totally broken safety features that you can't turn off (or you can but they come back on again when you reboot the car) like showing a really annoying flashing 40km/h icon when you're on the motorway and it sees a speed limit sign on a slip-road. Apparently these are due to Euro NCAP regulations. I'm considering starting a campaign for China and Japan to leave the EU.
Good luck with jailbreaking your car!
My current plan if I am unable to reconfigure the global world order is to make a little round sticker and stick it to the screen.
So I bought a Chinese car and it has all these totally broken safety features that you can't turn off (or you can but they come back on again when you reboot the car) like showing a really annoying flashing 40km/h icon when you're on the motorway and it sees a speed limit sign on a slip-road. Apparently these are due to Euro NCAP regulations. I'm considering starting a campaign for China and Japan to leave the EU.
Couple of judiciously placed stickers over the screen should sort that.
Hope its auto-braking and auto-lanechanging are more reliable.
So I bought a Chinese car and it has all these totally broken safety features that you can't turn off (or you can but they come back on again when you reboot the car) like showing a really annoying flashing 40km/h icon when you're on the motorway and it sees a speed limit sign on a slip-road. Apparently these are due to Euro NCAP regulations. I'm considering starting a campaign for China and Japan to leave the EU.
TBF my Toyota will also see a slip road sign and tell me that I am speeding. Smart tech is not always that smart.
I don't think those figures mean much - I don't know if "Europe" is in the political background as much as it was for us from rebates via Bruges via Maastricht to the Euro to Lisbon etc. We had 35 years of Europe being in our politics from Thatcher to Major to Blair to Brown to Cameron - each one of them had "issues" with the EEC and later the EU.
Arguably, it destroyed the Conservative Party - now, whether you think that's another "dividend" or not is up to you but I'm certain the party would not be where it is now otherwise but every party had a fracture on this issue of some degree.
Claims of the death of the Tory party are massively premature. They were in government last year and lost an election after 14 years in power. People were and still are sick of them. Add in the purge of the pro Europeans and a lot of ‘talent’ and centrism has gone from the MP roster. But. They are still polling more than Ed Daley’s apparently hugely sucessful Lib Dem’s, and pretty close to the party who won a huge majority last year.
Those who would welcome the extinction of conservatism should be careful what they wish. Conservative politics isn’t right wing nastiness. It’s personal responsibility, a state which lets individuals get on with their lives, but includes a safety net for those who struggle. It believes that those who can work, should. It believes in wealth creation, which aids all.
And if you have no conservatives, you risk being left with Reform.
The only difference between the Tories and the Refukkers are the colour of their rosettes, their histories and the class/education of their voters.
The Tories are in a doomed race to out-reform Reform and unsurprisingly that is a race they can't win, however BNP Lam and Jenrick get.
Meanwhile Reform is trying to shift economically to the left, leaving the Tories with a clear economic policy space, if only they could recover a more pragmatic, moderate position on the cultural stuff.
So I bought a Chinese car and it has all these totally broken safety features that you can't turn off (or you can but they come back on again when you reboot the car) like showing a really annoying flashing 40km/h icon when you're on the motorway and it sees a speed limit sign on a slip-road. Apparently these are due to Euro NCAP regulations. I'm considering starting a campaign for China and Japan to leave the EU.
Lane assist tried to push me off a cliff in the Highlands.
I don't believe a majority of any of these countries wanted to leave the EU before Brexit either.
Plus of course plenty of European nations like Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Norway, Serbia, Albania, Monaco, Andorra, the Vatican City, and Iceland have managed outside the EU even before the UK left it
Norway and Switzerland are effectively covered by the EU's economic policy - the position we should have taken had your party not put its increasingly warped ideological obsessions in front of our national interest. The others in your list are all tiny, and have ways of surviving as tax havens and suchlike that aren't open to a large country like ours.
The one abiding Brexit bonus is that nearly a decade on, Remainers are still desperate to prove that there are no Brexit bonuses...
A bold claim under an article by a Remainer pointing out a Brexit bonus!
Seriously, I think there is a case for saying we did the rest of the EU a big favor by showing how effing stupid it was to leave the world's largest and most successful free trade association. Shame we had to pay the price, but from a broadly European standpoint you could well say Brexit was a good thing.
Absolutely, we did the rest of the EU a massive favour. Given the rise of global bullies like Trump, Putin and Xi I don't think anyone else in Europe would want to be as lonely as we are right now.
Given that EU foreign and defence policy requires the approval of Viktor Orban I'm not seeing the advantages.
Controversial view, but the UK being outside the EU structures has been very useful in dealing with the Ukraine war, because it’s made it mostly an issue for individual countries, rather than a starting point of trying to arrange a primarily EU-level response which, at the start of the war, would have been like herding cats.
Especially with the East Politics crowd running Germany at the time.
Remember flights carrying weapons to Ukraine having to fly round German airspace?
That was exactly the thought in my head at the time.
It was pretty much only the UK and Poland that were 100% in on Day 1, there would have been weeks of meetings and QMV votes trying to get into everyone’s head the idea that there’s an actual war right on the EU’s doorstep.
So I bought a Chinese car and it has all these totally broken safety features that you can't turn off (or you can but they come back on again when you reboot the car) like showing a really annoying flashing 40km/h icon when you're on the motorway and it sees a speed limit sign on a slip-road. Apparently these are due to Euro NCAP regulations. I'm considering starting a campaign for China and Japan to leave the EU.
Good luck with jailbreaking your car!
My current plan if I am unable to reconfigure the global world order is to make a little round sticker and stick it to the screen.
That’s the Hillbilly way of dealing with that darn check engine light that won’t go off.
The conclusion in the header, at any rate its second paragraph, isn't supported by the evidence cited.
Attitudes towards leaving the EU were always going to be more favourable in those countries polled - France, Italy, the Netherlands, Germany and Spain are in the Euro, so it's massively more expensive for them to leave, and the Eastern Europeans get gigantic subsidies from Brussels (though I am a bit surprised about Denmark, I must admit).
To determine whether or not our leaving the EU has affected other countries' attitudes towards leaving the EU, you can tell nothing whatever from a snapshot - you need to look at attitudes over time, and allow for many other factors that affect countries' attitudes, and that could also have shifted over time. Anything else is just speculation at best.
The one abiding Brexit bonus is that nearly a decade on, Remainers are still desperate to prove that there are no Brexit bonuses...
A bold claim under an article by a Remainer pointing out a Brexit bonus!
Seriously, I think there is a case for saying we did the rest of the EU a big favor by showing how effing stupid it was to leave the world's largest and most successful free trade association. Shame we had to pay the price, but from a broadly European standpoint you could well say Brexit was a good thing.
Absolutely, we did the rest of the EU a massive favour. Given the rise of global bullies like Trump, Putin and Xi I don't think anyone else in Europe would want to be as lonely as we are right now.
Given that EU foreign and defence policy requires the approval of Viktor Orban I'm not seeing the advantages.
On a related note do those people who advocate a EU defence role understand that it would mean paying more to get less ?
That is the policy of the Greens for those PBers who have expressed their interest in the party recently.
The overall spend for a joint defence capability for a region should be less than the aggregate spend of each part of the region doing it for themselves. Synergies, economies of scale etc.
In reality it often produces greater inefficiencies and blocked decision making.
An organisation is often only as strong as its weakest member.
So imagine a defence agreement where country A provides X, country B provides Y and country C provides Z.
Now what happens if one of the countries then refuses to join an operation ? The other two countries may not be able to operate either as they don't have the full capability without the third country.
So I bought a Chinese car and it has all these totally broken safety features that you can't turn off (or you can but they come back on again when you reboot the car) like showing a really annoying flashing 40km/h icon when you're on the motorway and it sees a speed limit sign on a slip-road. Apparently these are due to Euro NCAP regulations. I'm considering starting a campaign for China and Japan to leave the EU.
Lane assist tried to push me off a cliff in the Highlands.
Presumably you'd upset the car in some way? Lusty glances at other motors?
I don't think those figures mean much - I don't know if "Europe" is in the political background as much as it was for us from rebates via Bruges via Maastricht to the Euro to Lisbon etc. We had 35 years of Europe being in our politics from Thatcher to Major to Blair to Brown to Cameron - each one of them had "issues" with the EEC and later the EU.
Arguably, it destroyed the Conservative Party - now, whether you think that's another "dividend" or not is up to you but I'm certain the party would not be where it is now otherwise but every party had a fracture on this issue of some degree.
Claims of the death of the Tory party are massively premature. They were in government last year and lost an election after 14 years in power. People were and still are sick of them. Add in the purge of the pro Europeans and a lot of ‘talent’ and centrism has gone from the MP roster. But. They are still polling more than Ed Daley’s apparently hugely sucessful Lib Dem’s, and pretty close to the party who won a huge majority last year.
Those who would welcome the extinction of conservatism should be careful what they wish. Conservative politics isn’t right wing nastiness. It’s personal responsibility, a state which lets individuals get on with their lives, but includes a safety net for those who struggle. It believes that those who can work, should. It believes in wealth creation, which aids all.
And if you have no conservatives, you risk being left with Reform.
Though given what Katie Did Next, we may have reached the point where it's not clear why Reform are worse.
Here Lam explicitly sets out her proposal - which is official Conservative Party policy - to deport long-standing legal permanent residents who have *ever* claimed any benefit, including the state pension or child benefit (even if the child is British), or who earn less than £39K.
The one abiding Brexit bonus is that nearly a decade on, Remainers are still desperate to prove that there are no Brexit bonuses...
A bold claim under an article by a Remainer pointing out a Brexit bonus!
Seriously, I think there is a case for saying we did the rest of the EU a big favor by showing how effing stupid it was to leave the world's largest and most successful free trade association. Shame we had to pay the price, but from a broadly European standpoint you could well say Brexit was a good thing.
Absolutely, we did the rest of the EU a massive favour. Given the rise of global bullies like Trump, Putin and Xi I don't think anyone else in Europe would want to be as lonely as we are right now.
Given that EU foreign and defence policy requires the approval of Viktor Orban I'm not seeing the advantages.
Not for much longer, I suspect. (And that not only because he's likely to lose power.)
I've been reading comments like that for the past three years.
When the EU forces Ireland to increase defence spending and deploy troops to Eastern Europe will be the day it can be taken seriously on defence matters.
If the EU decided to organise it's defence on a Eurozone-style basis, where willing countries pooled their resources and policy without waiting for every country to join in, I think it could create something serious, just like the Euro.
I don't think that's likely to happen, because I don't think Poland is going to want to trust its defence decision-making to others, and if Poland isn't involved then it's pointless. But forcing Ireland to contribute isn't the yardstick for seriousness for the EU as a whole.
The problems with EU defence policy are that
- the pitch for years has been to create a NATO like headquarters, but not spend more on defence. So you’d end up getting less actual defence, since you need to pay for the it - Who decides? Would one country be able to veto action? Qualified majority?
The first problem may be going away. The second is not.
It is fairly clear that, if provided with a veto, Germany would have vetoed military aid from the EU to Ukraine before the invasion.
The Eurozone model is that you have a European institution with it's leaders appointed by the Eurozone leaders who makes those decisions. So I guess right now that would be Kaja Kallas, who is no shrinking violet when it comes to Russia.
The one abiding Brexit bonus is that nearly a decade on, Remainers are still desperate to prove that there are no Brexit bonuses...
A bold claim under an article by a Remainer pointing out a Brexit bonus!
Seriously, I think there is a case for saying we did the rest of the EU a big favor by showing how effing stupid it was to leave the world's largest and most successful free trade association. Shame we had to pay the price, but from a broadly European standpoint you could well say Brexit was a good thing.
Absolutely, we did the rest of the EU a massive favour. Given the rise of global bullies like Trump, Putin and Xi I don't think anyone else in Europe would want to be as lonely as we are right now.
Given that EU foreign and defence policy requires the approval of Viktor Orban I'm not seeing the advantages.
Not for much longer, I suspect. (And that not only because he's likely to lose power.)
I've been reading comments like that for the past three years.
When the EU forces Ireland to increase defence spending and deploy troops to Eastern Europe will be the day it can be taken seriously on defence matters.
If the EU decided to organise it's defence on a Eurozone-style basis, where willing countries pooled their resources and policy without waiting for every country to join in, I think it could create something serious, just like the Euro.
I don't think that's likely to happen, because I don't think Poland is going to want to trust its defence decision-making to others, and if Poland isn't involved then it's pointless. But forcing Ireland to contribute isn't the yardstick for seriousness for the EU as a whole.
The problems with EU defence policy are that
- the pitch for years has been to create a NATO like headquarters, but not spend more on defence. So you’d end up getting less actual defence, since you need to pay for the it - Who decides? Would one country be able to veto action? Qualified majority?
The first problem may be going away. The second is not.
