The midterms are of course quite far off. However the crisis in the US economy is beginning to happen now, and we should not forget that most Americans support Ukraine and take a very dim view of Trump's pro Russian antics.
I could see a Republican split happening more quickly than the mid terms- MTG on the lunatic fringe of course has already gone, However we should note that traditional Republican members of Congress may also move against the Speaker. This would not itself be the end of Trump, but would stiffen resistance to him in the Congress and start to make the Executive more accountable- at least ending government by administrative dictatorship.
In a more extreme case- say a Wall Street collapse and the advent of the long feared Second Great Depression, then I could see far more radical things happen and more quickly, and all of this of course coming before what will soon look like an inevitable, crushing defeat in the midterms.
After the midterms I think we could very well see the House firmly in the hands of the Dems. Possibly the Senate too, and even if there are not 60 Dem Senators, I think there will be enough anti Trump Republican rebels to vote the articles of impeachment through the Senate.
At that point Trump probably goes "on health grounds" and a lame duck Vance administration serves out the term under the strict supervision of Congress with all the Trump cronies purged and under criminal investigation.
Increasingly I think Trump does not serve out his term- age, health, economic crisis and growing polical rebellion will see to him long before 2028.
So far we are seeing a swing against the Republicans. Not a wave. Not a tidal wave.
60 senators for the Democrats - that requires you to show your workings.
The Democrats are on course (60/40 probability) for a narrow majority in the House - but that will not block Trump from much.
Actually to be clear I was not predicting 60 Dem Senators- I am suggesting that several GOP Senators might vote for the articles of impeachment, if the crisis gets as bad as it very well might. Of course that does need a Dem majority in the Senate to actually introduce the articles of impeachment. This requires a net gain of four. To get that, I suggest that they hold what they have (not losing MI or GA for example, which 270 rates as toss ups). They take the GOP toss ups- NC, ME and they add OH, IA, NE and possibly even TX, and after Miami last night they may also have an outside shot at FL. This takes them to 52 plus two independents. In the face of the gathering Trump crisis, I could certainly see 6 GOP Senators break ranks, as the collapse of the administration becomes apparent. This is what happened in November 1973 to Richard Nixon.
BTW, by the actual midterms, I think the numbers will be much much worse for the Republicans, I am just extrapolating slightly from current forecasts. The midterms in my view will bring an unprecedented blood bath. Trump is already the most unpopular President in modern polling history, and I think you ain't seen nothing yet.
As many of us have been saying for a while it's time for Starmer to make clear he's going to distance himself unequivocally from Trump and all of his neo Nazi coterie. If you think Trumps unpopular in the US imagine how the citizenship of the UK and the EU feel about him. Leave Trump to Farage and his flag waving admirers and move on quickly and decisively. I'm in France but the stuff he said about Khan appeared on the news and is shocking ......
........and for Starmer to be silent on it is even more shocking
I’m no fan of Trump but ‘neo-Nazi’.
Where Trump is concerned there is serious derangement going down. Some seriously deranged takes. Including in this thread. You’d think the US is on the verge of becoming the next N Korea.
What I expect to happen. The US carries on for a year. The Dems flip the house. Trump is reigned in and limps on for two years and his ability to rule by executive order is diminished.
Starmer is doing the right thing on ECHR renegotiation and it seems they have significant support but may require unanimity. I'd suggest the UK and nine other countries pushing it should make it clear that if nothing happens, they will move to set up their own parallel version and leave the outdated one.
If the Midterms are held, MAGA lose control of the country. Many of them will go to jail.
Question - are they united enough to drive through the democratic renewal and cancel / postpone the elections? Or is MTG John the Baptist, leading the way for a series of Damascene conversions and mea culpas?
2026 is going to be some year...
With a big enough blue wave, it would have to be a full fledged armed coup. I don't think they yet have sufficient control of the state institutions to do that, but if they could, they probably would.
1. Choke off the blue wave now. Not safe to hold elections in blue places, the officials are terrorists 2. Flood blue places with troopers from red places 3. A few strategic extrajudicial murders to kick off the protests, to prove the blue lot are terrorist insurgents 4. Elections postponed. For safety.
To get away with that you need still close to 50% approval, if you are under 40% approval even if you have military support for now you risk revolution if you cancel elections permanently
@HYUFD, you are a decent chap, and that is an admirable thing to be. But the downside of being a decent chap is to assume that other people are also decent chaps. And to keep giving the benefit of the doubt for far too long.
The first is a good thing in a good society, but the second can end disastrously.
Trump's Administration is not made up of decent chaps. Given the trouble they will be in after they hand over power, they ain't handing over power, no matter what the rules say.
What has that what I said got to do with being a 'decent chap' though? When I was basically saying what a dictator needs to do to keep power.
A dictator can keep power without holding any elections if about half or more of the country approves of what they are doing and the economy is OK, with the military and secret police etc behind them too. Trump of course won with 50% of the vote last year.
If about 2/3 of the nation though wants the dictator gone, ultimately they are doomed and even the military will likely desert them even if the secret police stay loyal as well.
That was what happened to Ceusescu for example who went from supreme leader of Romania in Jan 1989 to executed by firing squad after a revolution by Christmas 1989.
You can rule as a dictator with much less support than 50%, if you have the backing of the security forces. Maduro is a good example. If the security forces turn, the dictator is finished. It’s why civilian dictators don’t like to maintain powerful armies, if they can avoid it (they do like powerful paramilitary police forces).
But, I do expect that much of the US military would revolt, if Trump ordered them to impose martial law in blue states. My impression is that many soldiers despise Trump, who views them as “suckers and losers”, and who made a drunkard his Defence Secretary.
And, you think that declared result reflected the actual votes that were cast?
According to the Venezuala election commission yes, Maduro held an election and won it, it may not have been 100% perfect but he did not cancel elections
Maduro cheated like a professional wrestling villain, as PJ O’Rourke put it.
If the Midterms are held, MAGA lose control of the country. Many of them will go to jail.
Question - are they united enough to drive through the democratic renewal and cancel / postpone the elections? Or is MTG John the Baptist, leading the way for a series of Damascene conversions and mea culpas?
2026 is going to be some year...
With a big enough blue wave, it would have to be a full fledged armed coup. I don't think they yet have sufficient control of the state institutions to do that, but if they could, they probably would.
1. Choke off the blue wave now. Not safe to hold elections in blue places, the officials are terrorists 2. Flood blue places with troopers from red places 3. A few strategic extrajudicial murders to kick off the protests, to prove the blue lot are terrorist insurgents 4. Elections postponed. For safety.
To get away with that you need still close to 50% approval, if you are under 40% approval even if you have military support for now you risk revolution if you cancel elections permanently
@HYUFD, you are a decent chap, and that is an admirable thing to be. But the downside of being a decent chap is to assume that other people are also decent chaps. And to keep giving the benefit of the doubt for far too long.
The first is a good thing in a good society, but the second can end disastrously.
Trump's Administration is not made up of decent chaps. Given the trouble they will be in after they hand over power, they ain't handing over power, no matter what the rules say.
What has that what I said got to do with being a 'decent chap' though? When I was basically saying what a dictator needs to do to keep power.
A dictator can keep power without holding any elections if about half or more of the country approves of what they are doing and the economy is OK, with the military and secret police etc behind them too. Trump of course won with 50% of the vote last year.
If about 2/3 of the nation though wants the dictator gone, ultimately they are doomed and even the military will likely desert them even if the secret police stay loyal as well.
That was what happened to Ceusescu for example who went from supreme leader of Romania in Jan 1989 to executed by firing squad after a revolution by Christmas 1989.
You can rule as a dictator with much less support than 50%, if you have the backing of the security forces. Maduro is a good example. If the security forces turn, the dictator is finished. It’s why civilian dictators don’t like to maintain powerful armies, if they can avoid it (they do like powerful paramilitary police forces).
But, I do expect that much of the US military would revolt, if Trump ordered them to impose martial law in blue states. My impression is that many soldiers despise Trump, who views them as “suckers and losers”, and who made a drunkard his Defence Secretary.
Several rock-ribbed, American ex military friends of mine have quoted the motto of Virginia- "Thus all tyrants"- to me. I think the US military holds this administration in complete contempt, as the summoning of the silent generals may have shown.
As many of us have been saying for a while it's time for Starmer to make clear he's going to distance himself unequivocally from Trump and all of his neo Nazi coterie. If you think Trumps unpopular in the US imagine how the citizenship of the UK and the EU feel about him. Leave Trump to Farage and his flag waving admirers and move on quickly and decisively. I'm in France but the stuff he said about Khan appeared on the news and is shocking ......
........and for Starmer to be silent on it is even more shocking
I’m no fan of Trump but ‘neo-Nazi’.
Where Trump is concerned there is serious derangement going down. Some seriously deranged takes. Including in this thread. You’d think the US is on the verge of becoming the next N Korea.
What I expect to happen. The US carries on for a year. The Dems flip the house. Trump is reigned in and limps on for two years and his ability to rule by executive order is diminished.
A third of Republicans under 50 freely admit they are racist, a quarter anti-semitic. They prefer strongmen to the rule of law. They prefer lies and propaganda to the free press. They threaten their neighbours with trade wars and potential wars.
Unless neo-nazi is exclusively for Hitlers Germany then surely this is it.
Can anyone say exactly what aid the USA is now providing to Ukraine? I’ve read variously that it’s 0$ and that they’ve stopped providing intelligence. If this is the case what is the utility of flattering Trump?
Because if they piss him off more he will tell Starmer, Macron and the German one, etc. to stop giving anything to Ukraine and they will dutifully obey. If you think they wouldn't you are fucking kidding yourself.
Must be at least one in Europe with a backbone who can tell him where to go.
Ed M to regain labour leadership and be PM... Is he tough enough to tell Trump where to go? HELL YEAH!
Joke of the year for sure. Ed could not beat the lettuce
If the Midterms are held, MAGA lose control of the country. Many of them will go to jail.
Question - are they united enough to drive through the democratic renewal and cancel / postpone the elections? Or is MTG John the Baptist, leading the way for a series of Damascene conversions and mea culpas?
2026 is going to be some year...
With a big enough blue wave, it would have to be a full fledged armed coup. I don't think they yet have sufficient control of the state institutions to do that, but if they could, they probably would.
1. Choke off the blue wave now. Not safe to hold elections in blue places, the officials are terrorists 2. Flood blue places with troopers from red places 3. A few strategic extrajudicial murders to kick off the protests, to prove the blue lot are terrorist insurgents 4. Elections postponed. For safety.
To get away with that you need still close to 50% approval, if you are under 40% approval even if you have military support for now you risk revolution if you cancel elections permanently
@HYUFD, you are a decent chap, and that is an admirable thing to be. But the downside of being a decent chap is to assume that other people are also decent chaps. And to keep giving the benefit of the doubt for far too long.
The first is a good thing in a good society, but the second can end disastrously.
Trump's Administration is not made up of decent chaps. Given the trouble they will be in after they hand over power, they ain't handing over power, no matter what the rules say.
What has that what I said got to do with being a 'decent chap' though? When I was basically saying what a dictator needs to do to keep power.
A dictator can keep power without holding any elections if about half or more of the country approves of what they are doing and the economy is OK, with the military and secret police etc behind them too. Trump of course won with 50% of the vote last year.
If about 2/3 of the nation though wants the dictator gone, ultimately they are doomed and even the military will likely desert them even if the secret police stay loyal as well.
That was what happened to Ceusescu for example who went from supreme leader of Romania in Jan 1989 to executed by firing squad after a revolution by Christmas 1989.
You can rule as a dictator with much less support than 50%, if you have the backing of the security forces. Maduro is a good example. If the security forces turn, the dictator is finished. It’s why civilian dictators don’t like to maintain powerful armies, if they can avoid it (they do like powerful paramilitary police forces).
But, I do expect that much of the US military would revolt, if Trump ordered them to impose martial law in blue states. My impression is that many soldiers despise Trump, who views them as “suckers and losers”, and who made a drunkard his Defence Secretary.
As many of us have been saying for a while it's time for Starmer to make clear he's going to distance himself unequivocally from Trump and all of his neo Nazi coterie. If you think Trumps unpopular in the US imagine how the citizenship of the UK and the EU feel about him. Leave Trump to Farage and his flag waving admirers and move on quickly and decisively. I'm in France but the stuff he said about Khan appeared on the news and is shocking ......
........and for Starmer to be silent on it is even more shocking
I’m no fan of Trump but ‘neo-Nazi’.
Where Trump is concerned there is serious derangement going down. Some seriously deranged takes. Including in this thread. You’d think the US is on the verge of becoming the next N Korea.
What I expect to happen. The US carries on for a year. The Dems flip the house. Trump is reigned in and limps on for two years and his ability to rule by executive order is diminished.
Neo-Nazi is OTT. Even JD Vance has rowed back from comparing Trump to Hitler.
As many of us have been saying for a while it's time for Starmer to make clear he's going to distance himself unequivocally from Trump and all of his neo Nazi coterie. If you think Trumps unpopular in the US imagine how the citizenship of the UK and the EU feel about him. Leave Trump to Farage and his flag waving admirers and move on quickly and decisively. I'm in France but the stuff he said about Khan appeared on the news and is shocking ......
........and for Starmer to be silent on it is even more shocking
I’m no fan of Trump but ‘neo-Nazi’.
Where Trump is concerned there is serious derangement going down. Some seriously deranged takes. Including in this thread. You’d think the US is on the verge of becoming the next N Korea.
What I expect to happen. The US carries on for a year. The Dems flip the house. Trump is reigned in and limps on for two years and his ability to rule by executive order is diminished.
Wahey, haven't seen an 'I'm no fan of Trump but' for ages!
As many of us have been saying for a while it's time for Starmer to make clear he's going to distance himself unequivocally from Trump and all of his neo Nazi coterie. If you think Trumps unpopular in the US imagine how the citizenship of the UK and the EU feel about him. Leave Trump to Farage and his flag waving admirers and move on quickly and decisively. I'm in France but the stuff he said about Khan appeared on the news and is shocking ......
........and for Starmer to be silent on it is even more shocking
I’m no fan of Trump but ‘neo-Nazi’.
Where Trump is concerned there is serious derangement going down. Some seriously deranged takes. Including in this thread. You’d think the US is on the verge of becoming the next N Korea.
What I expect to happen. The US carries on for a year. The Dems flip the house. Trump is reigned in and limps on for two years and his ability to rule by executive order is diminished.
A third of Republicans under 50 freely admit they are racist, a quarter anti-semitic. They prefer strongmen to the rule of law. They prefer lies and propaganda to the free press. They threaten their neighbours with trade wars and potential wars.
Unless neo-nazi is exclusively for Hitlers Germany then surely this is it.
And, half of them believe that the Holocaust did not happen - but no doubt believe it ought to have done.
As many of us have been saying for a while it's time for Starmer to make clear he's going to distance himself unequivocally from Trump and all of his neo Nazi coterie. If you think Trumps unpopular in the US imagine how the citizenship of the UK and the EU feel about him. Leave Trump to Farage and his flag waving admirers and move on quickly and decisively. I'm in France but the stuff he said about Khan appeared on the news and is shocking ......
........and for Starmer to be silent on it is even more shocking
I’m no fan of Trump but ‘neo-Nazi’.
Where Trump is concerned there is serious derangement going down. Some seriously deranged takes. Including in this thread. You’d think the US is on the verge of becoming the next N Korea.
What I expect to happen. The US carries on for a year. The Dems flip the house. Trump is reigned in and limps on for two years and his ability to rule by executive order is diminished.
Wahey, haven't seen an 'I'm no fan of Trump but' for ages!
OT. For car lovers. There is a very striking car that seems to be much favoured by the Ukrainian ex pat community which has no visible name but AVATR underneath the passenger door. Very discreet. It looks a little like the Jag prototype but with a bit of an SUV. Favoured colours are pink and sky blue
As many of us have been saying for a while it's time for Starmer to make clear he's going to distance himself unequivocally from Trump and all of his neo Nazi coterie. If you think Trumps unpopular in the US imagine how the citizenship of the UK and the EU feel about him. Leave Trump to Farage and his flag waving admirers and move on quickly and decisively. I'm in France but the stuff he said about Khan appeared on the news and is shocking ......
........and for Starmer to be silent on it is even more shocking
I’m no fan of Trump but ‘neo-Nazi’.
Where Trump is concerned there is serious derangement going down. Some seriously deranged takes. Including in this thread. You’d think the US is on the verge of becoming the next N Korea.
What I expect to happen. The US carries on for a year. The Dems flip the house. Trump is reigned in and limps on for two years and his ability to rule by executive order is diminished.
A third of Republicans under 50 freely admit they are racist, a quarter anti-semitic. They prefer strongmen to the rule of law. They prefer lies and propaganda to the free press. They threaten their neighbours with trade wars and potential wars.
Unless neo-nazi is exclusively for Hitlers Germany then surely this is it.
As many of us have been saying for a while it's time for Starmer to make clear he's going to distance himself unequivocally from Trump and all of his neo Nazi coterie. If you think Trumps unpopular in the US imagine how the citizenship of the UK and the EU feel about him. Leave Trump to Farage and his flag waving admirers and move on quickly and decisively. I'm in France but the stuff he said about Khan appeared on the news and is shocking ......
........and for Starmer to be silent on it is even more shocking
I’m no fan of Trump but ‘neo-Nazi’.
Where Trump is concerned there is serious derangement going down. Some seriously deranged takes. Including in this thread. You’d think the US is on the verge of becoming the next N Korea.
What I expect to happen. The US carries on for a year. The Dems flip the house. Trump is reigned in and limps on for two years and his ability to rule by executive order is diminished.
Let's hope you are right Taz, but not looking very certain at this point for some strange reason. Too many supine , pork belly politician's with no backbones happy to let him trash the country, the billionaires, grifters and ne'er do wells are with him and making hay while the sun shines.
As many of us have been saying for a while it's time for Starmer to make clear he's going to distance himself unequivocally from Trump and all of his neo Nazi coterie. If you think Trumps unpopular in the US imagine how the citizenship of the UK and the EU feel about him. Leave Trump to Farage and his flag waving admirers and move on quickly and decisively. I'm in France but the stuff he said about Khan appeared on the news and is shocking ......
........and for Starmer to be silent on it is even more shocking
I’m no fan of Trump but ‘neo-Nazi’.
Where Trump is concerned there is serious derangement going down. Some seriously deranged takes. Including in this thread. You’d think the US is on the verge of becoming the next N Korea.
What I expect to happen. The US carries on for a year. The Dems flip the house. Trump is reigned in and limps on for two years and his ability to rule by executive order is diminished.
A third of Republicans under 50 freely admit they are racist, a quarter anti-semitic. They prefer strongmen to the rule of law. They prefer lies and propaganda to the free press. They threaten their neighbours with trade wars and potential wars.
Unless neo-nazi is exclusively for Hitlers Germany then surely this is it.
Thick ill educated oafs abound, I reckon it is all the processed food that makes them so dumb and crazy.
If the Midterms are held, MAGA lose control of the country. Many of them will go to jail.
Question - are they united enough to drive through the democratic renewal and cancel / postpone the elections? Or is MTG John the Baptist, leading the way for a series of Damascene conversions and mea culpas?
2026 is going to be some year...
With a big enough blue wave, it would have to be a full fledged armed coup. I don't think they yet have sufficient control of the state institutions to do that, but if they could, they probably would.
1. Choke off the blue wave now. Not safe to hold elections in blue places, the officials are terrorists 2. Flood blue places with troopers from red places 3. A few strategic extrajudicial murders to kick off the protests, to prove the blue lot are terrorist insurgents 4. Elections postponed. For safety.
To get away with that you need still close to 50% approval, if you are under 40% approval even if you have military support for now you risk revolution if you cancel elections permanently
@HYUFD, you are a decent chap, and that is an admirable thing to be. But the downside of being a decent chap is to assume that other people are also decent chaps. And to keep giving the benefit of the doubt for far too long.
The first is a good thing in a good society, but the second can end disastrously.
Trump's Administration is not made up of decent chaps. Given the trouble they will be in after they hand over power, they ain't handing over power, no matter what the rules say.
What has that what I said got to do with being a 'decent chap' though? When I was basically saying what a dictator needs to do to keep power.
A dictator can keep power without holding any elections if about half or more of the country approves of what they are doing and the economy is OK, with the military and secret police etc behind them too. Trump of course won with 50% of the vote last year.
If about 2/3 of the nation though wants the dictator gone, ultimately they are doomed and even the military will likely desert them even if the secret police stay loyal as well.
That was what happened to Ceusescu for example who went from supreme leader of Romania in Jan 1989 to executed by firing squad after a revolution by Christmas 1989.
You can rule as a dictator with much less support than 50%, if you have the backing of the security forces. Maduro is a good example. If the security forces turn, the dictator is finished. It’s why civilian dictators don’t like to maintain powerful armies, if they can avoid it (they do like powerful paramilitary police forces).
But, I do expect that much of the US military would revolt, if Trump ordered them to impose martial law in blue states. My impression is that many soldiers despise Trump, who views them as “suckers and losers”, and who made a drunkard his Defence Secretary.
And, you think that declared result reflected the actual votes that were cast?
According to the Venezuala election commission yes, Maduro held an election and won it, it may not have been 100% perfect but he did not cancel elections
Maduro cheated like a professional wrestling villain, as PJ O’Rourke put it.
The World Cup in 2026 is going to be a fiasco isn't it? No-one is going to turn up. I see the latest proposal is that all visitors must provide social media, email addresses going back 5 years and details of all your relatives.
As many of us have been saying for a while it's time for Starmer to make clear he's going to distance himself unequivocally from Trump and all of his neo Nazi coterie. If you think Trumps unpopular in the US imagine how the citizenship of the UK and the EU feel about him. Leave Trump to Farage and his flag waving admirers and move on quickly and decisively. I'm in France but the stuff he said about Khan appeared on the news and is shocking ......
........and for Starmer to be silent on it is even more shocking
I’m no fan of Trump but ‘neo-Nazi’.
Where Trump is concerned there is serious derangement going down. Some seriously deranged takes. Including in this thread. You’d think the US is on the verge of becoming the next N Korea.
What I expect to happen. The US carries on for a year. The Dems flip the house. Trump is reigned in and limps on for two years and his ability to rule by executive order is diminished.
Let's hope you are right Taz, but not looking very certain at this point for some strange reason. Too many supine , pork belly politician's with no backbones happy to let him trash the country, the billionaires, grifters and ne'er do wells are with him and making hay while the sun shines.
I am. I think Trump will run out of road once the US economy takes a turn for the worse and that will happen next year. That’s what the indicators are saying.
He made the economy his platform, he has to deliver, and he won’t be able to. Job openings are not good, inflation is sticky and growth, although above ours, is not great.
The World Cup in 2026 is going to be a fiasco isn't it? No-one is going to turn up. I see the latest proposal is that all visitors must provide social media, email addresses going back 5 years and details of all your relatives.
Isn’t that normal for the USA.
My wife had to provide a lot of info, like that, prior to a recent trip to New York.
As many of us have been saying for a while it's time for Starmer to make clear he's going to distance himself unequivocally from Trump and all of his neo Nazi coterie. If you think Trumps unpopular in the US imagine how the citizenship of the UK and the EU feel about him. Leave Trump to Farage and his flag waving admirers and move on quickly and decisively. I'm in France but the stuff he said about Khan appeared on the news and is shocking ......
........and for Starmer to be silent on it is even more shocking
I’m no fan of Trump but ‘neo-Nazi’.
Where Trump is concerned there is serious derangement going down. Some seriously deranged takes. Including in this thread. You’d think the US is on the verge of becoming the next N Korea.
What I expect to happen. The US carries on for a year. The Dems flip the house. Trump is reigned in and limps on for two years and his ability to rule by executive order is diminished.
Let's hope you are right Taz, but not looking very certain at this point for some strange reason. Too many supine , pork belly politician's with no backbones happy to let him trash the country, the billionaires, grifters and ne'er do wells are with him and making hay while the sun shines.
I am. I think Trump will run out of road once the US economy takes a turn for the worse and that will happen next year. That’s what the indicators are saying.
He made the economy his platform, he has to deliver, and he won’t be able to. Job openings are not good, inflation is sticky and growth, although above ours, is not great.
As many of us have been saying for a while it's time for Starmer to make clear he's going to distance himself unequivocally from Trump and all of his neo Nazi coterie. If you think Trumps unpopular in the US imagine how the citizenship of the UK and the EU feel about him. Leave Trump to Farage and his flag waving admirers and move on quickly and decisively. I'm in France but the stuff he said about Khan appeared on the news and is shocking ......
........and for Starmer to be silent on it is even more shocking
I’m no fan of Trump but ‘neo-Nazi’.