It is fairly clear that, if provided with a veto, Germany would have vetoed military aid from the EU to Ukraine before the invasion.
If I were Poland, one of the Baltics, or Finland, the last thing I’d want is to entrust my defence to QMV.
An EU defence capability only works if there is broad consensus about boosting defence spending, hitting your enemies hard, and taking casualties.
So I bought a Chinese car and it has all these totally broken safety features that you can't turn off (or you can but they come back on again when you reboot the car) like showing a really annoying flashing 40km/h icon when you're on the motorway and it sees a speed limit sign on a slip-road. Apparently these are due to Euro NCAP regulations. I'm considering starting a campaign for China and Japan to leave the EU.
Good luck with jailbreaking your car!
My current plan if I am unable to reconfigure the global world order is to make a little round sticker and stick it to the screen.
That’s the Hillbilly way of dealing with that darn check engine light that won’t go off.
The one abiding Brexit bonus is that nearly a decade on, Remainers are still desperate to prove that there are no Brexit bonuses...
A bold claim under an article by a Remainer pointing out a Brexit bonus!
Seriously, I think there is a case for saying we did the rest of the EU a big favor by showing how effing stupid it was to leave the world's largest and most successful free trade association. Shame we had to pay the price, but from a broadly European standpoint you could well say Brexit was a good thing.
Absolutely, we did the rest of the EU a massive favour. Given the rise of global bullies like Trump, Putin and Xi I don't think anyone else in Europe would want to be as lonely as we are right now.
Given that EU foreign and defence policy requires the approval of Viktor Orban I'm not seeing the advantages.
On a related note do those people who advocate a EU defence role understand that it would mean paying more to get less ?
That is the policy of the Greens for those PBers who have expressed their interest in the party recently.
The overall spend for a joint defence capability for a region should be less than the aggregate spend of each part of the region doing it for themselves. Synergies, economies of scale etc.
In reality it often produces greater inefficiencies and blocked decision making.
An organisation is often only as strong as its weakest member.
So imagine a defence agreement where country A provides X, country B provides Y and country C provides Z.
Now what happens if one of the countries then refuses to join an operation ? The other two countries may not be able to operate either as they don't have the full capability without the third country.
Sure you have those downsides and challenges. But the alternative is each country operating an 'us against the world' defence policy. That leads to enormous waste (in a region of shared interests) and also a less secure overall environment.
I don't think those figures mean much - I don't know if "Europe" is in the political background as much as it was for us from rebates via Bruges via Maastricht to the Euro to Lisbon etc. We had 35 years of Europe being in our politics from Thatcher to Major to Blair to Brown to Cameron - each one of them had "issues" with the EEC and later the EU.
Arguably, it destroyed the Conservative Party - now, whether you think that's another "dividend" or not is up to you but I'm certain the party would not be where it is now otherwise but every party had a fracture on this issue of some degree.
Claims of the death of the Tory party are massively premature. They were in government last year and lost an election after 14 years in power. People were and still are sick of them. Add in the purge of the pro Europeans and a lot of ‘talent’ and centrism has gone from the MP roster. But. They are still polling more than Ed Daley’s apparently hugely sucessful Lib Dem’s, and pretty close to the party who won a huge majority last year.
Those who would welcome the extinction of conservatism should be careful what they wish. Conservative politics isn’t right wing nastiness. It’s personal responsibility, a state which lets individuals get on with their lives, but includes a safety net for those who struggle. It believes that those who can work, should. It believes in wealth creation, which aids all.
And if you have no conservatives, you risk being left with Reform.
Though given what Katie Did Next, we may have reached the point where it's not clear why Reform are worse.
Here Lam explicitly sets out her proposal - which is official Conservative Party policy - to deport long-standing legal permanent residents who have *ever* claimed any benefit, including the state pension or child benefit (even if the child is British), or who earn less than £39K.
I don't think those figures mean much - I don't know if "Europe" is in the political background as much as it was for us from rebates via Bruges via Maastricht to the Euro to Lisbon etc. We had 35 years of Europe being in our politics from Thatcher to Major to Blair to Brown to Cameron - each one of them had "issues" with the EEC and later the EU.
Arguably, it destroyed the Conservative Party - now, whether you think that's another "dividend" or not is up to you but I'm certain the party would not be where it is now otherwise but every party had a fracture on this issue of some degree.
Claims of the death of the Tory party are massively premature. They were in government last year and lost an election after 14 years in power. People were and still are sick of them. Add in the purge of the pro Europeans and a lot of ‘talent’ and centrism has gone from the MP roster. But. They are still polling more than Ed Daley’s apparently hugely sucessful Lib Dem’s, and pretty close to the party who won a huge majority last year.
Those who would welcome the extinction of conservatism should be careful what they wish. Conservative politics isn’t right wing nastiness. It’s personal responsibility, a state which lets individuals get on with their lives, but includes a safety net for those who struggle. It believes that those who can work, should. It believes in wealth creation, which aids all.
And if you have no conservatives, you risk being left with Reform.
There speaks a loyal Conservative.
The Conservatives clearly aren't "dead" but they aren't well - look at the results in Surrey last week. Towns like Caterham and Whyteleafe were once strongholds of the party - now, it's not just they are a close second to the LDs, they are a poor third .
Yes, you can be as waspish about the LDs as you like but in their historical context, 72 seats is a success, albeit for the most part built on the Conservative Party's collapse (but you can say the same about Labour, Reform and Green - we are all picking over the corpse of a once formidable electoral winning machine).
It’s personal responsibility, a state which lets individuals get on with their lives, but includes a safety net for those who struggle. It believes that those who can work, should. It believes in wealth creation, which aids all.
As the cobbler would tell you, time wounds all heels and in a couple of decades, there may be an opportunity for a "new" Conservative Party, predicated on the old principles of one nation Conservatism, to emerge and in all probability return to Government but that requires a clearout of augean proportions both of who are in the Party now and of their half-baked thinking.
I'm not a conservative, I'm a centrist who hangs to the right. I voted Lib Dem at the last election, voted to remain, despite being sceptical of the EU political project (something Ydoethur has made an excellent point above).
We seem to have very short memories on here. How long ago was it that Labour was dead? Yet now they are in power with a whopping majority. Of course the current Tory party is struggling. They were in power for 14 years, culminating in covid (not their fault) and the war in Ukraine (not their fault). They are paying the price for that and are now making some really poor choices, desperately flailing for anything that stops the rot.
But the challenge for wider politics is that what once motivated anti-EU feeling (hence UKIP) is now driving Reform. A sense of failure from the traditional parties. And thats all of them. I think any one in Labour or the Lib Dems who believed that their success last year was down to their brilliance and campaigning and people thinking they have the right policies are somewhat mistaken. It was very much a get the Tories out vote, across the board.
Many on PB will not like it, but a large number of people in the country simply think that immigration is too high and that this is the reason for all their ills.
Thats almost certainly not true, but it doesn't stop them believing it. My neighbour completely unprompted talks to me about Farage - 'He's right!', he says. My neighbour doesn't talk about politics in general, but Farage, ever the populist has once again found the right scab to pick at. How the grown ups counter it is crucial. The Tories seem to think being like Reform is the way - I don't, personally. Politicians are meant to lead the country - at the moment too many are following what the voters 'think' they want.
But ultimately the way to kill Farage and Reform is to get the economy growing, get peoples lives improving. Get the good times back. And part of that is to acknowledge that if we are borrowing 20 Billion to pay the bills a month, maybe we need to stop some spending. And look better are taxing fairly.
I don't believe a majority of any of these countries wanted to leave the EU before Brexit either.
Plus of course plenty of European nations like Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Norway, Serbia, Albania, Monaco, Andorra, the Vatican City, and Iceland have managed outside the EU even before the UK left it
Norway and Switzerland are effectively covered by the EU's economic policy - the position we should have taken had your party not put its increasingly warped ideological obsessions in front of our national interest. The others in your list are all tiny, and have ways of surviving as tax havens and suchlike that aren't open to a large country like ours.
Norway is still outside the Customs Union and Switzerland is neither in the EEA single market nor a Customs Union.
Being in a Customs Union again like the LDs want means we could no longer do our own trade deals and the LDs long term aim of rejoining the single market too (also the aim of the Greens who even want ultimately still full rejoin) would mean we would have free movement from the EU again.
Albeit by 2028 that would be more viable, with 7 years of no EEA free movement to the UK, which would match the 7 years of no free movement from the new EU accession countries we could have had in 2004 had Blair imposed transition controls which may have avoided Brexit in the first place
So I bought a Chinese car and it has all these totally broken safety features that you can't turn off (or you can but they come back on again when you reboot the car) like showing a really annoying flashing 40km/h icon when you're on the motorway and it sees a speed limit sign on a slip-road. Apparently these are due to Euro NCAP regulations. I'm considering starting a campaign for China and Japan to leave the EU.
TBF my Toyota will also see a slip road sign and tell me that I am speeding. Smart tech is not always that smart.
My VW slammed the brakes on because it imagined something.
So I bought a Chinese car and it has all these totally broken safety features that you can't turn off (or you can but they come back on again when you reboot the car) like showing a really annoying flashing 40km/h icon when you're on the motorway and it sees a speed limit sign on a slip-road. Apparently these are due to Euro NCAP regulations. I'm considering starting a campaign for China and Japan to leave the EU.
I flagged this a while back - it's down to EU compulsory ISA regulations, which despite Brexit the car manufacturers aren't willing to vary for models sold into the UK. The most annoying feature is that you have to turn the feature off every time you start the car (and the EU intends to monitor drivers' usage of this with the implied threat of removing the ability to turn it off, down the line), although some manufacturers like BMW and Mercedes have made it easier for drivers to disable with one-click or one-button actions by the driver; the Asian makers, presumably less willing to undermine their reputation for safety, leave you having to scroll through multiple screens on settings menus to do so.
It's the main reason I haven't replaced my current car with a new one, as I originally intended to do this year or next. I can't believe I'm the only one, suggesting that the new rules will hit new car sales. And any motoring forum is full of posts from angry and frustrated drivers who have got a new car and can't stop it beeping at them all the time.
The bottom line is what evidence eventually emerges that compulsory ISA has reduced accident and road casualty rates. Meanwhile, clever though the systems are, even if you never stray an mph/kmh above any speed limit, there are tons of things that mislead your car into getting the speed limit wrong, including speed signs on slip or parallel roads in France, signs imposing lower speed limits when there is fog in Italy, (sometimes) the speed signs with yellow backgrounds in Finland and Sweden, and the Norwegian habit of not signing the return to normal speed limits after roadworks, and (sometimes) speed limits up on digital gantries and the like.
I don't think those figures mean much - I don't know if "Europe" is in the political background as much as it was for us from rebates via Bruges via Maastricht to the Euro to Lisbon etc. We had 35 years of Europe being in our politics from Thatcher to Major to Blair to Brown to Cameron - each one of them had "issues" with the EEC and later the EU.
Arguably, it destroyed the Conservative Party - now, whether you think that's another "dividend" or not is up to you but I'm certain the party would not be where it is now otherwise but every party had a fracture on this issue of some degree.
Claims of the death of the Tory party are massively premature. They were in government last year and lost an election after 14 years in power. People were and still are sick of them. Add in the purge of the pro Europeans and a lot of ‘talent’ and centrism has gone from the MP roster. But. They are still polling more than Ed Daley’s apparently hugely sucessful Lib Dem’s, and pretty close to the party who won a huge majority last year.
Those who would welcome the extinction of conservatism should be careful what they wish. Conservative politics isn’t right wing nastiness. It’s personal responsibility, a state which lets individuals get on with their lives, but includes a safety net for those who struggle. It believes that those who can work, should. It believes in wealth creation, which aids all.
And if you have no conservatives, you risk being left with Reform.
Though given what Katie Did Next, we may have reached the point where it's not clear why Reform are worse.
Here Lam explicitly sets out her proposal - which is official Conservative Party policy - to deport long-standing legal permanent residents who have *ever* claimed any benefit, including the state pension or child benefit (even if the child is British), or who earn less than £39K.
My wife would have been deported a few years ago under this policy - she's a UK citizen now. I wouldn't be able to live in her country of origin either and so we would be separated for ever.
Why would I consider voting for this abomination of a party in any circumstances for the rest of my life?
So I bought a Chinese car and it has all these totally broken safety features that you can't turn off (or you can but they come back on again when you reboot the car) like showing a really annoying flashing 40km/h icon when you're on the motorway and it sees a speed limit sign on a slip-road. Apparently these are due to Euro NCAP regulations. I'm considering starting a campaign for China and Japan to leave the EU.
Good luck with jailbreaking your car!
My current plan if I am unable to reconfigure the global world order is to make a little round sticker and stick it to the screen.