Where Trump is concerned there is serious derangement going down. Some seriously deranged takes. Including in this thread. You’d think the US is on the verge of becoming the next N Korea.
What I expect to happen. The US carries on for a year. The Dems flip the house. Trump is reigned in and limps on for two years and his ability to rule by executive order is diminished.
Let's hope you are right Taz, but not looking very certain at this point for some strange reason. Too many supine , pork belly politician's with no backbones happy to let him trash the country, the billionaires, grifters and ne'er do wells are with him and making hay while the sun shines.
I am. I think Trump will run out of road once the US economy takes a turn for the worse and that will happen next year. That’s what the indicators are saying.
He made the economy his platform, he has to deliver, and he won’t be able to. Job openings are not good, inflation is sticky and growth, although above ours, is not great.
He will piss off his base.
"FAKE NEWS FROM THE RADICAL LEFT LUNATICS!"
That bollocks won’t cut it when people are paying for his policies with their jobs and food costs are going up and up.
Inflation people generally really take notice of when it affects stuff they buy regularly. Like food. Beef prices are elevated and will continue to be. Eggs are still elevated. The cost of dining out is going through the roof there.
Trump made food inflation a cornerstone of his campaign and, one year in, he’s failing.
If the Midterms are held, MAGA lose control of the country. Many of them will go to jail.
Question - are they united enough to drive through the democratic renewal and cancel / postpone the elections? Or is MTG John the Baptist, leading the way for a series of Damascene conversions and mea culpas?
2026 is going to be some year...
With a big enough blue wave, it would have to be a full fledged armed coup. I don't think they yet have sufficient control of the state institutions to do that, but if they could, they probably would.
1. Choke off the blue wave now. Not safe to hold elections in blue places, the officials are terrorists 2. Flood blue places with troopers from red places 3. A few strategic extrajudicial murders to kick off the protests, to prove the blue lot are terrorist insurgents 4. Elections postponed. For safety.
To get away with that you need still close to 50% approval, if you are under 40% approval even if you have military support for now you risk revolution if you cancel elections permanently
@HYUFD, you are a decent chap, and that is an admirable thing to be. But the downside of being a decent chap is to assume that other people are also decent chaps. And to keep giving the benefit of the doubt for far too long.
The first is a good thing in a good society, but the second can end disastrously.
Trump's Administration is not made up of decent chaps. Given the trouble they will be in after they hand over power, they ain't handing over power, no matter what the rules say.
What has that what I said got to do with being a 'decent chap' though? When I was basically saying what a dictator needs to do to keep power.
A dictator can keep power without holding any elections if about half or more of the country approves of what they are doing and the economy is OK, with the military and secret police etc behind them too. Trump of course won with 50% of the vote last year.
If about 2/3 of the nation though wants the dictator gone, ultimately they are doomed and even the military will likely desert them even if the secret police stay loyal as well.
That was what happened to Ceusescu for example who went from supreme leader of Romania in Jan 1989 to executed by firing squad after a revolution by Christmas 1989.
You can rule as a dictator with much less support than 50%, if you have the backing of the security forces. Maduro is a good example. If the security forces turn, the dictator is finished. It’s why civilian dictators don’t like to maintain powerful armies, if they can avoid it (they do like powerful paramilitary police forces).
But, I do expect that much of the US military would revolt, if Trump ordered them to impose martial law in blue states. My impression is that many soldiers despise Trump, who views them as “suckers and losers”, and who made a drunkard his Defence Secretary.
And, you think that declared result reflected the actual votes that were cast?
According to the Venezuala election commission yes, Maduro held an election and won it, it may not have been 100% perfect but he did not cancel elections
Maduro cheated like a professional wrestling villain, as PJ O’Rourke put it.
No, otherwise he would have won with 99% not 51%
Only the truly stupid do that.
Maduro cheated enough to win - to keep his Tankie friends overseas. 99% would have been embarrassing for sone of them.
As many of us have been saying for a while it's time for Starmer to make clear he's going to distance himself unequivocally from Trump and all of his neo Nazi coterie. If you think Trumps unpopular in the US imagine how the citizenship of the UK and the EU feel about him. Leave Trump to Farage and his flag waving admirers and move on quickly and decisively. I'm in France but the stuff he said about Khan appeared on the news and is shocking ......
........and for Starmer to be silent on it is even more shocking
I’m no fan of Trump but ‘neo-Nazi’.
Where Trump is concerned there is serious derangement going down. Some seriously deranged takes. Including in this thread. You’d think the US is on the verge of becoming the next N Korea.
What I expect to happen. The US carries on for a year. The Dems flip the house. Trump is reigned in and limps on for two years and his ability to rule by executive order is diminished.
Let's hope you are right Taz, but not looking very certain at this point for some strange reason. Too many supine , pork belly politician's with no backbones happy to let him trash the country, the billionaires, grifters and ne'er do wells are with him and making hay while the sun shines.
I am. I think Trump will run out of road once the US economy takes a turn for the worse and that will happen next year. That’s what the indicators are saying.
He made the economy his platform, he has to deliver, and he won’t be able to. Job openings are not good, inflation is sticky and growth, although above ours, is not great.
He will piss off his base.
"FAKE NEWS FROM THE RADICAL LEFT LUNATICS!"
That bollocks won’t cut it when people are paying for his policies with their jobs and food costs are going up and up.
Inflation people generally really take notice of when it affects stuff they buy regularly. Like food. Beef prices are elevated and will continue to be. Eggs are still elevated. The cost of dining out is going through the roof there.
Trump made food inflation a cornerstone of his campaign and, one year in, he’s failing.
And lower inflation is still an increase in prices.
In the same way that lower net immigration is still an increase in immigrants.
As many of us have been saying for a while it's time for Starmer to make clear he's going to distance himself unequivocally from Trump and all of his neo Nazi coterie. If you think Trumps unpopular in the US imagine how the citizenship of the UK and the EU feel about him. Leave Trump to Farage and his flag waving admirers and move on quickly and decisively. I'm in France but the stuff he said about Khan appeared on the news and is shocking ......
........and for Starmer to be silent on it is even more shocking
I’m no fan of Trump but ‘neo-Nazi’.
Where Trump is concerned there is serious derangement going down. Some seriously deranged takes. Including in this thread. You’d think the US is on the verge of becoming the next N Korea.
What I expect to happen. The US carries on for a year. The Dems flip the house. Trump is reigned in and limps on for two years and his ability to rule by executive order is diminished.
Let's hope you are right Taz, but not looking very certain at this point for some strange reason. Too many supine , pork belly politician's with no backbones happy to let him trash the country, the billionaires, grifters and ne'er do wells are with him and making hay while the sun shines.
I am. I think Trump will run out of road once the US economy takes a turn for the worse and that will happen next year. That’s what the indicators are saying.
He made the economy his platform, he has to deliver, and he won’t be able to. Job openings are not good, inflation is sticky and growth, although above ours, is not great.
He will piss off his base.
"FAKE NEWS FROM THE RADICAL LEFT LUNATICS!"
That bollocks won’t cut it when people are paying for his policies with their jobs and food costs are going up and up.
Inflation people generally really take notice of when it affects stuff they buy regularly. Like food. Beef prices are elevated and will continue to be. Eggs are still elevated. The cost of dining out is going through the roof there.
Trump made food inflation a cornerstone of his campaign and, one year in, he’s failing.
And lower inflation is still an increase in prices.
In the same way that lower net immigration is still an increase in immigrants.
Low inflation is fine, especially if your wages rise above it
Low inflation is more desirable than deflation. Central Banks aim for low inflation.
Talking of deflation China is exporting it at the moment. They’ve had deflation for a couple of years. That may help us and Europe.
Sir Keir will be thrilled that his cherished ideals of anglo-French co-operation will be retained after he leaves office.
*In seriousness, in the event that both Farage and Bardella are elected, minds are more than likely to change, but it's interesting nonetheless.
The Home Office and Civil Service simply won’t allow it.
I dont think towing overloaded dinghies is something that either coastguard or Royal Navy could do. Theres a very high risk of a capsize catastrophe.
Loading them onto a safe vessel and landing them back on the French coast is possible, but obviously needs French governmental support.
I wouldn’t advocate it for the reasons you outline. Whatever people think of these men and their motivations for coming here you cannot simply risk drowning them. It would be unacceptable.
Thanks for the link, which is revealing about the UAE. It tells me that political parties are banned; half the FNC are appointed by the rulers of each emirate; not all citizens are eligible to vote - voters are handpicked and chosen through an electoral college. Hardly a beacon of democracy.
The World Cup in 2026 is going to be a fiasco isn't it? No-one is going to turn up. I see the latest proposal is that all visitors must provide social media, email addresses going back 5 years and details of all your relatives.
I applied under the current rules last week for an upcoming visit to a friend NY in March. If the article someone linked above is true, I won't be going again. We had already discussed meeting in Canada in future if Trump got worse, I think that's what we will be doing!
I see people are talking about the grooming story again.
As I am busy for most of the week, I’ve changed the spam trap settings so if people mention it on here, it’s an automatic ban, perhaps that will focus minds.
Sir Keir will be thrilled that his cherished ideals of anglo-French co-operation will be retained after he leaves office.
*In seriousness, in the event that both Farage and Bardella are elected, minds are more than likely to change, but it's interesting nonetheless.
The Home Office and Civil Service simply won’t allow it.
I dont think towing overloaded dinghies is something that either coastguard or Royal Navy could do. Theres a very high risk of a capsize catastrophe.
Loading them onto a safe vessel and landing them back on the French coast is possible, but obviously needs French governmental support.
I wouldn’t advocate it for the reasons you outline. Whatever people think of these men and their motivations for coming here you cannot simply risk drowning them. It would be unacceptable.
Especially since towing operations have already killed non trivial numbers in the Mediterranean. See Greece and Italy.
As many of us have been saying for a while it's time for Starmer to make clear he's going to distance himself unequivocally from Trump and all of his neo Nazi coterie. If you think Trumps unpopular in the US imagine how the citizenship of the UK and the EU feel about him. Leave Trump to Farage and his flag waving admirers and move on quickly and decisively. I'm in France but the stuff he said about Khan appeared on the news and is shocking ......
........and for Starmer to be silent on it is even more shocking
I’m no fan of Trump but ‘neo-Nazi’.
Where Trump is concerned there is serious derangement going down. Some seriously deranged takes. Including in this thread. You’d think the US is on the verge of becoming the next N Korea.
What I expect to happen. The US carries on for a year. The Dems flip the house. Trump is reigned in and limps on for two years and his ability to rule by executive order is diminished.
Let's hope you are right Taz, but not looking very certain at this point for some strange reason. Too many supine , pork belly politician's with no backbones happy to let him trash the country, the billionaires, grifters and ne'er do wells are with him and making hay while the sun shines.
I am. I think Trump will run out of road once the US economy takes a turn for the worse and that will happen next year. That’s what the indicators are saying.
He made the economy his platform, he has to deliver, and he won’t be able to. Job openings are not good, inflation is sticky and growth, although above ours, is not great.
He will piss off his base.
"FAKE NEWS FROM THE RADICAL LEFT LUNATICS!"
That bollocks won’t cut it when people are paying for his policies with their jobs and food costs are going up and up.
Inflation people generally really take notice of when it affects stuff they buy regularly. Like food. Beef prices are elevated and will continue to be. Eggs are still elevated. The cost of dining out is going through the roof there.
Trump made food inflation a cornerstone of his campaign and, one year in, he’s failing.
And lower inflation is still an increase in prices.
In the same way that lower net immigration is still an increase in immigrants.
Low inflation is fine, especially if your wages rise above it
Low inflation is more desirable than deflation. Central Banks aim for low inflation.
Talking of deflation China is exporting it at the moment. They’ve had deflation for a couple of years. That may help us and Europe.
Indeed.
The difficulty can be getting the pay rise and getting a pay rise relative to other people.
And being on the right side of the asset / debt balance is also vital.
Which if the Dave Ramsey show is in any way representative is an increasing problem in the USA.
As many of us have been saying for a while it's time for Starmer to make clear he's going to distance himself unequivocally from Trump and all of his neo Nazi coterie. If you think Trumps unpopular in the US imagine how the citizenship of the UK and the EU feel about him. Leave Trump to Farage and his flag waving admirers and move on quickly and decisively. I'm in France but the stuff he said about Khan appeared on the news and is shocking ......