That’s the Hillbilly way of dealing with that darn check engine light that won’t go off.
I had that a few years and cars ago. A minor rear end shunt for which I accepted 500 quid from the insurance (and assumed no damage) led to the engine warning light coming on. Reset it and it would come on again after 9 miles. No fault was ever found, just a dodgy sensor. The garage even suggested the black tape...
I don't think those figures mean much - I don't know if "Europe" is in the political background as much as it was for us from rebates via Bruges via Maastricht to the Euro to Lisbon etc. We had 35 years of Europe being in our politics from Thatcher to Major to Blair to Brown to Cameron - each one of them had "issues" with the EEC and later the EU.
Arguably, it destroyed the Conservative Party - now, whether you think that's another "dividend" or not is up to you but I'm certain the party would not be where it is now otherwise but every party had a fracture on this issue of some degree.
Claims of the death of the Tory party are massively premature. They were in government last year and lost an election after 14 years in power. People were and still are sick of them. Add in the purge of the pro Europeans and a lot of ‘talent’ and centrism has gone from the MP roster. But. They are still polling more than Ed Daley’s apparently hugely sucessful Lib Dem’s, and pretty close to the party who won a huge majority last year.
Those who would welcome the extinction of conservatism should be careful what they wish. Conservative politics isn’t right wing nastiness. It’s personal responsibility, a state which lets individuals get on with their lives, but includes a safety net for those who struggle. It believes that those who can work, should. It believes in wealth creation, which aids all.
And if you have no conservatives, you risk being left with Reform.
The only difference between the Tories and the Refukkers are the colour of their rosettes, their histories and the class/education of their voters.
The Tories are in a doomed race to out-reform Reform and unsurprisingly that is a race they can't win, however BNP Lam and Jenrick get.
Meanwhile Reform is trying to shift economically to the left, leaving the Tories with a clear economic policy space, if only they could recover a more pragmatic, moderate position on the cultural stuff.
Were, now Farage is going to say he will cut spending and the civil service and ban borrowing to fund government spending before tax cuts in a clear shift to fiscal conservatism from Reform.
The one abiding Brexit bonus is that nearly a decade on, Remainers are still desperate to prove that there are no Brexit bonuses...
A bold claim under an article by a Remainer pointing out a Brexit bonus!
Seriously, I think there is a case for saying we did the rest of the EU a big favor by showing how effing stupid it was to leave the world's largest and most successful free trade association. Shame we had to pay the price, but from a broadly European standpoint you could well say Brexit was a good thing.
Absolutely, we did the rest of the EU a massive favour. Given the rise of global bullies like Trump, Putin and Xi I don't think anyone else in Europe would want to be as lonely as we are right now.
Given that EU foreign and defence policy requires the approval of Viktor Orban I'm not seeing the advantages.
Not for much longer, I suspect. (And that not only because he's likely to lose power.)
I've been reading comments like that for the past three years.
When the EU forces Ireland to increase defence spending and deploy troops to Eastern Europe will be the day it can be taken seriously on defence matters.
If the EU decided to organise it's defence on a Eurozone-style basis, where willing countries pooled their resources and policy without waiting for every country to join in, I think it could create something serious, just like the Euro.
I don't think that's likely to happen, because I don't think Poland is going to want to trust its defence decision-making to others, and if Poland isn't involved then it's pointless. But forcing Ireland to contribute isn't the yardstick for seriousness for the EU as a whole.
The problems with EU defence policy are that
- the pitch for years has been to create a NATO like headquarters, but not spend more on defence. So you’d end up getting less actual defence, since you need to pay for the it - Who decides? Would one country be able to veto action? Qualified majority?
The first problem may be going away. The second is not.
It is fairly clear that, if provided with a veto, Germany would have vetoed military aid from the EU to Ukraine before the invasion.
The Eurozone model is that you have a European institution with it's leaders appointed by the Eurozone leaders who makes those decisions. So I guess right now that would be Kaja Kallas, who is no shrinking violet when it comes to Russia.
My flatmate who has a degree in chemical engineering and came here for Primary school faces a future in Lithuania (a country she barely recalls and a language she doesn't speak) under these plans. For the misdemeanour of not being born British.
Grievance mongering Jocks update. Evidently a belated awareness that he needs to build bridges.
Andrew Bowie @AndrewBowie_MP Now confirmed Labour are giving Scotland only get a “Barnett Share” of the new Fishing Fund. That’s less than 8%. Despite landing 60% of Britain’s fish. Disgrace. They’ve screwed farmers. They’ve screwed oil workers. Now they’re screwing fishermen. Labour are screwing Scotland
If it's not a UK scheme, administered in Westminster, and so just involves handing money over to Holyrood, with no guarantee the money will be spent on the fishing industry, then it makes absolute sense to use the Barnett formula.
If its devolved then the Scottish fishing industry is Holyrood's responsibility.
Usual carpetbaggers stealing all Scotland's resources.
So I bought a Chinese car and it has all these totally broken safety features that you can't turn off (or you can but they come back on again when you reboot the car) like showing a really annoying flashing 40km/h icon when you're on the motorway and it sees a speed limit sign on a slip-road. Apparently these are due to Euro NCAP regulations. I'm considering starting a campaign for China and Japan to leave the EU.
Good luck with jailbreaking your car!
My current plan if I am unable to reconfigure the global world order is to make a little round sticker and stick it to the screen.
That’s the Hillbilly way of dealing with that darn check engine light that won’t go off.
I had that a few years and cars ago. A minor rear end shunt for which I accepted 500 quid from the insurance (and assumed no damage) led to the engine warning light coming on. Reset it and it would come on again after 9 miles. No fault was ever found, just a dodgy sensor. The garage even suggested the black tape...
The problem with this is it can put the car into limp mode with no fix available. My friend's perfectly serviceable Fiesta met this fate despite lots of trips to the mechanic.
The one abiding Brexit bonus is that nearly a decade on, Remainers are still desperate to prove that there are no Brexit bonuses...
A bold claim under an article by a Remainer pointing out a Brexit bonus!
Seriously, I think there is a case for saying we did the rest of the EU a big favor by showing how effing stupid it was to leave the world's largest and most successful free trade association. Shame we had to pay the price, but from a broadly European standpoint you could well say Brexit was a good thing.
Absolutely, we did the rest of the EU a massive favour. Given the rise of global bullies like Trump, Putin and Xi I don't think anyone else in Europe would want to be as lonely as we are right now.
Given that EU foreign and defence policy requires the approval of Viktor Orban I'm not seeing the advantages.
Not for much longer, I suspect. (And that not only because he's likely to lose power.)
I've been reading comments like that for the past three years.
When the EU forces Ireland to increase defence spending and deploy troops to Eastern Europe will be the day it can be taken seriously on defence matters.
Really ? This, for example, is quite new (and not irrelevant to our future intentions).
The only objective for the Tories at the next election is to hang on to second place as the leading party to the right of Labour.
They will say anything and do anything to achieve that goal. If they achieve it then Farage will be 70 by the time of the general election afterwards (in 2034), and the Tories can reasonably hope that FPTP will make them the main choice for voters wishing to be rid of Labour.
The danger is that this strategy is doomed to failure, and all they're achieving is to make BNP policy more widely acceptable to Reform's benefit. No-one will believe that the Tories will reverse the immigration that happened when they were in government.
Lam is of course a long standing ally of Jenrick, if Jenrick became Tory leader before the next GE the Tories may as well merge with Farage's Reform anyway as there now looks to be little difference between Jenrick and Farage. Indeed Jenrick is 20 years younger than Farage and clearly wants to be Farage's successor as leader of the populist nationalist right and Farage all but anointed Jenrick his heir when he praised Jenrick's conference speech on his GB news show.
The danger for Kemi is if she goes further and further down the Jenrick policy route as she has over leaving the ECHR, scrapping net zero and now deporting immigrants, then Jenrick supporters will say they may as well have him do it more articulately and with more energy than she can.
If she sees significant Tory losses in the May local and devolved elections and the Tories remain at 15 to 20% in the polls she almost certainly will face a VONC and lose it. Most Tory MPs would then I suspect back Cleverly over Jenrick, probably by coronation, given the failure of Kemi's Jenrick lite policy. Some former Kemi backing MPs are also starting to move to Cleverly to stop Jenrick. Cleverly could then at least put clear blue water with Farage and Reform as well as Starmer and Labour and also would be more likely to get Labour and LD tactical votes in Conservative held seats to beat Reform
You seem to have become a Cleverly fan and, but for his own bad gaming of the election for leader he would have won
Your post is sensible and I would be happy to see Cleverly win and let Jenrick and Lam join Reform, their natural home
So I bought a Chinese car and it has all these totally broken safety features that you can't turn off (or you can but they come back on again when you reboot the car) like showing a really annoying flashing 40km/h icon when you're on the motorway and it sees a speed limit sign on a slip-road. Apparently these are due to Euro NCAP regulations. I'm considering starting a campaign for China and Japan to leave the EU.
Good luck with jailbreaking your car!
My current plan if I am unable to reconfigure the global world order is to make a little round sticker and stick it to the screen.
That’s the Hillbilly way of dealing with that darn check engine light that won’t go off.
I had that a few years and cars ago. A minor rear end shunt for which I accepted 500 quid from the insurance (and assumed no damage) led to the engine warning light coming on. Reset it and it would come on again after 9 miles. No fault was ever found, just a dodgy sensor. The garage even suggested the black tape...
The problem with this is it can put the car into limp mode with no fix available. My friend's perfectly serviceable Fiesta met this fate despite lots of trips to the mechanic.
Luckily this was an older car that didn't do that, but it has happened to the wife in her Smart.
The EU members are not going to exit the EU and if anything the Ukraine war has drawn them closer
I read earlier in the week that Starmer's EU reset is coming up against the same problem seen previously, that the EU are not going to agree any significant changes posing the question why should the UK get the 'good bits' but not be a member ?
Indeed the article suggested the EU are not remotely interested in the UK rejoining and why would they with an anti EU party riding high in the polls
Yesterday my wife and I received a letter from the DWP confirming we each will receive £150 WFA in the next few weeks
Today's inflation rate for 2026 benefits is 3.8% but thanks to the idiotic triple lock, pensioners will receive 1% more at 4.8%
This is madness, and speaks terribly of a government with a landslide win twisting and turning trying to capture popularity and at the same time failing in its duty as the guardian of the economy
Not only is Reeves looking for huge tax rises and seeks reduction in public spending, but is willing to abolish the 2 child cap !!!!!
This is financial incontinence and makes one despair
And on despair, what on earth is Lam thinking in her policy of deportations and this has to be rejected as conservative policy, or I really will be politically homeless for the first time in my 81 plus years
G, 1% of very very little is hardly going to break the bank. They could save hundreds of times that with ease if they got their house in order. Poor pensioners will appreciate it and anyone above poverty rate will pay half of it back in tax in any case. Very minor compared to the waste that goes on every day in the country.
The one abiding Brexit bonus is that nearly a decade on, Remainers are still desperate to prove that there are no Brexit bonuses...
A bold claim under an article by a Remainer pointing out a Brexit bonus!
Seriously, I think there is a case for saying we did the rest of the EU a big favor by showing how effing stupid it was to leave the world's largest and most successful free trade association. Shame we had to pay the price, but from a broadly European standpoint you could well say Brexit was a good thing.
Absolutely, we did the rest of the EU a massive favour. Given the rise of global bullies like Trump, Putin and Xi I don't think anyone else in Europe would want to be as lonely as we are right now.
Given that EU foreign and defence policy requires the approval of Viktor Orban I'm not seeing the advantages.
Not for much longer, I suspect. (And that not only because he's likely to lose power.)
I've been reading comments like that for the past three years.
When the EU forces Ireland to increase defence spending and deploy troops to Eastern Europe will be the day it can be taken seriously on defence matters.
If the EU decided to organise it's defence on a Eurozone-style basis, where willing countries pooled their resources and policy without waiting for every country to join in, I think it could create something serious, just like the Euro.
I don't think that's likely to happen, because I don't think Poland is going to want to trust its defence decision-making to others, and if Poland isn't involved then it's pointless. But forcing Ireland to contribute isn't the yardstick for seriousness for the EU as a whole.
The problems with EU defence policy are that
- the pitch for years has been to create a NATO like headquarters, but not spend more on defence. So you’d end up getting less actual defence, since you need to pay for the it - Who decides? Would one country be able to veto action? Qualified majority?
The first problem may be going away. The second is not.
It is fairly clear that, if provided with a veto, Germany would have vetoed military aid from the EU to Ukraine before the invasion.
The Eurozone model is that you have a European institution with it's leaders appointed by the Eurozone leaders who makes those decisions. So I guess right now that would be Kaja Kallas, who is no shrinking violet when it comes to Russia.
So the policy is in the lap of the gods, or, rather, the EU's buggin's turn commissionar
The only objective for the Tories at the next election is to hang on to second place as the leading party to the right of Labour.
They will say anything and do anything to achieve that goal. If they achieve it then Farage will be 70 by the time of the general election afterwards (in 2034), and the Tories can reasonably hope that FPTP will make them the main choice for voters wishing to be rid of Labour.
The danger is that this strategy is doomed to failure, and all they're achieving is to make BNP policy more widely acceptable to Reform's benefit. No-one will believe that the Tories will reverse the immigration that happened when they were in government.
Lam is of course a long standing ally of Jenrick, if Jenrick became Tory leader before the next GE the Tories may as well merge with Farage's Reform anyway as there now looks to be little difference between Jenrick and Farage. Indeed Jenrick is 20 years younger than Farage and clearly wants to be Farage's successor as leader of the populist nationalist right and Farage all but anointed Jenrick his heir when he praised Jenrick's conference speech on his GB news show.
The danger for Kemi is if she goes further and further down the Jenrick policy route as she has over leaving the ECHR, scrapping net zero and now deporting immigrants, then Jenrick supporters will say they may as well have him do it more articulately and with more energy than she can.
If she sees significant Tory losses in the May local and devolved elections and the Tories remain at 15 to 20% in the polls she almost certainly will face a VONC and lose it. Most Tory MPs would then I suspect back Cleverly over Jenrick, probably by coronation, given the failure of Kemi's Jenrick lite policy. Some former Kemi backing MPs are also starting to move to Cleverly to stop Jenrick. Cleverly could then at least put clear blue water with Farage and Reform as well as Starmer and Labour and also would be more likely to get Labour and LD tactical votes in Conservative held seats to beat Reform
You seem to have become a Cleverly fan and, but for his own bad gaming of the election for leader he would have won
Your post is sensible and I would be happy to see Cleverly win and let Jenrick and Lam join Reform, their natural home
I think for the next general election Cleverly would be the only viable alternative to Kemi to take on Farage as well as Starmer yes.
Lam it should be noted is not in Kemi's Shadow Cabinet and backed Jenrick for leader last year
So I bought a Chinese car and it has all these totally broken safety features that you can't turn off (or you can but they come back on again when you reboot the car) like showing a really annoying flashing 40km/h icon when you're on the motorway and it sees a speed limit sign on a slip-road. Apparently these are due to Euro NCAP regulations. I'm considering starting a campaign for China and Japan to leave the EU.
Good luck with jailbreaking your car!
My current plan if I am unable to reconfigure the global world order is to make a little round sticker and stick it to the screen.
That’s the Hillbilly way of dealing with that darn check engine light that won’t go off.
I had that a few years and cars ago. A minor rear end shunt for which I accepted 500 quid from the insurance (and assumed no damage) led to the engine warning light coming on. Reset it and it would come on again after 9 miles. No fault was ever found, just a dodgy sensor. The garage even suggested the black tape...
The problem with this is it can put the car into limp mode with no fix available. My friend's perfectly serviceable Fiesta met this fate despite lots of trips to the mechanic.
I’ve said a few times that “peak car” was about a decade ago.
Modern “safety” technology and emissions stuff is going to lead to a lot of more modern cars being mechanical writeoffs when they otherwise still run and drive. They will be MoT failures, and willl require fixing at main dealer only.
The one abiding Brexit bonus is that nearly a decade on, Remainers are still desperate to prove that there are no Brexit bonuses...
A bold claim under an article by a Remainer pointing out a Brexit bonus!
Seriously, I think there is a case for saying we did the rest of the EU a big favor by showing how effing stupid it was to leave the world's largest and most successful free trade association. Shame we had to pay the price, but from a broadly European standpoint you could well say Brexit was a good thing.
Absolutely, we did the rest of the EU a massive favour. Given the rise of global bullies like Trump, Putin and Xi I don't think anyone else in Europe would want to be as lonely as we are right now.
Given that EU foreign and defence policy requires the approval of Viktor Orban I'm not seeing the advantages.
On a related note do those people who advocate a EU defence role understand that it would mean paying more to get less ?
That is the policy of the Greens for those PBers who have expressed their interest in the party recently.
The overall spend for a joint defence capability for a region should be less than the aggregate spend of each part of the region doing it for themselves. Synergies, economies of scale etc.
Case in point at the moment. The NL is replacing a large number of their naval vessels on pretty well the same timetable as our navy. There's a big overlap in capabilities for a uber of them.
Neither of us is even considering joint procurement.
I think we might want to do a bit more proofing of headers.
From what I could decipher, I wouldn't call it a benefit, but I can't say I'm remotely concerned whether EU member states wish to remain in the EU - that's their affair, that thankfully doesn't concern us any more.
As I mentioned yesterday, Remainers are too damaged to debate sensibly on this issue. Even with the utter dysfunction of the British State, and the parking of any meaningful post-Brexit reforms (getting rid of legally binding bat tunnels that would have saved £100mn springs to mind), the significant saving on membership fees (when the Government has shit all money), the lack of liability for EU debt, and not being subject to new EU laws, are vast Brexit benefits that so far even Starmer hasn't managed to fuck up. Yet they will still stick their fingers in their ears and scream FIND ME ONE BENEFIT OF LEAVING. You can only give them a kindly look and move on.
Isn't this fantastic news? It just needs to be endorsed by other forces.
"Met to end all non-crime hate investigations Force says officers ‘should not be policing toxic culture-war debates’ after dropping case against Graham Linehan"
The one abiding Brexit bonus is that nearly a decade on, Remainers are still desperate to prove that there are no Brexit bonuses...
A bold claim under an article by a Remainer pointing out a Brexit bonus!
Seriously, I think there is a case for saying we did the rest of the EU a big favor by showing how effing stupid it was to leave the world's largest and most successful free trade association. Shame we had to pay the price, but from a broadly European standpoint you could well say Brexit was a good thing.
Absolutely, we did the rest of the EU a massive favour. Given the rise of global bullies like Trump, Putin and Xi I don't think anyone else in Europe would want to be as lonely as we are right now.
Given that EU foreign and defence policy requires the approval of Viktor Orban I'm not seeing the advantages.
Not for much longer, I suspect. (And that not only because he's likely to lose power.)
I've been reading comments like that for the past three years.
When the EU forces Ireland to increase defence spending and deploy troops to Eastern Europe will be the day it can be taken seriously on defence matters.
If the EU decided to organise it's defence on a Eurozone-style basis, where willing countries pooled their resources and policy without waiting for every country to join in, I think it could create something serious, just like the Euro.
I don't think that's likely to happen, because I don't think Poland is going to want to trust its defence decision-making to others, and if Poland isn't involved then it's pointless. But forcing Ireland to contribute isn't the yardstick for seriousness for the EU as a whole.
Poland plus the Scands and Balts (and potentially us) would provide a useful core.
Isn't this fantastic news? It just needs to be endorsed by other forces.
"Met to end all non-crime hate investigations Force says officers ‘should not be policing toxic culture-war debates’ after dropping case against Graham Linehan"
How come "culturally coherent" hasn't been called out as anti-Semitic? Because it won't stop at the dog whistled group that's for sure. Just as wishing to deport illegal law breakers wasn't quite enough for many.
Katie Lams grandparents were Jewish refugees from Europe prewar.
Perhaps that makes her remarks even more gruesome, as many of the objections to those refugees in the 1930s were about "cultural coherence".
One of the really creepy bits of the Lam interview that started all the hoohhah was her recollection of teenage Katie arguing with her grandfather about the wisdom of allowing immigration.
The only way I can process it is that she sees herself as elite enough that the leopards wouldn't dare eat her face off. At best, it makes her incredibly silly.
The only objective for the Tories at the next election is to hang on to second place as the leading party to the right of Labour.
They will say anything and do anything to achieve that goal. If they achieve it then Farage will be 70 by the time of the general election afterwards (in 2034), and the Tories can reasonably hope that FPTP will make them the main choice for voters wishing to be rid of Labour.
The danger is that this strategy is doomed to failure, and all they're achieving is to make BNP policy more widely acceptable to Reform's benefit. No-one will believe that the Tories will reverse the immigration that happened when they were in government.
Lam is of course a long standing ally of Jenrick, if Jenrick became Tory leader before the next GE the Tories may as well merge with Farage's Reform anyway as there now looks to be little difference between Jenrick and Farage. Indeed Jenrick is 20 years younger than Farage and clearly wants to be Farage's successor as leader of the populist nationalist right and Farage all but anointed Jenrick his heir when he praised Jenrick's conference speech on his GB news show.
The danger for Kemi is if she goes further and further down the Jenrick policy route as she has over leaving the ECHR, scrapping net zero and now deporting immigrants, then Jenrick supporters will say they may as well have him do it more articulately and with more energy than she can.
If she sees significant Tory losses in the May local and devolved elections and the Tories remain at 15 to 20% in the polls she almost certainly will face a VONC and lose it. Most Tory MPs would then I suspect back Cleverly over Jenrick, probably by coronation, given the failure of Kemi's Jenrick lite policy. Some former Kemi backing MPs are also starting to move to Cleverly to stop Jenrick. Cleverly could then at least put clear blue water with Farage and Reform as well as Starmer and Labour and also would be more likely to get Labour and LD tactical votes in Conservative held seats to beat Reform
You seem to have become a Cleverly fan and, but for his own bad gaming of the election for leader he would have won
Your post is sensible and I would be happy to see Cleverly win and let Jenrick and Lam join Reform, their natural home
I think for the next general election Cleverly would be the only viable alternative to Kemi to take on Farage as well as Starmer yes.
Lam it should be noted is not in Kemi's Shadow Cabinet and backed Jenrick for leader last year
The one abiding Brexit bonus is that nearly a decade on, Remainers are still desperate to prove that there are no Brexit bonuses...
A bold claim under an article by a Remainer pointing out a Brexit bonus!
Seriously, I think there is a case for saying we did the rest of the EU a big favor by showing how effing stupid it was to leave the world's largest and most successful free trade association. Shame we had to pay the price, but from a broadly European standpoint you could well say Brexit was a good thing.
Absolutely, we did the rest of the EU a massive favour. Given the rise of global bullies like Trump, Putin and Xi I don't think anyone else in Europe would want to be as lonely as we are right now.
Given that EU foreign and defence policy requires the approval of Viktor Orban I'm not seeing the advantages.
On a related note do those people who advocate a EU defence role understand that it would mean paying more to get less ?
That is the policy of the Greens for those PBers who have expressed their interest in the party recently.
The overall spend for a joint defence capability for a region should be less than the aggregate spend of each part of the region doing it for themselves. Synergies, economies of scale etc.
In reality it often produces greater inefficiencies and blocked decision making.
An organisation is often only as strong as its weakest member.
So imagine a defence agreement where country A provides X, country B provides Y and country C provides Z.
Now what happens if one of the countries then refuses to join an operation ? The other two countries may not be able to operate either as they don't have the full capability without the third country.
The big one from the Ukraine War has been the issue of rights over the weapons you’ve bought.
If you incorporate technology or develop multinationally, this builds in vetos.
The South Koreans have been cleaning up on sales, because their terms for resale are pre-defined and short. Don’t resell to North Korea, pretty much.
So I bought a Chinese car and it has all these totally broken safety features that you can't turn off (or you can but they come back on again when you reboot the car) like showing a really annoying flashing 40km/h icon when you're on the motorway and it sees a speed limit sign on a slip-road. Apparently these are due to Euro NCAP regulations. I'm considering starting a campaign for China and Japan to leave the EU.
Good luck with jailbreaking your car!
My current plan if I am unable to reconfigure the global world order is to make a little round sticker and stick it to the screen.
That’s the Hillbilly way of dealing with that darn check engine light that won’t go off.
I had that a few years and cars ago. A minor rear end shunt for which I accepted 500 quid from the insurance (and assumed no damage) led to the engine warning light coming on. Reset it and it would come on again after 9 miles. No fault was ever found, just a dodgy sensor. The garage even suggested the black tape...
The problem with this is it can put the car into limp mode with no fix available. My friend's perfectly serviceable Fiesta met this fate despite lots of trips to the mechanic.
I’ve said a few times that “peak car” was about a decade ago.
Modern “safety” technology and emissions stuff is going to lead to a lot of more modern cars being mechanical writeoffs when they otherwise still run and drive. They will be MoT failures, and willl require fixing at main dealer only.
I don't think the actual regulations are the issue; it's just that the car companies have worked out it's another way to fleece their customers.
The one abiding Brexit bonus is that nearly a decade on, Remainers are still desperate to prove that there are no Brexit bonuses...
A bold claim under an article by a Remainer pointing out a Brexit bonus!