........and for Starmer to be silent on it is even more shocking
I’m no fan of Trump but ‘neo-Nazi’.
Where Trump is concerned there is serious derangement going down. Some seriously deranged takes. Including in this thread. You’d think the US is on the verge of becoming the next N Korea.
What I expect to happen. The US carries on for a year. The Dems flip the house. Trump is reigned in and limps on for two years and his ability to rule by executive order is diminished.
Let's hope you are right Taz, but not looking very certain at this point for some strange reason. Too many supine , pork belly politician's with no backbones happy to let him trash the country, the billionaires, grifters and ne'er do wells are with him and making hay while the sun shines.
I am. I think Trump will run out of road once the US economy takes a turn for the worse and that will happen next year. That’s what the indicators are saying.
He made the economy his platform, he has to deliver, and he won’t be able to. Job openings are not good, inflation is sticky and growth, although above ours, is not great.
He will piss off his base.
"FAKE NEWS FROM THE RADICAL LEFT LUNATICS!"
That bollocks won’t cut it when people are paying for his policies with their jobs and food costs are going up and up.
Inflation people generally really take notice of when it affects stuff they buy regularly. Like food. Beef prices are elevated and will continue to be. Eggs are still elevated. The cost of dining out is going through the roof there.
Trump made food inflation a cornerstone of his campaign and, one year in, he’s failing.
And lower inflation is still an increase in prices.
In the same way that lower net immigration is still an increase in immigrants.
Low inflation is fine, especially if your wages rise above it
Low inflation is more desirable than deflation. Central Banks aim for low inflation.
Talking of deflation China is exporting it at the moment. They’ve had deflation for a couple of years. That may help us and Europe.
I think the lesson from the US is that GDP per capita and even real wages growth count for very little if there is high inflation.
I was looking at the OBR tables earlier and I think they suggest zero real wages growth from 2008 - 2030. That's unbelievably bad - but from a political perspective that's fine as long as inflation is low during this parliament.
As many of us have been saying for a while it's time for Starmer to make clear he's going to distance himself unequivocally from Trump and all of his neo Nazi coterie. If you think Trumps unpopular in the US imagine how the citizenship of the UK and the EU feel about him. Leave Trump to Farage and his flag waving admirers and move on quickly and decisively. I'm in France but the stuff he said about Khan appeared on the news and is shocking ......
........and for Starmer to be silent on it is even more shocking
I’m no fan of Trump but ‘neo-Nazi’.
Where Trump is concerned there is serious derangement going down. Some seriously deranged takes. Including in this thread. You’d think the US is on the verge of becoming the next N Korea.
What I expect to happen. The US carries on for a year. The Dems flip the house. Trump is reigned in and limps on for two years and his ability to rule by executive order is diminished.
A third of Republicans under 50 freely admit they are racist, a quarter anti-semitic. They prefer strongmen to the rule of law. They prefer lies and propaganda to the free press. They threaten their neighbours with trade wars and potential wars.
Unless neo-nazi is exclusively for Hitlers Germany then surely this is it.
Oh clearly. Must be.
‘Everyone I disagree with is a Neo Nazi’
Err, I disagree with everyone about something or other, very few are neo nazis. The ones that are neo-nazi tend to be the racist, anti-semitic ones who like strongmen rules with a disdain for the law and see might as right in dealing with their neighbours.
OT. For car lovers. There is a very striking car that seems to be much favoured by the Ukrainian ex pat community which has no visible name but AVATR underneath the passenger door. Very discreet. It looks a little like the Jag prototype but with a bit of an SUV. Favoured colours are pink and sky blue
Just checked out the website another Chinese EV - looks like a lot of car for the money.
Sir Keir will be thrilled that his cherished ideals of anglo-French co-operation will be retained after he leaves office.
*In seriousness, in the event that both Farage and Bardella are elected, minds are more than likely to change, but it's interesting nonetheless.
The Home Office and Civil Service simply won’t allow it.
I dont think towing overloaded dinghies is something that either coastguard or Royal Navy could do. Theres a very high risk of a capsize catastrophe.
Loading them onto a safe vessel and landing them back on the French coast is possible, but obviously needs French governmental support.
I wouldn’t advocate it for the reasons you outline. Whatever people think of these men and their motivations for coming here you cannot simply risk drowning them. It would be unacceptable.
I thought the Labour government told us that they were mostly women and children?
The World Cup in 2026 is going to be a fiasco isn't it? No-one is going to turn up. I see the latest proposal is that all visitors must provide social media, email addresses going back 5 years and details of all your relatives.
I applied under the current rules last week for an upcoming visit to a friend NY in March. If the article someone linked above is true, I won't be going again. We had already discussed meeting in Canada in future if Trump got worse, I think that's what we will be doing!
As many of us have been saying for a while it's time for Starmer to make clear he's going to distance himself unequivocally from Trump and all of his neo Nazi coterie. If you think Trumps unpopular in the US imagine how the citizenship of the UK and the EU feel about him. Leave Trump to Farage and his flag waving admirers and move on quickly and decisively. I'm in France but the stuff he said about Khan appeared on the news and is shocking ......
........and for Starmer to be silent on it is even more shocking
I’m no fan of Trump but ‘neo-Nazi’.
Where Trump is concerned there is serious derangement going down. Some seriously deranged takes. Including in this thread. You’d think the US is on the verge of becoming the next N Korea.
What I expect to happen. The US carries on for a year. The Dems flip the house. Trump is reigned in and limps on for two years and his ability to rule by executive order is diminished.
Let's hope you are right Taz, but not looking very certain at this point for some strange reason. Too many supine , pork belly politician's with no backbones happy to let him trash the country, the billionaires, grifters and ne'er do wells are with him and making hay while the sun shines.
I am. I think Trump will run out of road once the US economy takes a turn for the worse and that will happen next year. That’s what the indicators are saying.
He made the economy his platform, he has to deliver, and he won’t be able to. Job openings are not good, inflation is sticky and growth, although above ours, is not great.
He will piss off his base.
"FAKE NEWS FROM THE RADICAL LEFT LUNATICS!"
That bollocks won’t cut it when people are paying for his policies with their jobs and food costs are going up and up.
Inflation people generally really take notice of when it affects stuff they buy regularly. Like food. Beef prices are elevated and will continue to be. Eggs are still elevated. The cost of dining out is going through the roof there.
Trump made food inflation a cornerstone of his campaign and, one year in, he’s failing.
And lower inflation is still an increase in prices.
In the same way that lower net immigration is still an increase in immigrants.
Low inflation is fine, especially if your wages rise above it
Low inflation is more desirable than deflation. Central Banks aim for low inflation.
Talking of deflation China is exporting it at the moment. They’ve had deflation for a couple of years. That may help us and Europe.
I think the lesson from the US is that GDP per capita and even real wages growth count for very little if there is high inflation.
I was looking at the OBR tables earlier and I think they suggest zero real wages growth from 2008 - 2030. That's unbelievably bad - but from a political perspective that's fine as long as inflation is low during this parliament.
Increasing GDP per capita doesn't help you if someone else is getting 'your share'.
As many of us have been saying for a while it's time for Starmer to make clear he's going to distance himself unequivocally from Trump and all of his neo Nazi coterie. If you think Trumps unpopular in the US imagine how the citizenship of the UK and the EU feel about him. Leave Trump to Farage and his flag waving admirers and move on quickly and decisively. I'm in France but the stuff he said about Khan appeared on the news and is shocking ......
........and for Starmer to be silent on it is even more shocking
I’m no fan of Trump but ‘neo-Nazi’.
Where Trump is concerned there is serious derangement going down. Some seriously deranged takes. Including in this thread. You’d think the US is on the verge of becoming the next N Korea.
What I expect to happen. The US carries on for a year. The Dems flip the house. Trump is reigned in and limps on for two years and his ability to rule by executive order is diminished.
A third of Republicans under 50 freely admit they are racist, a quarter anti-semitic. They prefer strongmen to the rule of law. They prefer lies and propaganda to the free press. They threaten their neighbours with trade wars and potential wars.
Unless neo-nazi is exclusively for Hitlers Germany then surely this is it.
Oh clearly. Must be.
‘Everyone I disagree with is a Neo Nazi’
Err, I disagree with everyone about something or other, very few are neo nazis. The ones that are neo-nazi tend to be the racist, anti-semitic ones who like strongmen rules with a disdain for the law and see might as right in dealing with their neighbours.
Personally I hate the use of the term Neo-Nazi. For one thing Nazism, National Socialism, is a very specific, time limited, German movement. Far better is the catch-all of Fascist. But even then Fascism is derived from the Italian movement.
The World Cup in 2026 is going to be a fiasco isn't it? No-one is going to turn up. I see the latest proposal is that all visitors must provide social media, email addresses going back 5 years and details of all your relatives.
I applied under the current rules last week for an upcoming visit to a friend NY in March. If the article someone linked above is true, I won't be going again. We had already discussed meeting in Canada in future if Trump got worse, I think that's what we will be doing!
Canada - like America only civilised.
Yes, it shares our King unlike the Americans who removed his ancestor King George III in the 18th century
As many of us have been saying for a while it's time for Starmer to make clear he's going to distance himself unequivocally from Trump and all of his neo Nazi coterie. If you think Trumps unpopular in the US imagine how the citizenship of the UK and the EU feel about him. Leave Trump to Farage and his flag waving admirers and move on quickly and decisively. I'm in France but the stuff he said about Khan appeared on the news and is shocking ......
........and for Starmer to be silent on it is even more shocking
I’m no fan of Trump but ‘neo-Nazi’.
Where Trump is concerned there is serious derangement going down. Some seriously deranged takes. Including in this thread. You’d think the US is on the verge of becoming the next N Korea.
What I expect to happen. The US carries on for a year. The Dems flip the house. Trump is reigned in and limps on for two years and his ability to rule by executive order is diminished.
A third of Republicans under 50 freely admit they are racist, a quarter anti-semitic. They prefer strongmen to the rule of law. They prefer lies and propaganda to the free press. They threaten their neighbours with trade wars and potential wars.
Unless neo-nazi is exclusively for Hitlers Germany then surely this is it.
Oh clearly. Must be.
‘Everyone I disagree with is a Neo Nazi’
Err, I disagree with everyone about something or other, very few are neo nazis. The ones that are neo-nazi tend to be the racist, anti-semitic ones who like strongmen rules with a disdain for the law and see might as right in dealing with their neighbours.
Personally I hate the use of the term Neo-Nazi. For one thing Nazism, National Socialism, is a very specific, time limited, German movement. Far better is the catch-all of Fascist. But even then Fascism is derived from the Italian movement.
OT. For car lovers. There is a very striking car that seems to be much favoured by the Ukrainian ex pat community which has no visible name but AVATR underneath the passenger door. Very discreet. It looks a little like the Jag prototype but with a bit of an SUV. Favoured colours are pink and sky blue
Just checked out the website another Chinese EV - looks like a lot of car for the money.
Western car manufacturers might as well pack up.
Someone, @FrancisUrquhart IIRC, posted some YouTube videos of Chinese cars a few months back.
It’s staggering how advanced they are. Western car makers have talked the talk, the Chinese have walked the walk
Meanwhile in Germany car workers threaten to strike because they want a four day week for the same money.
The Chinese car makers are eating western car makers lunch.
Their only,salvation will be tariffs. Ironic given the criticism of Trump for them.
On a side note do you have the roof on your house ? The weather is shit at the moment.
As many of us have been saying for a while it's time for Starmer to make clear he's going to distance himself unequivocally from Trump and all of his neo Nazi coterie. If you think Trumps unpopular in the US imagine how the citizenship of the UK and the EU feel about him. Leave Trump to Farage and his flag waving admirers and move on quickly and decisively. I'm in France but the stuff he said about Khan appeared on the news and is shocking ......
........and for Starmer to be silent on it is even more shocking
I’m no fan of Trump but ‘neo-Nazi’.
Where Trump is concerned there is serious derangement going down. Some seriously deranged takes. Including in this thread. You’d think the US is on the verge of becoming the next N Korea.
What I expect to happen. The US carries on for a year. The Dems flip the house. Trump is reigned in and limps on for two years and his ability to rule by executive order is diminished.
A third of Republicans under 50 freely admit they are racist, a quarter anti-semitic. They prefer strongmen to the rule of law. They prefer lies and propaganda to the free press. They threaten their neighbours with trade wars and potential wars.
Unless neo-nazi is exclusively for Hitlers Germany then surely this is it.
Oh clearly. Must be.