Seriously, I think there is a case for saying we did the rest of the EU a big favor by showing how effing stupid it was to leave the world's largest and most successful free trade association. Shame we had to pay the price, but from a broadly European standpoint you could well say Brexit was a good thing.
Absolutely, we did the rest of the EU a massive favour. Given the rise of global bullies like Trump, Putin and Xi I don't think anyone else in Europe would want to be as lonely as we are right now.
Given that EU foreign and defence policy requires the approval of Viktor Orban I'm not seeing the advantages.
Not for much longer, I suspect. (And that not only because he's likely to lose power.)
I've been reading comments like that for the past three years.
When the EU forces Ireland to increase defence spending and deploy troops to Eastern Europe will be the day it can be taken seriously on defence matters.
Really ? This, for example, is quite new (and not irrelevant to our future intentions).
So I bought a Chinese car and it has all these totally broken safety features that you can't turn off (or you can but they come back on again when you reboot the car) like showing a really annoying flashing 40km/h icon when you're on the motorway and it sees a speed limit sign on a slip-road. Apparently these are due to Euro NCAP regulations. I'm considering starting a campaign for China and Japan to leave the EU.
Good luck with jailbreaking your car!
My current plan if I am unable to reconfigure the global world order is to make a little round sticker and stick it to the screen.
That’s the Hillbilly way of dealing with that darn check engine light that won’t go off.
I had that a few years and cars ago. A minor rear end shunt for which I accepted 500 quid from the insurance (and assumed no damage) led to the engine warning light coming on. Reset it and it would come on again after 9 miles. No fault was ever found, just a dodgy sensor. The garage even suggested the black tape...
The problem with this is it can put the car into limp mode with no fix available. My friend's perfectly serviceable Fiesta met this fate despite lots of trips to the mechanic.
Yes, I had that too with my Fiesta - the limp mode kicked in repeatedly for no apparent reason, and the problem was only eventually solved by replacement of the testing system. The ability to switch off limp mode if one doesn't believe the warning would be a strong sales argument when I get round to replacing it, but perhaps that's illegal? I hired a car recently when my Fiesta was in the garage, and it bombarded me with messages about every real or imagined infringement, from driving at 21 in a 20 mph zone to straying over the lane boundary in a wide road at night. Some of the messages were reasonable, but the cumulative effect was to ignore them all. Is that a feature of all new cars?
I don't think those figures mean much - I don't know if "Europe" is in the political background as much as it was for us from rebates via Bruges via Maastricht to the Euro to Lisbon etc. We had 35 years of Europe being in our politics from Thatcher to Major to Blair to Brown to Cameron - each one of them had "issues" with the EEC and later the EU.
Arguably, it destroyed the Conservative Party - now, whether you think that's another "dividend" or not is up to you but I'm certain the party would not be where it is now otherwise but every party had a fracture on this issue of some degree.
Claims of the death of the Tory party are massively premature. They were in government last year and lost an election after 14 years in power. People were and still are sick of them. Add in the purge of the pro Europeans and a lot of ‘talent’ and centrism has gone from the MP roster. But. They are still polling more than Ed Daley’s apparently hugely sucessful Lib Dem’s, and pretty close to the party who won a huge majority last year.
Those who would welcome the extinction of conservatism should be careful what they wish. Conservative politics isn’t right wing nastiness. It’s personal responsibility, a state which lets individuals get on with their lives, but includes a safety net for those who struggle. It believes that those who can work, should. It believes in wealth creation, which aids all.
And if you have no conservatives, you risk being left with Reform.
There speaks a loyal Conservative.
The Conservatives clearly aren't "dead" but they aren't well - look at the results in Surrey last week. Towns like Caterham and Whyteleafe were once strongholds of the party - now, it's not just they are a close second to the LDs, they are a poor third .
Yes, you can be as waspish about the LDs as you like but in their historical context, 72 seats is a success, albeit for the most part built on the Conservative Party's collapse (but you can say the same about Labour, Reform and Green - we are all picking over the corpse of a once formidable electoral winning machine).
It’s personal responsibility, a state which lets individuals get on with their lives, but includes a safety net for those who struggle. It believes that those who can work, should. It believes in wealth creation, which aids all.
As the cobbler would tell you, time wounds all heels and in a couple of decades, there may be an opportunity for a "new" Conservative Party, predicated on the old principles of one nation Conservatism, to emerge and in all probability return to Government but that requires a clearout of augean proportions both of who are in the Party now and of their half-baked thinking.
I'm not a conservative, I'm a centrist who hangs to the right. I voted Lib Dem at the last election, voted to remain, despite being sceptical of the EU political project (something Ydoethur has made an excellent point above).
We seem to have very short memories on here. How long ago was it that Labour was dead? Yet now they are in power with a whopping majority. Of course the current Tory party is struggling. They were in power for 14 years, culminating in covid (not their fault) and the war in Ukraine (not their fault). They are paying the price for that and are now making some really poor choices, desperately flailing for anything that stops the rot.
But the challenge for wider politics is that what once motivated anti-EU feeling (hence UKIP) is now driving Reform. A sense of failure from the traditional parties. And thats all of them. I think any one in Labour or the Lib Dems who believed that their success last year was down to their brilliance and campaigning and people thinking they have the right policies are somewhat mistaken. It was very much a get the Tories out vote, across the board.
Many on PB will not like it, but a large number of people in the country simply think that immigration is too high and that this is the reason for all their ills.
Thats almost certainly not true, but it doesn't stop them believing it. My neighbour completely unprompted talks to me about Farage - 'He's right!', he says. My neighbour doesn't talk about politics in general, but Farage, ever the populist has once again found the right scab to pick at. How the grown ups counter it is crucial. The Tories seem to think being like Reform is the way - I don't, personally. Politicians are meant to lead the country - at the moment too many are following what the voters 'think' they want.
But ultimately the way to kill Farage and Reform is to get the economy growing, get peoples lives improving. Get the good times back. And part of that is to acknowledge that if we are borrowing 20 Billion to pay the bills a month, maybe we need to stop some spending. And look better are taxing fairly.
A cogent and thoughtful response and not much with which anyone could disagtee.
Labour were out of office for 18 years and then 14 but they have a history of long periods of opposition as do the LDs, the Conservatives do not. Whether you think of them as "the natural party of Government" or not, the truth is the period out of office from 1997 to 2010 was the longest period of continuous opposition since the introduction of universal suffrage.
Yes, you could also argue, having won his mandate in December 2019, Boris was incredibly unfortunate to run into Covid but it happened on his watch as did the Russian invasion of the Ukraine and that's the thing about politics - if it's on your watch, it's on you.
There are facts about immigration and perceptions - IF the economy were growing at 4 or 5% per annum we wouldn't be talking about immigration or immigrants or at least not in the same way. It becomes an issue in harder economic times as in the 1970s with the rise of the National Front.
The Conservative Party, if it's serious about returning to power, needs to reconcile the anti-immigration and pro-business policies. Deporting potentially critical members of the work force won't sit well with a party supposedly supporting business and growing the economy.
So I bought a Chinese car and it has all these totally broken safety features that you can't turn off (or you can but they come back on again when you reboot the car) like showing a really annoying flashing 40km/h icon when you're on the motorway and it sees a speed limit sign on a slip-road. Apparently these are due to Euro NCAP regulations. I'm considering starting a campaign for China and Japan to leave the EU.
Good luck with jailbreaking your car!
My current plan if I am unable to reconfigure the global world order is to make a little round sticker and stick it to the screen.
That’s the Hillbilly way of dealing with that darn check engine light that won’t go off.
I had that a few years and cars ago. A minor rear end shunt for which I accepted 500 quid from the insurance (and assumed no damage) led to the engine warning light coming on. Reset it and it would come on again after 9 miles. No fault was ever found, just a dodgy sensor. The garage even suggested the black tape...
The problem with this is it can put the car into limp mode with no fix available. My friend's perfectly serviceable Fiesta met this fate despite lots of trips to the mechanic.
I’ve said a few times that “peak car” was about a decade ago.
Modern “safety” technology and emissions stuff is going to lead to a lot of more modern cars being mechanical writeoffs when they otherwise still run and drive. They will be MoT failures, and willl require fixing at main dealer only.
I don't think the actual regulations are the issue; it's just that the car companies have worked out it's another way to fleece their customers.
The regulations are that such devices are safety equipment, in the same category as seat belts and airbags. You need a dealer “computer” to set up the new equipment properly, and they’re too expensve for your average garage to buy for each manufacturer.
The one abiding Brexit bonus is that nearly a decade on, Remainers are still desperate to prove that there are no Brexit bonuses...
A bold claim under an article by a Remainer pointing out a Brexit bonus!
Seriously, I think there is a case for saying we did the rest of the EU a big favor by showing how effing stupid it was to leave the world's largest and most successful free trade association. Shame we had to pay the price, but from a broadly European standpoint you could well say Brexit was a good thing.
Absolutely, we did the rest of the EU a massive favour. Given the rise of global bullies like Trump, Putin and Xi I don't think anyone else in Europe would want to be as lonely as we are right now.
Given that EU foreign and defence policy requires the approval of Viktor Orban I'm not seeing the advantages.
Not for much longer, I suspect. (And that not only because he's likely to lose power.)
I've been reading comments like that for the past three years.
When the EU forces Ireland to increase defence spending and deploy troops to Eastern Europe will be the day it can be taken seriously on defence matters.
If the EU decided to organise it's defence on a Eurozone-style basis, where willing countries pooled their resources and policy without waiting for every country to join in, I think it could create something serious, just like the Euro.
I don't think that's likely to happen, because I don't think Poland is going to want to trust its defence decision-making to others, and if Poland isn't involved then it's pointless. But forcing Ireland to contribute isn't the yardstick for seriousness for the EU as a whole.
Poland plus the Scands and Balts (and potentially us) would provide a useful core.
JEF + Poland
Where JEF = Nordics + Baltics + UK + NL
One of the stumbling blocks for a deeper EU integration on defence is that some of the European countries most serious about defence aren't in the EU (i.e. UK and Norway). So, we're more likely to see developments with new structures, such as JEF.
But my point is that the EU can do things seriously on defence without unanimity. A lot can be done without Ireland and other nations that haven't yet got the memo on Russia.
So I bought a Chinese car and it has all these totally broken safety features that you can't turn off (or you can but they come back on again when you reboot the car) like showing a really annoying flashing 40km/h icon when you're on the motorway and it sees a speed limit sign on a slip-road. Apparently these are due to Euro NCAP regulations. I'm considering starting a campaign for China and Japan to leave the EU.
Good luck with jailbreaking your car!
My current plan if I am unable to reconfigure the global world order is to make a little round sticker and stick it to the screen.
That’s the Hillbilly way of dealing with that darn check engine light that won’t go off.
I had that a few years and cars ago. A minor rear end shunt for which I accepted 500 quid from the insurance (and assumed no damage) led to the engine warning light coming on. Reset it and it would come on again after 9 miles. No fault was ever found, just a dodgy sensor. The garage even suggested the black tape...
The problem with this is it can put the car into limp mode with no fix available. My friend's perfectly serviceable Fiesta met this fate despite lots of trips to the mechanic.
Yes, I had that too with my Fiesta - the limp mode kicked in repeatedly for no apparent reason, and the problem was only eventually solved by replacement of the testing system. The ability to switch off limp mode if one doesn't believe the warning would be a strong sales argument when I get round to replacing it, but perhaps that's illegal? I hired a car recently when my Fiesta was in the garage, and it bombarded me with messages about every real or imagined infringement, from driving at 21 in a 20 mph zone to straying over the lane boundary in a wide road at night. Some of the messages were reasonable, but the cumulative effect was to ignore them all. Is that a feature of all new cars?
The speed limit indicator would be more useful if it had a bit of margin for error. More of a "taking the piss" indicator. The lane thing is just annoying - and likely to be inducing phone use which is far more dangerous.
The limp mode is in theory a really useful feature but it looks like more cars are being ruined by it than saved.
So I bought a Chinese car and it has all these totally broken safety features that you can't turn off (or you can but they come back on again when you reboot the car) like showing a really annoying flashing 40km/h icon when you're on the motorway and it sees a speed limit sign on a slip-road. Apparently these are due to Euro NCAP regulations. I'm considering starting a campaign for China and Japan to leave the EU.
The fact you're not given a choice about whether these features are on or off is interesting. But not surprising.
How come "culturally coherent" hasn't been called out as anti-Semitic? Because it won't stop at the dog whistled group that's for sure. Just as wishing to deport illegal law breakers wasn't quite enough for many.
Katie Lams grandparents were Jewish refugees from Europe prewar.
Perhaps that makes her remarks even more gruesome, as many of the objections to those refugees in the 1930s were about "cultural coherence".
One of the really creepy bits of the Lam interview that started all the hoohhah was her recollection of teenage Katie arguing with her grandfather about the wisdom of allowing immigration.