‘Everyone I disagree with is a Neo Nazi’
Err, I disagree with everyone about something or other, very few are neo nazis. The ones that are neo-nazi tend to be the racist, anti-semitic ones who like strongmen rules with a disdain for the law and see might as right in dealing with their neighbours.
Personally I hate the use of the term Neo-Nazi. For one thing Nazism, National Socialism, is a very specific, time limited, German movement. Far better is the catch-all of Fascist. But even then Fascism is derived from the Italian movement.
If the Midterms are held, MAGA lose control of the country. Many of them will go to jail.
Question - are they united enough to drive through the democratic renewal and cancel / postpone the elections? Or is MTG John the Baptist, leading the way for a series of Damascene conversions and mea culpas?
2026 is going to be some year...
With a big enough blue wave, it would have to be a full fledged armed coup. I don't think they yet have sufficient control of the state institutions to do that, but if they could, they probably would.
1. Choke off the blue wave now. Not safe to hold elections in blue places, the officials are terrorists 2. Flood blue places with troopers from red places 3. A few strategic extrajudicial murders to kick off the protests, to prove the blue lot are terrorist insurgents 4. Elections postponed. For safety.
To get away with that you need still close to 50% approval, if you are under 40% approval even if you have military support for now you risk revolution if you cancel elections permanently
@HYUFD, you are a decent chap, and that is an admirable thing to be. But the downside of being a decent chap is to assume that other people are also decent chaps. And to keep giving the benefit of the doubt for far too long.
The first is a good thing in a good society, but the second can end disastrously.
Trump's Administration is not made up of decent chaps. Given the trouble they will be in after they hand over power, they ain't handing over power, no matter what the rules say.
What has that what I said got to do with being a 'decent chap' though? When I was basically saying what a dictator needs to do to keep power.
A dictator can keep power without holding any elections if about half or more of the country approves of what they are doing and the economy is OK, with the military and secret police etc behind them too. Trump of course won with 50% of the vote last year.
If about 2/3 of the nation though wants the dictator gone, ultimately they are doomed and even the military will likely desert them even if the secret police stay loyal as well.
That was what happened to Ceusescu for example who went from supreme leader of Romania in Jan 1989 to executed by firing squad after a revolution by Christmas 1989.
You can rule as a dictator with much less support than 50%, if you have the backing of the security forces. Maduro is a good example. If the security forces turn, the dictator is finished. It’s why civilian dictators don’t like to maintain powerful armies, if they can avoid it (they do like powerful paramilitary police forces).
But, I do expect that much of the US military would revolt, if Trump ordered them to impose martial law in blue states. My impression is that many soldiers despise Trump, who views them as “suckers and losers”, and who made a drunkard his Defence Secretary.
And, you think that declared result reflected the actual votes that were cast?
According to the Venezuala election commission yes, Maduro held an election and won it, it may not have been 100% perfect but he did not cancel elections
Maduro cheated like a professional wrestling villain, as PJ O’Rourke put it.
No, otherwise he would have won with 99% not 51%
Only the truly stupid do that.
Maduro cheated enough to win - to keep his Tankie friends overseas. 99% would have been embarrassing for sone of them.
Yes but if 2/3 of Venezualans really opposed him they would have launched a revolution by now, if they really do and haven't then to be blunt they are weak and deserve him
Sir Keir will be thrilled that his cherished ideals of anglo-French co-operation will be retained after he leaves office.
*In seriousness, in the event that both Farage and Bardella are elected, minds are more than likely to change, but it's interesting nonetheless.
The Home Office and Civil Service simply won’t allow it.
I dont think towing overloaded dinghies is something that either coastguard or Royal Navy could do. Theres a very high risk of a capsize catastrophe.
Loading them onto a safe vessel and landing them back on the French coast is possible, but obviously needs French governmental support.
I wouldn’t advocate it for the reasons you outline. Whatever people think of these men and their motivations for coming here you cannot simply risk drowning them. It would be unacceptable.
I thought the Labour government told us that they were mostly women and children?
Perhaps they self-identify as women and children.
There's a long tradition of asylum seekers claiming to be children when they're not.
Sir Keir will be thrilled that his cherished ideals of anglo-French co-operation will be retained after he leaves office.
*In seriousness, in the event that both Farage and Bardella are elected, minds are more than likely to change, but it's interesting nonetheless.
The Home Office and Civil Service simply won’t allow it.
I dont think towing overloaded dinghies is something that either coastguard or Royal Navy could do. Theres a very high risk of a capsize catastrophe.
Loading them onto a safe vessel and landing them back on the French coast is possible, but obviously needs French governmental support.
I wouldn’t advocate it for the reasons you outline. Whatever people think of these men and their motivations for coming here you cannot simply risk drowning them. It would be unacceptable.
I thought the Labour government told us that they were mostly women and children?
Perhaps they self-identify as women and children.
There's a long tradition of asylum seekers claiming to be children when they're not.
Specific quote of interest "Jahanzeb fled Afghanistan and underwent an age assessment after arriving in the UK in January, which concluded he was 17, Mr Williams said." But was he really 17?
As many of us have been saying for a while it's time for Starmer to make clear he's going to distance himself unequivocally from Trump and all of his neo Nazi coterie. If you think Trumps unpopular in the US imagine how the citizenship of the UK and the EU feel about him. Leave Trump to Farage and his flag waving admirers and move on quickly and decisively. I'm in France but the stuff he said about Khan appeared on the news and is shocking ......
........and for Starmer to be silent on it is even more shocking
I’m no fan of Trump but ‘neo-Nazi’.
Where Trump is concerned there is serious derangement going down. Some seriously deranged takes. Including in this thread. You’d think the US is on the verge of becoming the next N Korea.
What I expect to happen. The US carries on for a year. The Dems flip the house. Trump is reigned in and limps on for two years and his ability to rule by executive order is diminished.
Let's hope you are right Taz, but not looking very certain at this point for some strange reason. Too many supine , pork belly politician's with no backbones happy to let him trash the country, the billionaires, grifters and ne'er do wells are with him and making hay while the sun shines.
I am. I think Trump will run out of road once the US economy takes a turn for the worse and that will happen next year. That’s what the indicators are saying.
He made the economy his platform, he has to deliver, and he won’t be able to. Job openings are not good, inflation is sticky and growth, although above ours, is not great.
He will piss off his base.
"FAKE NEWS FROM THE RADICAL LEFT LUNATICS!"
That bollocks won’t cut it when people are paying for his policies with their jobs and food costs are going up and up.
Inflation people generally really take notice of when it affects stuff they buy regularly. Like food. Beef prices are elevated and will continue to be. Eggs are still elevated. The cost of dining out is going through the roof there.
Trump made food inflation a cornerstone of his campaign and, one year in, he’s failing.
And lower inflation is still an increase in prices.
In the same way that lower net immigration is still an increase in immigrants.
Low inflation is fine, especially if your wages rise above it
Low inflation is more desirable than deflation. Central Banks aim for low inflation.
Talking of deflation China is exporting it at the moment. They’ve had deflation for a couple of years. That may help us and Europe.
I think the lesson from the US is that GDP per capita and even real wages growth count for very little if there is high inflation.
I was looking at the OBR tables earlier and I think they suggest zero real wages growth from 2008 - 2030. That's unbelievably bad - but from a political perspective that's fine as long as inflation is low during this parliament.
One bright spot from the budget is that its measures were anti inflationary. So it should come down.
However, like with the USA, it depends where that inflation is. People notice it more when they spend it weekly. Like food.
That’s why food was so effective for Trump, but a massive hostage to fortune.
I don’t think it’s a coincidence he’s now looking at massive subsidies for the food producers in the US to offset the impact of his tariff policies.
As many of us have been saying for a while it's time for Starmer to make clear he's going to distance himself unequivocally from Trump and all of his neo Nazi coterie. If you think Trumps unpopular in the US imagine how the citizenship of the UK and the EU feel about him. Leave Trump to Farage and his flag waving admirers and move on quickly and decisively. I'm in France but the stuff he said about Khan appeared on the news and is shocking ......
........and for Starmer to be silent on it is even more shocking
I’m no fan of Trump but ‘neo-Nazi’.
Where Trump is concerned there is serious derangement going down. Some seriously deranged takes. Including in this thread. You’d think the US is on the verge of becoming the next N Korea.
What I expect to happen. The US carries on for a year. The Dems flip the house. Trump is reigned in and limps on for two years and his ability to rule by executive order is diminished.
A third of Republicans under 50 freely admit they are racist, a quarter anti-semitic. They prefer strongmen to the rule of law. They prefer lies and propaganda to the free press. They threaten their neighbours with trade wars and potential wars.
Unless neo-nazi is exclusively for Hitlers Germany then surely this is it.
Oh clearly. Must be.
‘Everyone I disagree with is a Neo Nazi’
Err, I disagree with everyone about something or other, very few are neo nazis. The ones that are neo-nazi tend to be the racist, anti-semitic ones who like strongmen rules with a disdain for the law and see might as right in dealing with their neighbours.
Personally I hate the use of the term Neo-Nazi. For one thing Nazism, National Socialism, is a very specific, time limited, German movement. Far better is the catch-all of Fascist. But even then Fascism is derived from the Italian movement.
I am ok with the term neo-Nazi. It has a specific meaning, just like neo-conservative or neoclassicism. I don't think Trump personally is a neo-Nazi, but there are plenty of them in his administration.
OT. For car lovers. There is a very striking car that seems to be much favoured by the Ukrainian ex pat community which has no visible name but AVATR underneath the passenger door. Very discreet. It looks a little like the Jag prototype but with a bit of an SUV. Favoured colours are pink and sky blue
Just checked out the website another Chinese EV - looks like a lot of car for the money.
Western car manufacturers might as well pack up.
Someone, @FrancisUrquhart IIRC, posted some YouTube videos of Chinese cars a few months back.
It’s staggering how advanced they are. Western car makers have talked the talk, the Chinese have walked the walk
Meanwhile in Germany car workers threaten to strike because they want a four day week for the same money.
The Chinese car makers are eating western car makers lunch.
Their only,salvation will be tariffs. Ironic given the criticism of Trump for them.
On a side note do you have the roof on your house ? The weather is shit at the moment.
CBAM is starting in the EU next year, 2027 in the UK. Not sure if that will have a significant impact on car manufacturers but will help level the playing field.
It should have been in place for at least the last decade. Horse bolted.
Sir Keir will be thrilled that his cherished ideals of anglo-French co-operation will be retained after he leaves office.
*In seriousness, in the event that both Farage and Bardella are elected, minds are more than likely to change, but it's interesting nonetheless.
The Home Office and Civil Service simply won’t allow it.
I dont think towing overloaded dinghies is something that either coastguard or Royal Navy could do. Theres a very high risk of a capsize catastrophe.
Loading them onto a safe vessel and landing them back on the French coast is possible, but obviously needs French governmental support.
I wouldn’t advocate it for the reasons you outline. Whatever people think of these men and their motivations for coming here you cannot simply risk drowning them. It would be unacceptable.
I thought the Labour government told us that they were mostly women and children?
Perhaps they self-identify as women and children.
There's a long tradition of asylum seekers claiming to be children when they're not.
Specific quote of interest "Jahanzeb fled Afghanistan and underwent an age assessment after arriving in the UK in January, which concluded he was 17, Mr Williams said." But was he really 17?
Is this the case that was reported of the two Leamington spa boys committing a heinous attack on a girl ?
I used to work in Leamington and live in Kenilworth.
OT. For car lovers. There is a very striking car that seems to be much favoured by the Ukrainian ex pat community which has no visible name but AVATR underneath the passenger door. Very discreet. It looks a little like the Jag prototype but with a bit of an SUV. Favoured colours are pink and sky blue
Just checked out the website another Chinese EV - looks like a lot of car for the money.
Western car manufacturers might as well pack up.
Someone, @FrancisUrquhart IIRC, posted some YouTube videos of Chinese cars a few months back.
It’s staggering how advanced they are. Western car makers have talked the talk, the Chinese have walked the walk
Meanwhile in Germany car workers threaten to strike because they want a four day week for the same money.
The Chinese car makers are eating western car makers lunch.
Their only,salvation will be tariffs. Ironic given the criticism of Trump for them.
On a side note do you have the roof on your house ? The weather is shit at the moment.
CBAM is starting in the EU next year, 2027 in the UK. Not sure if that will have a significant impact on car manufacturers but will help level the playing field.
It should have been in place for at least the last decade. Horse bolted.