The only way I can process it is that she sees herself as elite enough that the leopards wouldn't dare eat her face off. At best, it makes her incredibly silly.
How come "culturally coherent" hasn't been called out as anti-Semitic? Because it won't stop at the dog whistled group that's for sure. Just as wishing to deport illegal law breakers wasn't quite enough for many.
Katie Lams grandparents were Jewish refugees from Europe prewar.
Perhaps that makes her remarks even more gruesome, as many of the objections to those refugees in the 1930s were about "cultural coherence".
One of the really creepy bits of the Lam interview that started all the hoohhah was her recollection of teenage Katie arguing with her grandfather about the wisdom of allowing immigration.
The only way I can process it is that she sees herself as elite enough that the leopards wouldn't dare eat her face off. At best, it makes her incredibly silly.
Katie Lam.... 4 decades on the future of the Conservative party is Harvey Proctor in drag. It's not just dead, it's started to really stink
The only objective for the Tories at the next election is to hang on to second place as the leading party to the right of Labour.
They will say anything and do anything to achieve that goal. If they achieve it then Farage will be 70 by the time of the general election afterwards (in 2034), and the Tories can reasonably hope that FPTP will make them the main choice for voters wishing to be rid of Labour.
The danger is that this strategy is doomed to failure, and all they're achieving is to make BNP policy more widely acceptable to Reform's benefit. No-one will believe that the Tories will reverse the immigration that happened when they were in government.
Lam is of course a long standing ally of Jenrick, if Jenrick became Tory leader before the next GE the Tories may as well merge with Farage's Reform anyway as there now looks to be little difference between Jenrick and Farage. Indeed Jenrick is 20 years younger than Farage and clearly wants to be Farage's successor as leader of the populist nationalist right and Farage all but anointed Jenrick his heir when he praised Jenrick's conference speech on his GB news show.
The danger for Kemi is if she goes further and further down the Jenrick policy route as she has over leaving the ECHR, scrapping net zero and now deporting immigrants, then Jenrick supporters will say they may as well have him do it more articulately and with more energy than she can.
If she sees significant Tory losses in the May local and devolved elections and the Tories remain at 15 to 20% in the polls she almost certainly will face a VONC and lose it. Most Tory MPs would then I suspect back Cleverly over Jenrick, probably by coronation, given the failure of Kemi's Jenrick lite policy. Some former Kemi backing MPs are also starting to move to Cleverly to stop Jenrick. Cleverly could then at least put clear blue water with Farage and Reform as well as Starmer and Labour and also would be more likely to get Labour and LD tactical votes in Conservative held seats to beat Reform
You seem to have become a Cleverly fan and, but for his own bad gaming of the election for leader he would have won
Your post is sensible and I would be happy to see Cleverly win and let Jenrick and Lam join Reform, their natural home
I think for the next general election Cleverly would be the only viable alternative to Kemi to take on Farage as well as Starmer yes.
Lam it should be noted is not in Kemi's Shadow Cabinet and backed Jenrick for leader last year
So I bought a Chinese car and it has all these totally broken safety features that you can't turn off (or you can but they come back on again when you reboot the car) like showing a really annoying flashing 40km/h icon when you're on the motorway and it sees a speed limit sign on a slip-road. Apparently these are due to Euro NCAP regulations. I'm considering starting a campaign for China and Japan to leave the EU.
Good luck with jailbreaking your car!
My current plan if I am unable to reconfigure the global world order is to make a little round sticker and stick it to the screen.
That’s the Hillbilly way of dealing with that darn check engine light that won’t go off.
I had that a few years and cars ago. A minor rear end shunt for which I accepted 500 quid from the insurance (and assumed no damage) led to the engine warning light coming on. Reset it and it would come on again after 9 miles. No fault was ever found, just a dodgy sensor. The garage even suggested the black tape...
The problem with this is it can put the car into limp mode with no fix available. My friend's perfectly serviceable Fiesta met this fate despite lots of trips to the mechanic.
Yes, I had that too with my Fiesta - the limp mode kicked in repeatedly for no apparent reason, and the problem was only eventually solved by replacement of the testing system. The ability to switch off limp mode if one doesn't believe the warning would be a strong sales argument when I get round to replacing it, but perhaps that's illegal? I hired a car recently when my Fiesta was in the garage, and it bombarded me with messages about every real or imagined infringement, from driving at 21 in a 20 mph zone to straying over the lane boundary in a wide road at night. Some of the messages were reasonable, but the cumulative effect was to ignore them all. Is that a feature of all new cars?
All those notifications sound like distractions from the road - a really bad idea.
The only objective for the Tories at the next election is to hang on to second place as the leading party to the right of Labour.
They will say anything and do anything to achieve that goal. If they achieve it then Farage will be 70 by the time of the general election afterwards (in 2034), and the Tories can reasonably hope that FPTP will make them the main choice for voters wishing to be rid of Labour.
The danger is that this strategy is doomed to failure, and all they're achieving is to make BNP policy more widely acceptable to Reform's benefit. No-one will believe that the Tories will reverse the immigration that happened when they were in government.
Lam is of course a long standing ally of Jenrick, if Jenrick became Tory leader before the next GE the Tories may as well merge with Farage's Reform anyway as there now looks to be little difference between Jenrick and Farage. Indeed Jenrick is 20 years younger than Farage and clearly wants to be Farage's successor as leader of the populist nationalist right and Farage all but anointed Jenrick his heir when he praised Jenrick's conference speech on his GB news show.
The danger for Kemi is if she goes further and further down the Jenrick policy route as she has over leaving the ECHR, scrapping net zero and now deporting immigrants, then Jenrick supporters will say they may as well have him do it more articulately and with more energy than she can.
If she sees significant Tory losses in the May local and devolved elections and the Tories remain at 15 to 20% in the polls she almost certainly will face a VONC and lose it. Most Tory MPs would then I suspect back Cleverly over Jenrick, probably by coronation, given the failure of Kemi's Jenrick lite policy. Some former Kemi backing MPs are also starting to move to Cleverly to stop Jenrick. Cleverly could then at least put clear blue water with Farage and Reform as well as Starmer and Labour and also would be more likely to get Labour and LD tactical votes in Conservative held seats to beat Reform
You seem to have become a Cleverly fan and, but for his own bad gaming of the election for leader he would have won
Your post is sensible and I would be happy to see Cleverly win and let Jenrick and Lam join Reform, their natural home
I think for the next general election Cleverly would be the only viable alternative to Kemi to take on Farage as well as Starmer yes.
Lam it should be noted is not in Kemi's Shadow Cabinet and backed Jenrick for leader last year
I agree with @HYUFD here. I think main (perhaps only) advantage Tories have over Reform is that they are a traditional party of govt and that voters will find it easier to imagine them in Govt than Reform (despite the Truss bequest).
Nigel is a skilled pot-stirrer and media personality but is few people's idea of a PM and Reform are few people's idea of a government-in-waiting. Although the UK MAGA crowd won't care about that, a lot of people will, particularly disenchanted former Tory voters in the Blue Wall.
However for the Tories to take advantage they really need a leader who looks prime ministerial. Sadly, it seems Kemi became leader too early, like Hague, so won't really do. Cleverly, OTOH, does look a quite reasonable fit. He's less wooden than Starmer, has a sense of humour, a bit of gravitas, and won't be rattled by Farage in debates. The best choice in the circs.
Admittedly, may not shift the dial much in the polls, but when it comes to actual polling day, and pencils are hovering over ballot papers, may well make a crucial difference.
So I bought a Chinese car and it has all these totally broken safety features that you can't turn off (or you can but they come back on again when you reboot the car) like showing a really annoying flashing 40km/h icon when you're on the motorway and it sees a speed limit sign on a slip-road. Apparently these are due to Euro NCAP regulations. I'm considering starting a campaign for China and Japan to leave the EU.
Good luck with jailbreaking your car!
My current plan if I am unable to reconfigure the global world order is to make a little round sticker and stick it to the screen.
That’s the Hillbilly way of dealing with that darn check engine light that won’t go off.
I had that a few years and cars ago. A minor rear end shunt for which I accepted 500 quid from the insurance (and assumed no damage) led to the engine warning light coming on. Reset it and it would come on again after 9 miles. No fault was ever found, just a dodgy sensor. The garage even suggested the black tape...
The problem with this is it can put the car into limp mode with no fix available. My friend's perfectly serviceable Fiesta met this fate despite lots of trips to the mechanic.
Yes, I had that too with my Fiesta - the limp mode kicked in repeatedly for no apparent reason, and the problem was only eventually solved by replacement of the testing system. The ability to switch off limp mode if one doesn't believe the warning would be a strong sales argument when I get round to replacing it, but perhaps that's illegal? I hired a car recently when my Fiesta was in the garage, and it bombarded me with messages about every real or imagined infringement, from driving at 21 in a 20 mph zone to straying over the lane boundary in a wide road at night. Some of the messages were reasonable, but the cumulative effect was to ignore them all. Is that a feature of all new cars?
Alarm overload is a well known phenomenon impacting control room operators (aka "panel men") on process plants. When you have alarm saturation, and 90% can be ignored, you end up ignoring the 10% that require intervention.
Looks like the lessons have not been shared with the car industry.
So I bought a Chinese car and it has all these totally broken safety features that you can't turn off (or you can but they come back on again when you reboot the car) like showing a really annoying flashing 40km/h icon when you're on the motorway and it sees a speed limit sign on a slip-road. Apparently these are due to Euro NCAP regulations. I'm considering starting a campaign for China and Japan to leave the EU.
Good luck with jailbreaking your car!
My current plan if I am unable to reconfigure the global world order is to make a little round sticker and stick it to the screen.
That’s the Hillbilly way of dealing with that darn check engine light that won’t go off.
I had that a few years and cars ago. A minor rear end shunt for which I accepted 500 quid from the insurance (and assumed no damage) led to the engine warning light coming on. Reset it and it would come on again after 9 miles. No fault was ever found, just a dodgy sensor. The garage even suggested the black tape...
The problem with this is it can put the car into limp mode with no fix available. My friend's perfectly serviceable Fiesta met this fate despite lots of trips to the mechanic.
Yes, I had that too with my Fiesta - the limp mode kicked in repeatedly for no apparent reason, and the problem was only eventually solved by replacement of the testing system. The ability to switch off limp mode if one doesn't believe the warning would be a strong sales argument when I get round to replacing it, but perhaps that's illegal? I hired a car recently when my Fiesta was in the garage, and it bombarded me with messages about every real or imagined infringement, from driving at 21 in a 20 mph zone to straying over the lane boundary in a wide road at night. Some of the messages were reasonable, but the cumulative effect was to ignore them all. Is that a feature of all new cars?
The speed limit indicator would be more useful if it had a bit of margin for error. More of a "taking the piss" indicator. The lane thing is just annoying - and likely to be inducing phone use which is far more dangerous.
Until the ISA regulations came in, you could set it to trigger, in those cars that had it, at 5mph above the limit, but I believe that facility is now no longer available?
The only objective for the Tories at the next election is to hang on to second place as the leading party to the right of Labour.
They will say anything and do anything to achieve that goal. If they achieve it then Farage will be 70 by the time of the general election afterwards (in 2034), and the Tories can reasonably hope that FPTP will make them the main choice for voters wishing to be rid of Labour.
The danger is that this strategy is doomed to failure, and all they're achieving is to make BNP policy more widely acceptable to Reform's benefit. No-one will believe that the Tories will reverse the immigration that happened when they were in government.
Lam is of course a long standing ally of Jenrick, if Jenrick became Tory leader before the next GE the Tories may as well merge with Farage's Reform anyway as there now looks to be little difference between Jenrick and Farage. Indeed Jenrick is 20 years younger than Farage and clearly wants to be Farage's successor as leader of the populist nationalist right and Farage all but anointed Jenrick his heir when he praised Jenrick's conference speech on his GB news show.
The danger for Kemi is if she goes further and further down the Jenrick policy route as she has over leaving the ECHR, scrapping net zero and now deporting immigrants, then Jenrick supporters will say they may as well have him do it more articulately and with more energy than she can.
If she sees significant Tory losses in the May local and devolved elections and the Tories remain at 15 to 20% in the polls she almost certainly will face a VONC and lose it. Most Tory MPs would then I suspect back Cleverly over Jenrick, probably by coronation, given the failure of Kemi's Jenrick lite policy. Some former Kemi backing MPs are also starting to move to Cleverly to stop Jenrick. Cleverly could then at least put clear blue water with Farage and Reform as well as Starmer and Labour and also would be more likely to get Labour and LD tactical votes in Conservative held seats to beat Reform
You seem to have become a Cleverly fan and, but for his own bad gaming of the election for leader he would have won
Your post is sensible and I would be happy to see Cleverly win and let Jenrick and Lam join Reform, their natural home
I think for the next general election Cleverly would be the only viable alternative to Kemi to take on Farage as well as Starmer yes.
Lam it should be noted is not in Kemi's Shadow Cabinet and backed Jenrick for leader last year
I agree with @HYUFD here. I think main (perhaps only) advantage Tories have over Reform is that they are a traditional party of govt and that voters will find it easier to imagine them in Govt than Reform (despite the Truss bequest).
Nigel is a skilled pot-stirrer and media personality but is few people's idea of a PM and Reform are few people's idea of a government-in-waiting. Although the UK MAGA crowd won't care about that, a lot of people will, particularly disenchanted former Tory voters in the Blue Wall.
However for the Tories to take advantage they really need a leader who looks prime ministerial. Sadly, it seems Kemi became leader too early, like Hague, so won't really do. Cleverly, OTOH, does look a quite reasonable fit. He's less wooden than Starmer, has a sense of humour, a bit of gravitas, and won't be rattled by Farage in debates. The best choice in the circs.
Admittedly, may not shift the dial much in the polls, but when it comes to actual polling day, and pencils are hovering over ballot papers, may well make a crucial difference.
Indeed and Cleverly is a heavyweight, former Home and Foreign Secretary, has a bit of charisma and warmth.
I can also see some Labour and LD voters who live in seats the Tories held last year holding their nose and voting for a Cleverly led Conservatives to beat Reform but I can't see as many tactically voting for a Kemi led Conservatives and barely any would tactically vote for a Jenrick led Conservatives. Not least as a Jenrick led Conservatives may as well merge with Reform anyway
The only objective for the Tories at the next election is to hang on to second place as the leading party to the right of Labour.
They will say anything and do anything to achieve that goal. If they achieve it then Farage will be 70 by the time of the general election afterwards (in 2034), and the Tories can reasonably hope that FPTP will make them the main choice for voters wishing to be rid of Labour.
The danger is that this strategy is doomed to failure, and all they're achieving is to make BNP policy more widely acceptable to Reform's benefit. No-one will believe that the Tories will reverse the immigration that happened when they were in government.
Lam is of course a long standing ally of Jenrick, if Jenrick became Tory leader before the next GE the Tories may as well merge with Farage's Reform anyway as there now looks to be little difference between Jenrick and Farage. Indeed Jenrick is 20 years younger than Farage and clearly wants to be Farage's successor as leader of the populist nationalist right and Farage all but anointed Jenrick his heir when he praised Jenrick's conference speech on his GB news show.
The danger for Kemi is if she goes further and further down the Jenrick policy route as she has over leaving the ECHR, scrapping net zero and now deporting immigrants, then Jenrick supporters will say they may as well have him do it more articulately and with more energy than she can.
If she sees significant Tory losses in the May local and devolved elections and the Tories remain at 15 to 20% in the polls she almost certainly will face a VONC and lose it. Most Tory MPs would then I suspect back Cleverly over Jenrick, probably by coronation, given the failure of Kemi's Jenrick lite policy. Some former Kemi backing MPs are also starting to move to Cleverly to stop Jenrick. Cleverly could then at least put clear blue water with Farage and Reform as well as Starmer and Labour and also would be more likely to get Labour and LD tactical votes in Conservative held seats to beat Reform
You seem to have become a Cleverly fan and, but for his own bad gaming of the election for leader he would have won
Your post is sensible and I would be happy to see Cleverly win and let Jenrick and Lam join Reform, their natural home
I think for the next general election Cleverly would be the only viable alternative to Kemi to take on Farage as well as Starmer yes.
Lam it should be noted is not in Kemi's Shadow Cabinet and backed Jenrick for leader last year
Has Badenoch rejected Lam's obnoxious comments ?
I suspect Cleverly backing Tory MPs and some moderates who backed Kemi for leader last year will be watching what she says closely on Lam's remarks
So I bought a Chinese car and it has all these totally broken safety features that you can't turn off (or you can but they come back on again when you reboot the car) like showing a really annoying flashing 40km/h icon when you're on the motorway and it sees a speed limit sign on a slip-road. Apparently these are due to Euro NCAP regulations. I'm considering starting a campaign for China and Japan to leave the EU.
I flagged this a while back - it's down to EU compulsory ISA regulations, which despite Brexit the car manufacturers aren't willing to vary for models sold into the UK. The most annoying feature is that you have to turn the feature off every time you start the car (and the EU intends to monitor drivers' usage of this with the implied threat of removing the ability to turn it off, down the line), although some manufacturers like BMW and Mercedes have made it easier for drivers to disable with one-click or one-button actions by the driver; the Asian makers, presumably less willing to undermine their reputation for safety, leave you having to scroll through multiple screens on settings menus to do so.
It's the main reason I haven't replaced my current car with a new one, as I originally intended to do this year or next. I can't believe I'm the only one, suggesting that the new rules will hit new car sales. And any motoring forum is full of posts from angry and frustrated drivers who have got a new car and can't stop it beeping at them all the time.
The bottom line is what evidence eventually emerges that compulsory ISA has reduced accident and road casualty rates. Meanwhile, clever though the systems are, even if you never stray an mph/kmh above any speed limit, there are tons of things that mislead your car into getting the speed limit wrong, including speed signs on slip or parallel roads in France, signs imposing lower speed limits when there is fog in Italy, (sometimes) the speed signs with yellow backgrounds in Finland and Sweden, and the Norwegian habit of not signing the return to normal speed limits after roadworks, and (sometimes) speed limits up on digital gantries and the like.
Thank you for confirming what I was wondering. I hired a car in Europe this summer, and for the first time had all these wonderful features and it was utterly annoying. And also dangerous, several times the lane control made me swerve because I thought I'd hit something and over corrected - luckily there was nothing coming the other way. Oddly, the one time I actually hit the kerb it didn't try to stop me.
There is no way I'm buying a car with all these features unless I can turn them off once for all time. I'm looking forward to a manufacturer who is prepared to give us a real Brexit bonus when I buy a new EV in about 5 years' time.
Otherwise I will have to ensure the 2nd hand car I'm about to buy to tide me over until then will last indefinitely!
The Farewell Dear residents of Highgate, of the neighbouring villages, of North London, and of London in general, Don Ciccio – Osteria Italiana has closed today, exactly six years after its opening in October 2019. We have closed due to a lack of customers.
It wasn’t enough to be Traveller’s Choice 2023 – 2024 – 2025 on Tripadvisor.
It wasn’t enough to be told we had one of the best pizzas in London.
It wasn’t enough to hold 4.7 stars on Google, with 700 reviews, for every one of those six years.
Nor to change our menu each season, roaming through the flavours of Italy.
We are guests in this country, and as guests, we will not complain. We’ll simply say: addio. And now, with gratitude:
To our staff — Roberto, Diego, Daniele, the many waiters and chefs who came and went — thank you for your passion, and for enduring the humiliation of entire evenings with an empty dining room.
To our faithful customers — we’ll miss you. Perhaps one day we’ll meet again, in Italy.
To the community of Highgate and its neighbours —thank you for never supporting us, not even once.
To those we served during lockdown, when we were the only restaurant open, thank you for never visiting us once the pandemic ended.
To the Highgate Society — thank you for never replying to any of our proposals for collaboration.
To those who lived a few doors away yet ordered delivery from somewhere else — thank you for your commitment to distance.
In short: thank you all for supporting us so perfectly.
WE MAY BE THE FIRST ITALIAN RESTAURANT TO CLOSE... ...not for bad food, bad reviews, or bad luck — but for the sheer indifference of our neighbours.
To those who said, back in 2019, “they’ll close within three months” —congratulations ! You were only off by five years and nine months. We’re proud to have served the elderly, the children, the families, the lonely, the joyful and the broken alike. At least we did our duty.
It’s only a drop — soon it will dry. Unless, of course, it’s the beginning of a storm.
The only objective for the Tories at the next election is to hang on to second place as the leading party to the right of Labour.
They will say anything and do anything to achieve that goal. If they achieve it then Farage will be 70 by the time of the general election afterwards (in 2034), and the Tories can reasonably hope that FPTP will make them the main choice for voters wishing to be rid of Labour.
The danger is that this strategy is doomed to failure, and all they're achieving is to make BNP policy more widely acceptable to Reform's benefit. No-one will believe that the Tories will reverse the immigration that happened when they were in government.
Lam is of course a long standing ally of Jenrick, if Jenrick became Tory leader before the next GE the Tories may as well merge with Farage's Reform anyway as there now looks to be little difference between Jenrick and Farage. Indeed Jenrick is 20 years younger than Farage and clearly wants to be Farage's successor as leader of the populist nationalist right and Farage all but anointed Jenrick his heir when he praised Jenrick's conference speech on his GB news show.
The danger for Kemi is if she goes further and further down the Jenrick policy route as she has over leaving the ECHR, scrapping net zero and now deporting immigrants, then Jenrick supporters will say they may as well have him do it more articulately and with more energy than she can.
If she sees significant Tory losses in the May local and devolved elections and the Tories remain at 15 to 20% in the polls she almost certainly will face a VONC and lose it. Most Tory MPs would then I suspect back Cleverly over Jenrick, probably by coronation, given the failure of Kemi's Jenrick lite policy. Some former Kemi backing MPs are also starting to move to Cleverly to stop Jenrick. Cleverly could then at least put clear blue water with Farage and Reform as well as Starmer and Labour and also would be more likely to get Labour and LD tactical votes in Conservative held seats to beat Reform
You seem to have become a Cleverly fan and, but for his own bad gaming of the election for leader he would have won
Your post is sensible and I would be happy to see Cleverly win and let Jenrick and Lam join Reform, their natural home
I think for the next general election Cleverly would be the only viable alternative to Kemi to take on Farage as well as Starmer yes.
Lam it should be noted is not in Kemi's Shadow Cabinet and backed Jenrick for leader last year
Has Badenoch rejected Lam's obnoxious comments ?
I suspect Cleverly backing Tory MPs and some moderates who backed Kemi for leader last year will be watching what she says closely on Lam's remarks
Comments
We seem to have very short memories on here. How long ago was it that Labour was dead? Yet now they are in power with a whopping majority. Of course the current Tory party is struggling. They were in power for 14 years, culminating in covid (not their fault) and the war in Ukraine (not their fault). They are paying the price for that and are now making some really poor choices, desperately flailing for anything that stops the rot.
But the challenge for wider politics is that what once motivated anti-EU feeling (hence UKIP) is now driving Reform. A sense of failure from the traditional parties. And thats all of them. I think any one in Labour or the Lib Dems who believed that their success last year was down to their brilliance and campaigning and people thinking they have the right policies are somewhat mistaken. It was very much a get the Tories out vote, across the board.
Many on PB will not like it, but a large number of people in the country simply think that immigration is too high and that this is the reason for all their ills.
Thats almost certainly not true, but it doesn't stop them believing it. My neighbour completely unprompted talks to me about Farage - 'He's right!', he says. My neighbour doesn't talk about politics in general, but Farage, ever the populist has once again found the right scab to pick at. How the grown ups counter it is crucial. The Tories seem to think being like Reform is the way - I don't, personally. Politicians are meant to lead the country - at the moment too many are following what the voters 'think' they want.
But ultimately the way to kill Farage and Reform is to get the economy growing, get peoples lives improving. Get the good times back. And part of that is to acknowledge that if we are borrowing 20 Billion to pay the bills a month, maybe we need to stop some spending. And look better are taxing fairly.
(And that not only because he's likely to lose power.)
https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/fcgi-bin/usercode.py?scotcontrol=N&CON=19&LAB=22&LIB=13&Reform=31&Green=10&UKIP=&TVCON=100&TVLAB=100&TVLIB=100&TVReform=100&TVGreen=100&TVUKIP=&SCOTCON=&SCOTLAB=&SCOTLIB=&SCOTReform=&SCOTGreen=&SCOTUKIP=&SCOTNAT=&display=AllChanged&regorseat=(none)&boundary=2024base
Is a bad idea.
Will continue to have been a bad idea.
When the EU forces Ireland to increase defence spending and deploy troops to Eastern Europe will be the day it can be taken seriously on defence matters.
https://x.com/faisalislam/status/1980912134578983242?s=61
I don't recall Mr Bowie's contributions regarding his own party's influence on the Scottish fishing industry, either pre or post Brexit (to get back on topic).
Some political Party is going to pick up the baton and beg them to let us back in. Labour the Lib Dems and the Greens probably. The United colours of the centre left.,,,,,,,,,,We'll promise to behave like civilised members this time and to leave our blackshirts at the door,,,,,
The danger for Kemi is if she goes further and further down the Jenrick policy route as she has over leaving the ECHR, scrapping net zero and now deporting immigrants, then Jenrick supporters will say they may as well have him do it more articulately and with more energy than she can.