In fact - this could make it even worse for EU/UK car manufacturers. A new carbon tax on imported Chinese steel (which is the right thing to do), but not an equivalent on imported Chinese cars (that use .... Chinese steel).
That bollocks won’t cut it when people are paying for his policies with their jobs and food costs are going up and up.
Inflation people generally really take notice of when it affects stuff they buy regularly. Like food. Beef prices are elevated and will continue to be. Eggs are still elevated. The cost of dining out is going through the roof there.
Trump made food inflation a cornerstone of his campaign and, one year in, he’s failing.
All of his minions are on TV every day saying the economy is wonderful
OT. For car lovers. There is a very striking car that seems to be much favoured by the Ukrainian ex pat community which has no visible name but AVATR underneath the passenger door. Very discreet. It looks a little like the Jag prototype but with a bit of an SUV. Favoured colours are pink and sky blue
Just checked out the website another Chinese EV - looks like a lot of car for the money.
Western car manufacturers might as well pack up.
Someone, @FrancisUrquhart IIRC, posted some YouTube videos of Chinese cars a few months back.
It’s staggering how advanced they are. Western car makers have talked the talk, the Chinese have walked the walk
Meanwhile in Germany car workers threaten to strike because they want a four day week for the same money.
The Chinese car makers are eating western car makers lunch.
Their only,salvation will be tariffs. Ironic given the criticism of Trump for them.
On a side note do you have the roof on your house ? The weather is shit at the moment.
CBAM is starting in the EU next year, 2027 in the UK. Not sure if that will have a significant impact on car manufacturers but will help level the playing field.
It should have been in place for at least the last decade. Horse bolted.
In fact - this could make it even worse for EU/UK car manufacturers. A new carbon tax on imported Chinese steel (which is the right thing to do), but not an equivalent on imported Chinese cars (that use .... Chinese steel).
FFS.
I suspect there will be punitive tariffs on Chinese cars to protect western car producers. It’s too critical an industry to many European nations.
The World Cup in 2026 is going to be a fiasco isn't it? No-one is going to turn up. I see the latest proposal is that all visitors must provide social media, email addresses going back 5 years and details of all your relatives.
Isn’t that normal for the USA.
My wife had to provide a lot of info, like that, prior to a recent trip to New York.
It's curious that the same government that says the EU enforcing its law to fine social media companies for breaching the law is a violation of their "1st Amendment rights" is fine with trawling through individuals' social media history to deny them visas.
But yes, such inconsistencies of principle are quite normal these days.
That bollocks won’t cut it when people are paying for his policies with their jobs and food costs are going up and up.
Inflation people generally really take notice of when it affects stuff they buy regularly. Like food. Beef prices are elevated and will continue to be. Eggs are still elevated. The cost of dining out is going through the roof there.
Trump made food inflation a cornerstone of his campaign and, one year in, he’s failing.
All of his minions are on TV every day saying the economy is wonderful
Just like Labour people telling us how wonderful Reeves budget was, especially for hospitality, they can tell us but reality or (dare I say it for triggering resident loons) lived experience is different people won’t listen or trust them
That bollocks won’t cut it when people are paying for his policies with their jobs and food costs are going up and up.
Inflation people generally really take notice of when it affects stuff they buy regularly. Like food. Beef prices are elevated and will continue to be. Eggs are still elevated. The cost of dining out is going through the roof there.
Trump made food inflation a cornerstone of his campaign and, one year in, he’s failing.
All of his minions are on TV every day saying the economy is wonderful
They did the same in the USSR, but people weren't so easily fooled. The new levels of unpopularity that Trump keeps falling to underlines that your can lie for a long time, but when they stop believing the lies, they will not even the truth if it comes from the same source. Trump is not quite done yet, but its coming and when it comes there will be no return. The writing is already on the wall.
OT. For car lovers. There is a very striking car that seems to be much favoured by the Ukrainian ex pat community which has no visible name but AVATR underneath the passenger door. Very discreet. It looks a little like the Jag prototype but with a bit of an SUV. Favoured colours are pink and sky blue
Just checked out the website another Chinese EV - looks like a lot of car for the money.
Western car manufacturers might as well pack up.
Someone, @FrancisUrquhart IIRC, posted some YouTube videos of Chinese cars a few months back.
It’s staggering how advanced they are. Western car makers have talked the talk, the Chinese have walked the walk
Meanwhile in Germany car workers threaten to strike because they want a four day week for the same money.
The Chinese car makers are eating western car makers lunch.
Their only,salvation will be tariffs. Ironic given the criticism of Trump for them.
On a side note do you have the roof on your house ? The weather is shit at the moment.
CBAM is starting in the EU next year, 2027 in the UK. Not sure if that will have a significant impact on car manufacturers but will help level the playing field.
It should have been in place for at least the last decade. Horse bolted.
In fact - this could make it even worse for EU/UK car manufacturers. A new carbon tax on imported Chinese steel (which is the right thing to do), but not an equivalent on imported Chinese cars (that use .... Chinese steel).
FFS.
I suspect there will be punitive tariffs on Chinese cars to protect western car producers. It’s too critical an industry to many European nations.
Germany's got, apparently, 15% of the Chinese car market and is reluctant to approve tariffs. Short-sighted, if so, but that may be the case.
Sir Keir will be thrilled that his cherished ideals of anglo-French co-operation will be retained after he leaves office.
*In seriousness, in the event that both Farage and Bardella are elected, minds are more than likely to change, but it's interesting nonetheless.
While I don't like until you have something like a 90% chance of them ending up where they started it's going to be impossible to stop the boats.
Yes. Or to a third country that is further away from their preferred destination than where they started from, hence Rwanda.
Rwanda and simple logistics meant they were never going to receive the 30000 it would require for the message to get out and work
It absolutely could work, if we follow through on it. That's on our side, not logistics side.
The way the Australian Labor Party did a similar scheme was to start it, then say "everyone who arrives by boat" will be sent abroad, not to be returned to Australia, even if they have a legitimate asylum claim. Boat numbers almost immediately collapsed to zero, as nobody wants to make the journey if that's the case.
If the UK did that, everyone who arrives is immediately deported to Rwanda, even if legitimate, no exceptions, then boat numbers would almost immediately collapse to zero. Much fewer than 30,000 would arrive after that message gets out and it would get our rapidly.
The problem is on our side, and our conscience of following through on that, even for legitimate claimants.
That bollocks won’t cut it when people are paying for his policies with their jobs and food costs are going up and up.
Inflation people generally really take notice of when it affects stuff they buy regularly. Like food. Beef prices are elevated and will continue to be. Eggs are still elevated. The cost of dining out is going through the roof there.
Trump made food inflation a cornerstone of his campaign and, one year in, he’s failing.
All of his minions are on TV every day saying the economy is wonderful
They did the same in the USSR, but people weren't so easily fooled. The new levels of unpopularity that Trump keeps falling to underlines that your can lie for a long time, but when they stop believing the lies, they will not even the truth if it comes from the same source. Trump is not quite done yet, but its coming and when it comes there will be no return. The writing is already on the wall.
Telling people things are fine works until it dawns on them that things aren’t fine and they grasp they are being lied to.
It’s the reason why I’ve not read the Economist for 30 years because their original articles about the internet were so wrong (to the extent they misreported a meeting I was sat in) that I couldn’t trust anything else they were reporting on
The World Cup in 2026 is going to be a fiasco isn't it? No-one is going to turn up. I see the latest proposal is that all visitors must provide social media, email addresses going back 5 years and details of all your relatives.
Isn’t that normal for the USA.
My wife had to provide a lot of info, like that, prior to a recent trip to New York.
It's curious that the same government that says the EU enforcing its law to fine social media companies for breaching the law is a violation of their "1st Amendment rights" is fine with trawling through individuals' social media history to deny them visas.
But yes, such inconsistencies of principle are quite normal these days.
Of course, to be consistent, the Trump regime could remove this requirement. I suspect they won’t.
I did warn one of the party, a 15 year old daughter of friends of ours who is no fan of Trump, to make sure she wasn’t posting her thoughts online before she went. Just in case.
I’m afraid some free speech absolutists only support their own free speech. Left or right
OT. For car lovers. There is a very striking car that seems to be much favoured by the Ukrainian ex pat community which has no visible name but AVATR underneath the passenger door. Very discreet. It looks a little like the Jag prototype but with a bit of an SUV. Favoured colours are pink and sky blue
Just checked out the website another Chinese EV - looks like a lot of car for the money.
Western car manufacturers might as well pack up.
Someone, @FrancisUrquhart IIRC, posted some YouTube videos of Chinese cars a few months back.
It’s staggering how advanced they are. Western car makers have talked the talk, the Chinese have walked the walk
Meanwhile in Germany car workers threaten to strike because they want a four day week for the same money.
The Chinese car makers are eating western car makers lunch.
Their only,salvation will be tariffs. Ironic given the criticism of Trump for them.
On a side note do you have the roof on your house ? The weather is shit at the moment.
CBAM is starting in the EU next year, 2027 in the UK. Not sure if that will have a significant impact on car manufacturers but will help level the playing field.
It should have been in place for at least the last decade. Horse bolted.
In fact - this could make it even worse for EU/UK car manufacturers. A new carbon tax on imported Chinese steel (which is the right thing to do), but not an equivalent on imported Chinese cars (that use .... Chinese steel).
FFS.
I suspect there will be punitive tariffs on Chinese cars to protect western car producers. It’s too critical an industry to many European nations.
Some of us saw this coming a couple of years ago, when thousands of the cheap Chinese cars suddenly appeared from nowhere in my region.
Western governments have to balance the need to protect their own car industries, against a desire for more electric powertrains to be sold.
Non-EV Chinese cars should come with a 100% tariff and quotas, as Europe did for Japanese cars in the ‘80s, at least until the market shakes itself out from a very turbulent few years.
That bollocks won’t cut it when people are paying for his policies with their jobs and food costs are going up and up.
Inflation people generally really take notice of when it affects stuff they buy regularly. Like food. Beef prices are elevated and will continue to be. Eggs are still elevated. The cost of dining out is going through the roof there.
Trump made food inflation a cornerstone of his campaign and, one year in, he’s failing.
All of his minions are on TV every day saying the economy is wonderful
They did the same in the USSR, but people weren't so easily fooled. The new levels of unpopularity that Trump keeps falling to underlines that your can lie for a long time, but when they stop believing the lies, they will not even the truth if it comes from the same source. Trump is not quite done yet, but its coming and when it comes there will be no return. The writing is already on the wall.
So at the risk of triggering certain folk, Trump is Stalinist?
That bollocks won’t cut it when people are paying for his policies with their jobs and food costs are going up and up.
Inflation people generally really take notice of when it affects stuff they buy regularly. Like food. Beef prices are elevated and will continue to be. Eggs are still elevated. The cost of dining out is going through the roof there.
Trump made food inflation a cornerstone of his campaign and, one year in, he’s failing.
All of his minions are on TV every day saying the economy is wonderful
Just like Labour people telling us how wonderful Reeves budget was, especially for hospitality, they can tell us but reality or (dare I say it for triggering resident loons) lived experience is different people won’t listen or trust them
Business rates, energy bills, cost of staff, it’s all got a lot worse.
The World Cup in 2026 is going to be a fiasco isn't it? No-one is going to turn up. I see the latest proposal is that all visitors must provide social media, email addresses going back 5 years and details of all your relatives.
Isn’t that normal for the USA.
My wife had to provide a lot of info, like that, prior to a recent trip to New York.
Don't think so. I travelled to the US twice in recent times (just after Covid). Applied for the bit of paper I needed (can't remember its name), which had minimal info on it, which was very straightforward and trundled through passport checks with minimal interference. They did something with my passport, had some sort of scan and then straight through. A lot less than I was anticipating having listened to some stories.
That bollocks won’t cut it when people are paying for his policies with their jobs and food costs are going up and up.
Inflation people generally really take notice of when it affects stuff they buy regularly. Like food. Beef prices are elevated and will continue to be. Eggs are still elevated. The cost of dining out is going through the roof there.
Trump made food inflation a cornerstone of his campaign and, one year in, he’s failing.
All of his minions are on TV every day saying the economy is wonderful
Just like Labour people telling us how wonderful Reeves budget was, especially for hospitality, they can tell us but reality or (dare I say it for triggering resident loons) lived experience is different people won’t listen or trust them
Business rates, energy bills, cost of staff, it’s all got a lot worse.
The World Cup in 2026 is going to be a fiasco isn't it? No-one is going to turn up. I see the latest proposal is that all visitors must provide social media, email addresses going back 5 years and details of all your relatives.
Isn’t that normal for the USA.
My wife had to provide a lot of info, like that, prior to a recent trip to New York.
Don't think so. I travelled to the US twice in recent times (just after Covid). Applied for the bit of paper I needed (can't remember its name), which had minimal info on it, which was very straightforward and trundled through passport checks with minimal interference. They did something with my passport, had some sort of scan and then straight through. A lot less than I was anticipating having listened to some stories.
My wife certainly had to provide that to get her ESTA but she travelled last month.
Good news for investors and those buying annuities. Every transaction has 2 sides.
Indeed. Ive been most happy with VGOV in my SIPP and am buying monthly at the moment.
But its not good for the govt.
VGOV is down over almost every time period from 1 day to 5 years. Average gilt duration 8.3 years. Surely rising gilt yields are (yet more) bad news for holders ?
He’s an accomplished speaker in a small group situation: naturally loud voice, articulate, reasonably on top of his brief. I think it’s a mistake to lump all Reform people together as knuckle-heads - he has a brain. Not a brain that thinks the same way as mine, but a brain nonetheless.
Ideologically and stylistically he’s very much a Redwoodite Tory. The conversation could easily have been with someone on the right of the Tory party any time in the last 30 years. Deregulation, let’s get business people into government, cutting waste, common sense etc etc. The wrinkle vis a vis most Thatcherite types is a greater attachment to national champions, government intervention in the ownership of public utilities, and PPP. And of course a very clear enmity towards net zero and all things renewable, which is now mainstream conservative ideology but didn’t used to be.
To my question on corporation tax, he said they couldn’t make firm policy thus far out from an election but he praised Osborne’s tax roadmap.
He steered well away from anything culture war related, apart from a lone scoffing reference to “woke” investment funds. Nor foreign affairs. Clearly not his lane.
A clear indication that they would do “what they do in the USA” (he actually said that) and create a partisan civil service with Perm secs and their staff appointed by the government.
This was, in essence, like watching an hour of Dominic Cummings. Or indeed @Luckyguy1983 of this parish with a dollop of @Casino_Royale .
If the Midterms are held, MAGA lose control of the country. Many of them will go to jail.
Question - are they united enough to drive through the democratic renewal and cancel / postpone the elections? Or is MTG John the Baptist, leading the way for a series of Damascene conversions and mea culpas?
2026 is going to be some year...
With a big enough blue wave, it would have to be a full fledged armed coup. I don't think they yet have sufficient control of the state institutions to do that, but if they could, they probably would.
1. Choke off the blue wave now. Not safe to hold elections in blue places, the officials are terrorists 2. Flood blue places with troopers from red places 3. A few strategic extrajudicial murders to kick off the protests, to prove the blue lot are terrorist insurgents 4. Elections postponed. For safety.
To get away with that you need still close to 50% approval, if you are under 40% approval even if you have military support for now you risk revolution if you cancel elections permanently
@HYUFD, you are a decent chap, and that is an admirable thing to be. But the downside of being a decent chap is to assume that other people are also decent chaps. And to keep giving the benefit of the doubt for far too long.
The first is a good thing in a good society, but the second can end disastrously.
Trump's Administration is not made up of decent chaps. Given the trouble they will be in after they hand over power, they ain't handing over power, no matter what the rules say.
What has that what I said got to do with being a 'decent chap' though? When I was basically saying what a dictator needs to do to keep power.
A dictator can keep power without holding any elections if about half or more of the country approves of what they are doing and the economy is OK, with the military and secret police etc behind them too. Trump of course won with 50% of the vote last year.
If about 2/3 of the nation though wants the dictator gone, ultimately they are doomed and even the military will likely desert them even if the secret police stay loyal as well.
That was what happened to Ceusescu for example who went from supreme leader of Romania in Jan 1989 to executed by firing squad after a revolution by Christmas 1989.
You can rule as a dictator with much less support than 50%, if you have the backing of the security forces. Maduro is a good example. If the security forces turn, the dictator is finished. It’s why civilian dictators don’t like to maintain powerful armies, if they can avoid it (they do like powerful paramilitary police forces).
But, I do expect that much of the US military would revolt, if Trump ordered them to impose martial law in blue states. My impression is that many soldiers despise Trump, who views them as “suckers and losers”, and who made a drunkard his Defence Secretary.
And, you think that declared result reflected the actual votes that were cast?
According to the Venezuala election commission yes, Maduro held an election and won it, it may not have been 100% perfect but he did not cancel elections
Maduro cheated like a professional wrestling villain, as PJ O’Rourke put it.
No, otherwise he would have won with 99% not 51%
Only the truly stupid do that.
Maduro cheated enough to win - to keep his Tankie friends overseas. 99% would have been embarrassing for sone of them.
Yes but if 2/3 of Venezualans really opposed him they would have launched a revolution by now, if they really do and haven't then to be blunt they are weak and deserve him
The World Cup in 2026 is going to be a fiasco isn't it? No-one is going to turn up. I see the latest proposal is that all visitors must provide social media, email addresses going back 5 years and details of all your relatives.
Isn’t that normal for the USA.
My wife had to provide a lot of info, like that, prior to a recent trip to New York.
Don't think so. I travelled to the US twice in recent times (just after Covid). Applied for the bit of paper I needed (can't remember its name), which had minimal info on it, which was very straightforward and trundled through passport checks with minimal interference. They did something with my passport, had some sort of scan and then straight through. A lot less than I was anticipating having listened to some stories.
My wife certainly had to provide that to get her ESTA but she travelled last month.
Must be something relatively recent then
They do ask for Social Media accounts currently but not emails going back in time or any detail of family. I gave them my Facebook and LinkedIn which are both fairly boring,.I don't post anything political for work reasons. I don't care about Uncle Sam seeing that I do Parkrun or sometimes sing or where I've been on holiday (the last bit is in my passport anyway).
OT - I wonder what group of the electorate, who have heavily swung to the Reps and then even more to Trump in 24, are very heavily represented in Miami. The first round was a bad result for the Reps there but the second round is worse. It is just one contest but this sort of shift is very much of note
If the Midterms are held, MAGA lose control of the country. Many of them will go to jail.
Question - are they united enough to drive through the democratic renewal and cancel / postpone the elections? Or is MTG John the Baptist, leading the way for a series of Damascene conversions and mea culpas?
2026 is going to be some year...
With a big enough blue wave, it would have to be a full fledged armed coup. I don't think they yet have sufficient control of the state institutions to do that, but if they could, they probably would.
1. Choke off the blue wave now. Not safe to hold elections in blue places, the officials are terrorists 2. Flood blue places with troopers from red places 3. A few strategic extrajudicial murders to kick off the protests, to prove the blue lot are terrorist insurgents 4. Elections postponed. For safety.
To get away with that you need still close to 50% approval, if you are under 40% approval even if you have military support for now you risk revolution if you cancel elections permanently
@HYUFD, you are a decent chap, and that is an admirable thing to be. But the downside of being a decent chap is to assume that other people are also decent chaps. And to keep giving the benefit of the doubt for far too long.
The first is a good thing in a good society, but the second can end disastrously.
Trump's Administration is not made up of decent chaps. Given the trouble they will be in after they hand over power, they ain't handing over power, no matter what the rules say.
What has that what I said got to do with being a 'decent chap' though? When I was basically saying what a dictator needs to do to keep power.
A dictator can keep power without holding any elections if about half or more of the country approves of what they are doing and the economy is OK, with the military and secret police etc behind them too. Trump of course won with 50% of the vote last year.
If about 2/3 of the nation though wants the dictator gone, ultimately they are doomed and even the military will likely desert them even if the secret police stay loyal as well.
That was what happened to Ceusescu for example who went from supreme leader of Romania in Jan 1989 to executed by firing squad after a revolution by Christmas 1989.
You can rule as a dictator with much less support than 50%, if you have the backing of the security forces. Maduro is a good example. If the security forces turn, the dictator is finished. It’s why civilian dictators don’t like to maintain powerful armies, if they can avoid it (they do like powerful paramilitary police forces).
But, I do expect that much of the US military would revolt, if Trump ordered them to impose martial law in blue states. My impression is that many soldiers despise Trump, who views them as “suckers and losers”, and who made a drunkard his Defence Secretary.
And, you think that declared result reflected the actual votes that were cast?
According to the Venezuala election commission yes, Maduro held an election and won it, it may not have been 100% perfect but he did not cancel elections
Maduro cheated like a professional wrestling villain, as PJ O’Rourke put it.
No, otherwise he would have won with 99% not 51%
Only the truly stupid do that.
Maduro cheated enough to win - to keep his Tankie friends overseas. 99% would have been embarrassing for sone of them.
Yes but if 2/3 of Venezualans really opposed him they would have launched a revolution by now, if they really do and haven't then to be blunt they are weak and deserve him
The army is solidly behind him
Until they aren’t. As happened to Robert Mugabe once General Chiwenga went on TV and denounced him.
He’s an accomplished speaker in a small group situation: naturally loud voice, articulate, reasonably on top of his brief. I think it’s a mistake to lump all Reform people together as knuckle-heads - he has a brain. Not a brain that thinks the same way as mine, but a brain nonetheless.
Ideologically and stylistically he’s very much a Redwoodite Tory. The conversation could easily have been with someone on the right of the Tory party any time in the last 30 years. Deregulation, let’s get business people into government, cutting waste, common sense etc etc. The wrinkle vis a vis most Thatcherite types is a greater attachment to national champions, government intervention in the ownership of public utilities, and PPP. And of course a very clear enmity towards net zero and all things renewable, which is now mainstream conservative ideology but didn’t used to be.
To my question on corporation tax, he said they couldn’t make firm policy thus far out from an election but he praised Osborne’s tax roadmap.
He steered well away from anything culture war related, apart from a lone scoffing reference to “woke” investment funds. Nor foreign affairs. Clearly not his lane.
A clear indication that they would do “what they do in the USA” (he actually said that) and create a partisan civil service with Perm secs and their staff appointed by the government.
This was, in essence, like watching an hour of Dominic Cummings. Or indeed @Luckyguy1983 of this parish with a dollop of @Casino_Royale .
What I don't understand is that he advocates enmity against net zero yet in business is a huge supporter of renewables. The hypocrisy of his position is off the scale.
The World Cup in 2026 is going to be a fiasco isn't it? No-one is going to turn up. I see the latest proposal is that all visitors must provide social media, email addresses going back 5 years and details of all your relatives.
Isn’t that normal for the USA.
My wife had to provide a lot of info, like that, prior to a recent trip to New York.
Don't think so. I travelled to the US twice in recent times (just after Covid). Applied for the bit of paper I needed (can't remember its name), which had minimal info on it, which was very straightforward and trundled through passport checks with minimal interference. They did something with my passport, had some sort of scan and then straight through. A lot less than I was anticipating having listened to some stories.
My wife certainly had to provide that to get her ESTA but she travelled last month.
Must be something relatively recent then
They do ask for Social Media accounts currently but not emails going back in time or any detail of family. I gave them my Facebook and LinkedIn which are both fairly boring,.I don't post anything political for work reasons. I don't care about Uncle Sam seeing that I do Parkrun or sometimes sing or where I've been on holiday (the last bit is in my passport anyway).
I got a new ESTA a couple of months ago. The social media box is optional.
The political betting related forum box is required though.
He’s an accomplished speaker in a small group situation: naturally loud voice, articulate, reasonably on top of his brief. I think it’s a mistake to lump all Reform people together as knuckle-heads - he has a brain. Not a brain that thinks the same way as mine, but a brain nonetheless.
Ideologically and stylistically he’s very much a Redwoodite Tory. The conversation could easily have been with someone on the right of the Tory party any time in the last 30 years. Deregulation, let’s get business people into government, cutting waste, common sense etc etc. The wrinkle vis a vis most Thatcherite types is a greater attachment to national champions, government intervention in the ownership of public utilities, and PPP. And of course a very clear enmity towards net zero and all things renewable, which is now mainstream conservative ideology but didn’t used to be.
To my question on corporation tax, he said they couldn’t make firm policy thus far out from an election but he praised Osborne’s tax roadmap.
He steered well away from anything culture war related, apart from a lone scoffing reference to “woke” investment funds. Nor foreign affairs. Clearly not his lane.
A clear indication that they would do “what they do in the USA” (he actually said that) and create a partisan civil service with Perm secs and their staff appointed by the government.