If she sees significant Tory losses in the May local and devolved elections and the Tories remain at 15 to 20% in the polls she almost certainly will face a VONC and lose it. Most Tory MPs would then I suspect back Cleverly over Jenrick, probably by coronation, given the failure of Kemi's Jenrick lite policy. Some former Kemi backing MPs are also starting to move to Cleverly to stop Jenrick. Cleverly could then at least put clear blue water with Farage and Reform as well as Starmer and Labour and also would be more likely to get Labour and LD tactical votes in Conservative held seats to beat Reform
I don't think that's likely to happen, because I don't think Poland is going to want to trust its defence decision-making to others, and if Poland isn't involved then it's pointless. But forcing Ireland to contribute isn't the yardstick for seriousness for the EU as a whole.
If Labour had any understanding of auto-enrolled DC pensions they might realise that this matters to tens of millions of people.
Realises what I put at the top was not clear!
That you're drivelling on about 'blackshirts' when you have a FN deputy is baffling.
Remember flights carrying weapons to Ukraine having to fly round German airspace?
There is plenty wrong with suggesting that people who have arrived lawfully and lived here for decades need to be deported. Without giving any indication of criteria or process than do they fit in with Lam's view of coherence. That is just cheap racism that scares and unsettles millions of our citizens.
- the pitch for years has been to create a NATO like headquarters, but not spend more on defence. So you’d end up getting less actual defence, since you need to pay for the it
- Who decides? Would one country be able to veto action? Qualified majority?
The first problem may be going away. The second is not.
It is fairly clear that, if provided with a veto, Germany would have vetoed military aid from the EU to Ukraine before the invasion.
Hope its auto-braking and auto-lanechanging are more reliable.
It was pretty much only the UK and Poland that were 100% in on Day 1, there would have been weeks of meetings and QMV votes trying to get into everyone’s head the idea that there’s an actual war right on the EU’s doorstep.
Attitudes towards leaving the EU were always going to be more favourable in those countries polled - France, Italy, the Netherlands, Germany and Spain are in the Euro, so it's massively more expensive for them to leave, and the Eastern Europeans get gigantic subsidies from Brussels (though I am a bit surprised about Denmark, I must admit).
To determine whether or not our leaving the EU has affected other countries' attitudes towards leaving the EU, you can tell nothing whatever from a snapshot - you need to look at attitudes over time, and allow for many other factors that affect countries' attitudes, and that could also have shifted over time. Anything else is just speculation at best.
An organisation is often only as strong as its weakest member.
So imagine a defence agreement where country A provides X, country B provides Y and country C provides Z.
Now what happens if one of the countries then refuses to join an operation ? The other two countries may not be able to operate either as they don't have the full capability without the third country.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cdjryg38elzo
An EU defence capability only works if there is broad consensus about boosting defence spending, hitting your enemies hard, and taking casualties.
Being in a Customs Union again like the LDs want means we could no longer do our own trade deals and the LDs long term aim of rejoining the single market too (also the aim of the Greens who even want ultimately still full rejoin) would mean we would have free movement from the EU again.
Albeit by 2028 that would be more viable, with 7 years of no EEA free movement to the UK, which would match the 7 years of no free movement from the new EU accession countries we could have had in 2004 had Blair imposed transition controls which may have avoided Brexit in the first place
I flagged this a while back - it's down to EU compulsory ISA regulations, which despite Brexit the car manufacturers aren't willing to vary for models sold into the UK. The most annoying feature is that you have to turn the feature off every time you start the car (and the EU intends to monitor drivers' usage of this with the implied threat of removing the ability to turn it off, down the line), although some manufacturers like BMW and Mercedes have made it easier for drivers to disable with one-click or one-button actions by the driver; the Asian makers, presumably less willing to undermine their reputation for safety, leave you having to scroll through multiple screens on settings menus to do so.
It's the main reason I haven't replaced my current car with a new one, as I originally intended to do this year or next. I can't believe I'm the only one, suggesting that the new rules will hit new car sales. And any motoring forum is full of posts from angry and frustrated drivers who have got a new car and can't stop it beeping at them all the time.
The bottom line is what evidence eventually emerges that compulsory ISA has reduced accident and road casualty rates. Meanwhile, clever though the systems are, even if you never stray an mph/kmh above any speed limit, there are tons of things that mislead your car into getting the speed limit wrong, including speed signs on slip or parallel roads in France, signs imposing lower speed limits when there is fog in Italy, (sometimes) the speed signs with yellow backgrounds in Finland and Sweden, and the Norwegian habit of not signing the return to normal speed limits after roadworks, and (sometimes) speed limits up on digital gantries and the like.
Why would I consider voting for this abomination of a party in any circumstances for the rest of my life?
Albeit it risks losing some redwall voters who are economically more big government even if anti immigration back to Labour and some Thatcherites who liked Kemi's stamp duty cut may return to the Tories
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/nigel-farage-reform-manifesto-tax-cuts-economy-b2844223.html
But she only got the job a year ago.
This, for example, is quite new (and not irrelevant to our future intentions).
Commission backs Costa’s plan to sidestep Hungary’s veto over Ukraine’s EU bid
https://www.politico.eu/article/commission-backs-council-president-costa-plan-sidestep-hungary-veto-ukraine-eu-bid/
Similarly, they're finally taking steps to block the supply of Russian gas to Hungary.
And, of course, Orban is quite likely to lose power anyway.
Your post is sensible and I would be happy to see Cleverly win and let Jenrick and Lam join Reform, their natural home
Very minor compared to the waste that goes on every day in the country.
Lam it should be noted is not in Kemi's Shadow Cabinet and backed Jenrick for leader last year
Modern “safety” technology and emissions stuff is going to lead to a lot of more modern cars being mechanical writeoffs when they otherwise still run and drive. They will be MoT failures, and willl require fixing at main dealer only.
The NL is replacing a large number of their naval vessels on pretty well the same timetable as our navy.
There's a big overlap in capabilities for a uber of them.
Neither of us is even considering joint procurement.
From what I could decipher, I wouldn't call it a benefit, but I can't say I'm remotely concerned whether EU member states wish to remain in the EU - that's their affair, that thankfully doesn't concern us any more.
As I mentioned yesterday, Remainers are too damaged to debate sensibly on this issue. Even with the utter dysfunction of the British State, and the parking of any meaningful post-Brexit reforms (getting rid of legally binding bat tunnels that would have saved £100mn springs to mind), the significant saving on membership fees (when the Government has shit all money), the lack of liability for EU debt, and not being subject to new EU laws, are vast Brexit benefits that so far even Starmer hasn't managed to fuck up. Yet they will still stick their fingers in their ears and scream FIND ME ONE BENEFIT OF LEAVING. You can only give them a kindly look and move on.
"Met to end all non-crime hate investigations
Force says officers ‘should not be policing toxic culture-war debates’ after dropping case against Graham Linehan"
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/10/20/graham-linehan-hate-crime-case-dropped/?recomm_id=bec82051-c061-4ed4-bf1e-32363cc9df03
After all the bad news of recent weeks, a rare glimpse of light for the Chancellor.
The only way I can process it is that she sees herself as elite enough that the leopards wouldn't dare eat her face off. At best, it makes her incredibly silly.
We're lucky to get one at all.
If you incorporate technology or develop multinationally, this builds in vetos.
The South Koreans have been cleaning up on sales, because their terms for resale are pre-defined and short. Don’t resell to North Korea, pretty much.
More than three years of talk and still more talk.
And while Orban might lose power next year that's by no means certain:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2026_Hungarian_parliamentary_election
and his rival is another right-wing populist party unfriendly to Ukraine:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tisza_Party#Foreign_policy_and_immigration
Not to mention that Orban is not the only Putinist sympathiser in power or with possibility of coming to power in Europe.
Labour were out of office for 18 years and then 14 but they have a history of long periods of opposition as do the LDs, the Conservatives do not. Whether you think of them as "the natural party of Government" or not, the truth is the period out of office from 1997 to 2010 was the longest period of continuous opposition since the introduction of universal suffrage.
Yes, you could also argue, having won his mandate in December 2019, Boris was incredibly unfortunate to run into Covid but it happened on his watch as did the Russian invasion of the Ukraine and that's the thing about politics - if it's on your watch, it's on you.
There are facts about immigration and perceptions - IF the economy were growing at 4 or 5% per annum we wouldn't be talking about immigration or immigrants or at least not in the same way. It becomes an issue in harder economic times as in the 1970s with the rise of the National Front.
The Conservative Party, if it's serious about returning to power, needs to reconcile the anti-immigration and pro-business policies. Deporting potentially critical members of the work force won't sit well with a party supposedly supporting business and growing the economy.
Where JEF = Nordics + Baltics + UK + NL
One of the stumbling blocks for a deeper EU integration on defence is that some of the European countries most serious about defence aren't in the EU (i.e. UK and Norway). So, we're more likely to see developments with new structures, such as JEF.
But my point is that the EU can do things seriously on defence without unanimity. A lot can be done without Ireland and other nations that haven't yet got the memo on Russia.
The limp mode is in theory a really useful feature but it looks like more cars are being ruined by it than saved.
It's not just dead, it's started to really stink
Nigel is a skilled pot-stirrer and media personality but is few people's idea of a PM and Reform are few people's idea of a government-in-waiting. Although the UK MAGA crowd won't care about that, a lot of people will, particularly disenchanted former Tory voters in the Blue Wall.
However for the Tories to take advantage they really need a leader who looks prime ministerial. Sadly, it seems Kemi became leader too early, like Hague, so won't really do. Cleverly, OTOH, does look a quite reasonable fit. He's less wooden than Starmer, has a sense of humour, a bit of gravitas, and won't be rattled by Farage in debates. The best choice in the circs.
Admittedly, may not shift the dial much in the polls, but when it comes to actual polling day, and pencils are hovering over ballot papers, may well make a crucial difference.
Looks like the lessons have not been shared with the car industry.
The owners of Don Ciccio bid farewell after six years in business – but not before accusing locals of ‘sheer indifference’"
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/food-and-drink/news/don-ciccio-closes-in-highgate/?recomm_id=d426bab4-171e-40d9-89f8-1aa02e535a06
I can also see some Labour and LD voters who live in seats the Tories held last year holding their nose and voting for a Cleverly led Conservatives to beat Reform but I can't see as many tactically voting for a Kemi led Conservatives and barely any would tactically vote for a Jenrick led Conservatives. Not least as a Jenrick led Conservatives may as well merge with Reform anyway
It looks like those with significant private pensions will be taxed more by Reeves anyway
There is no way I'm buying a car with all these features unless I can turn them off once for all time. I'm looking forward to a manufacturer who is prepared to give us a real Brexit bonus when I buy a new EV in about 5 years' time.
Otherwise I will have to ensure the 2nd hand car I'm about to buy to tide me over until then will last indefinitely!
The Farewell
Dear residents of Highgate, of the neighbouring villages, of North London, and of London in general, Don Ciccio – Osteria Italiana has closed today, exactly six years after its opening in October 2019. We have closed due to a lack of customers.
- It wasn’t enough to be Traveller’s Choice 2023 – 2024 – 2025 on Tripadvisor.
- It wasn’t enough to be told we had one of the best pizzas in London.
- It wasn’t enough to hold 4.7 stars on Google, with 700 reviews, for every one of those six years.
- Nor to change our menu each season, roaming through the flavours of Italy.
We are guests in this country, and as guests, we will not complain. We’ll simply say: addio. And now, with gratitude:- To our staff — Roberto, Diego, Daniele, the many waiters and chefs who came and went — thank you for your passion, and for enduring the humiliation of entire evenings with an empty dining room.
- To our faithful customers — we’ll miss you. Perhaps one day we’ll meet again, in Italy.
- To the community of Highgate and its neighbours —thank you for never supporting us, not even once.
- To those we served during lockdown, when we were the only restaurant open, thank you for never visiting us once the pandemic ended.
- To the Highgate Society — thank you for never replying to any of our proposals for collaboration.
- To those who lived a few doors away yet ordered delivery from somewhere else — thank you for your commitment to distance.
In short: thank you all for supporting us so perfectly.WE MAY BE THE FIRST ITALIAN RESTAURANT TO CLOSE...
...not for bad food, bad reviews, or bad luck — but for the sheer indifference of our neighbours.
To those who said, back in 2019, “they’ll close within three months” —congratulations ! You were only off by five years and nine months. We’re proud to have served the elderly, the children, the families, the lonely, the joyful and the broken alike. At least we did our duty.
It’s only a drop — soon it will dry. Unless, of course, it’s the beginning of a storm.
Addio. Goodbye
https://www.donciccio-highgate.com/
https://www.newstatesman.com/ideas/2025/10/how-to-save-british-liberalism