This was, in essence, like watching an hour of Dominic Cummings. Or indeed @Luckyguy1983 of this parish with a dollop of @Casino_Royale .
Of course this is your partisan, centrist, take on it.
He’s an accomplished speaker in a small group situation: naturally loud voice, articulate, reasonably on top of his brief. I think it’s a mistake to lump all Reform people together as knuckle-heads - he has a brain. Not a brain that thinks the same way as mine, but a brain nonetheless.
Ideologically and stylistically he’s very much a Redwoodite Tory. The conversation could easily have been with someone on the right of the Tory party any time in the last 30 years. Deregulation, let’s get business people into government, cutting waste, common sense etc etc. The wrinkle vis a vis most Thatcherite types is a greater attachment to national champions, government intervention in the ownership of public utilities, and PPP. And of course a very clear enmity towards net zero and all things renewable, which is now mainstream conservative ideology but didn’t used to be.
To my question on corporation tax, he said they couldn’t make firm policy thus far out from an election but he praised Osborne’s tax roadmap.
He steered well away from anything culture war related, apart from a lone scoffing reference to “woke” investment funds. Nor foreign affairs. Clearly not his lane.
A clear indication that they would do “what they do in the USA” (he actually said that) and create a partisan civil service with Perm secs and their staff appointed by the government.
This was, in essence, like watching an hour of Dominic Cummings. Or indeed @Luckyguy1983 of this parish with a dollop of @Casino_Royale .
Of course this is your partisan, centrist, take on it.
Good news for investors and those buying annuities. Every transaction has 2 sides.
Indeed. Ive been most happy with VGOV in my SIPP and am buying monthly at the moment.
But its not good for the govt.
VGOV is down over almost every time period from 1 day to 5 years. Average gilt duration 8.3 years. Surely rising gilt yields are (yet more) bad news for holders ?
Yet I’m up on it and happy with the yield, which is what I bought it for 🤷♂️
Sir Keir will be thrilled that his cherished ideals of anglo-French co-operation will be retained after he leaves office.
*In seriousness, in the event that both Farage and Bardella are elected, minds are more than likely to change, but it's interesting nonetheless.
The Home Office and Civil Service simply won’t allow it.
I dont think towing overloaded dinghies is something that either coastguard or Royal Navy could do. Theres a very high risk of a capsize catastrophe.
Loading them onto a safe vessel and landing them back on the French coast is possible, but obviously needs French governmental support.
I wouldn’t advocate it for the reasons you outline. Whatever people think of these men and their motivations for coming here you cannot simply risk drowning them. It would be unacceptable.
I thought the Labour government told us that they were mostly women and children?
Perhaps they self-identify as women and children.
There's a long tradition of asylum seekers claiming to be children when they're not.
Specific quote of interest "Jahanzeb fled Afghanistan and underwent an age assessment after arriving in the UK in January, which concluded he was 17, Mr Williams said." But was he really 17?
Is this the case that was reported of the two Leamington spa boys committing a heinous attack on a girl ?
I used to work in Leamington and live in Kenilworth.
It used to be a nice place.
Of course this is your partisan, culture warrior take on it.
The World Cup in 2026 is going to be a fiasco isn't it? No-one is going to turn up. I see the latest proposal is that all visitors must provide social media, email addresses going back 5 years and details of all your relatives.
plus cost, they reckon minimum 7.5K-10K to budget.
He’s an accomplished speaker in a small group situation: naturally loud voice, articulate, reasonably on top of his brief. I think it’s a mistake to lump all Reform people together as knuckle-heads - he has a brain. Not a brain that thinks the same way as mine, but a brain nonetheless.
Ideologically and stylistically he’s very much a Redwoodite Tory. The conversation could easily have been with someone on the right of the Tory party any time in the last 30 years. Deregulation, let’s get business people into government, cutting waste, common sense etc etc. The wrinkle vis a vis most Thatcherite types is a greater attachment to national champions, government intervention in the ownership of public utilities, and PPP. And of course a very clear enmity towards net zero and all things renewable, which is now mainstream conservative ideology but didn’t used to be.
To my question on corporation tax, he said they couldn’t make firm policy thus far out from an election but he praised Osborne’s tax roadmap.
He steered well away from anything culture war related, apart from a lone scoffing reference to “woke” investment funds. Nor foreign affairs. Clearly not his lane.
A clear indication that they would do “what they do in the USA” (he actually said that) and create a partisan civil service with Perm secs and their staff appointed by the government.
This was, in essence, like watching an hour of Dominic Cummings. Or indeed @Luckyguy1983 of this parish with a dollop of @Casino_Royale .
If he is on top of his brief he has sharpened up since when I interacted with him, when he kept stating things as facts that were simply not true. Certainly a typical ex public school boy - talk loudly and confidently even when you don't know what you are talking about. I imagine he goes down well among people who like that sort of thing. He sees keen to present an economically dry version of the Reform proposition and as you say mostly steers clear of culture war stuff although is clearly happy to go along with it. How that sits with the average Reform voter in the red wall I am not sure. Of course they all think that government spending isn't going to people like them so I would guess this Thatcherite agenda would only be a hindrance to Reform support after their election victory.
Comments
BTW, by the actual midterms, I think the numbers will be much much worse for the Republicans, I am just extrapolating slightly from current forecasts. The midterms in my view will bring an unprecedented blood bath. Trump is already the most unpopular President in modern polling history, and I think you ain't seen nothing yet.
Where Trump is concerned there is serious derangement going down. Some seriously deranged takes. Including in this thread. You’d think the US is on the verge of becoming the next N Korea.
What I expect to happen. The US carries on for a year. The Dems flip the house. Trump is reigned in and limps on for two years and his ability to rule by executive order is diminished.
They prefer strongmen to the rule of law.
They prefer lies and propaganda to the free press.
They threaten their neighbours with trade wars and potential wars.
Unless neo-nazi is exclusively for Hitlers Germany then surely this is it.
I have a small suspicion that that might not actually have reflected East German public opinion at that point.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Emirati_parliamentary_election
‘Everyone I disagree with is a Neo Nazi’
He made the economy his platform, he has to deliver, and he won’t be able to. Job openings are not good, inflation is sticky and growth, although above ours, is not great.
He will piss off his base.
My wife had to provide a lot of info, like that, prior to a recent trip to New York.
What do you think he’ll do apart from have opinions you don’t share ?
Inflation people generally really take notice of when it affects stuff they buy regularly. Like food. Beef prices are elevated and will continue to be. Eggs are still elevated. The cost of dining out is going through the roof there.
Trump made food inflation a cornerstone of his campaign and, one year in, he’s failing.
Maduro cheated enough to win - to keep his Tankie friends overseas. 99% would have been embarrassing for sone of them.
He doesn't drink alcohol or smoke, so that's in his favour.
Well done Rachel.
In the same way that lower net immigration is still an increase in immigrants.
Loading them onto a safe vessel and landing them back on the French coast is possible, but obviously needs French governmental support.
Low inflation is more desirable than deflation. Central Banks aim for low inflation.
Talking of deflation China is exporting it at the moment. They’ve had deflation for a couple of years. That may help us and Europe.
A tin of chickpeas has increased from 49p to 55p at ASDA.
Am I allowed to blame Starmer and Reeves or do I have to blame Trump ?
Donald Trump’s never had a lentil on his face.
Hardly a beacon of democracy.
As I am busy for most of the week, I’ve changed the spam trap settings so if people mention it on here, it’s an automatic ban, perhaps that will focus minds.
I got a temp ban from a Dr Who group for that gag !,
The difficulty can be getting the pay rise and getting a pay rise relative to other people.
And being on the right side of the asset / debt balance is also vital.
Which if the Dave Ramsey show is in any way representative is an increasing problem in the USA.
I was looking at the OBR tables earlier and I think they suggest zero real wages growth from 2008 - 2030. That's unbelievably bad - but from a political perspective that's fine as long as inflation is low during this parliament.
Western car manufacturers might as well pack up.
ASDA's other tinned pulses are still 49p.
But its ASDA's chickpeas I prefer.
But there are groups in the US who describe themselves precisely as that.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/26/neo-nazis-trump-extremism
There are a lot more plain fascists, of course. not a few of them in the administration (*cough* Stephen Miller).
It’s staggering how advanced they are. Western car makers have talked the talk, the Chinese have walked the walk
Meanwhile in Germany car workers threaten to strike because they want a four day week for the same money.
The Chinese car makers are eating western car makers lunch.
Their only,salvation will be tariffs. Ironic given the criticism of Trump for them.
On a side note do you have the roof on your house ? The weather is shit at the moment.
There's a long tradition of asylum seekers claiming to be children when they're not.
https://bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c74x9ln0y4qo
Specific quote of interest "Jahanzeb fled Afghanistan and underwent an age assessment after arriving in the UK in January, which concluded he was 17, Mr Williams said." But was he really 17?
However, like with the USA, it depends where that inflation is. People notice it more when they spend it weekly. Like food.
That’s why food was so effective for Trump, but a massive hostage to fortune.
I don’t think it’s a coincidence he’s now looking at massive subsidies for the food producers in the US to offset the impact of his tariff policies.
It should have been in place for at least the last decade. Horse bolted.
I used to work in Leamington and live in Kenilworth.
It used to be a nice place.
But its not good for the govt.
FFS.
But yes, such inconsistencies of principle are quite normal these days.
The way the Australian Labor Party did a similar scheme was to start it, then say "everyone who arrives by boat" will be sent abroad, not to be returned to Australia, even if they have a legitimate asylum claim. Boat numbers almost immediately collapsed to zero, as nobody wants to make the journey if that's the case.
If the UK did that, everyone who arrives is immediately deported to Rwanda, even if legitimate, no exceptions, then boat numbers would almost immediately collapse to zero. Much fewer than 30,000 would arrive after that message gets out and it would get our rapidly.
The problem is on our side, and our conscience of following through on that, even for legitimate claimants.
It’s the reason why I’ve not read the Economist for 30 years because their original articles about the internet were so wrong (to the extent they misreported a meeting I was sat in) that I couldn’t trust anything else they were reporting on
I did warn one of the party, a 15 year old daughter of friends of ours who is no fan of Trump, to make sure she wasn’t posting her thoughts online before she went. Just in case.
I’m afraid some free speech absolutists only support their own free speech. Left or right
Western governments have to balance the need to protect their own car industries, against a desire for more electric powertrains to be sold.
Non-EV Chinese cars should come with a 100% tariff and quotas, as Europe did for Japanese cars in the ‘80s, at least until the market shakes itself out from a very turbulent few years.
https://x.com/laraincornwall/status/1997254890016399508
At this rate it will only be Clarkson’s pub left, subsidised by being on a TV show.
What is shitty is all the pro Labour accounts telling her that her business clearly is not viable if it cannot take these extra costs.
Must be something relatively recent then
He’s an accomplished speaker in a small group situation: naturally loud voice, articulate, reasonably on top of his brief. I think it’s a mistake to lump all Reform people together as knuckle-heads - he has a brain. Not a brain that thinks the same way as mine, but a brain nonetheless.
Ideologically and stylistically he’s very much a Redwoodite Tory. The conversation could easily have been with someone on the right of the Tory party any time in the last 30 years. Deregulation, let’s get business people into government, cutting waste, common sense etc etc. The wrinkle vis a vis most Thatcherite types is a greater attachment to national champions, government intervention in the ownership of public utilities, and PPP. And of course a very clear enmity towards net zero and all things renewable, which is now mainstream conservative ideology but didn’t used to be.
To my question on corporation tax, he said they couldn’t make firm policy thus far out from an election but he praised Osborne’s tax roadmap.
He steered well away from anything culture war related, apart from a lone scoffing reference to “woke” investment funds. Nor foreign affairs. Clearly not his lane.
A clear indication that they would do “what they do in the USA” (he actually said that) and create a partisan civil service with Perm secs and their staff appointed by the government.
This was, in essence, like watching an hour of Dominic Cummings. Or indeed @Luckyguy1983 of this parish with a dollop of @Casino_Royale .
It can happen very quickly.
The political betting related forum box is required though.
(Though I thought my account was pretty factual?)
(Leamington is still a nice place).
He sees keen to present an economically dry version of the Reform proposition and as you say mostly steers clear of culture war stuff although is clearly happy to go along with it. How that sits with the average Reform voter in the red wall I am not sure. Of course they all think that government spending isn't going to people like them so I would guess this Thatcherite agenda would only be a hindrance to Reform support after their election victory.