A point made forcefully by many historians, for example Michael Bentley. 'Politicians of that era (1905-1914) had no reason to think that they needed to complete everything before the chiming of some solemn midnight hour in 1914...diaries of Liberal politicians (in spring 1914) have an optimistic future tense reference to the election of 1915...in their imagination, those young men in the summer of 1914 rode the crest of an open future.'
An idea of how people thought and felt in any era can be gained by reading newspapers of the period for several days*, and the results are usually interesting. AI is doing the same thing, just quicker.
*Something that will be to put it mildly more challenging for historians of our own times.
Not just 'quicker', but with potentially far broader reach in terms of reading. Like all AIs, it will be a fallible tool which needs someone with actual knowledge of a given period to use most effectively, but it might be quite a powerful one, since it could/can have access to a vast amount of texts in any language.
(Consider, for example, the massive volumes of Korean court histories, which on their own might otherwise require a lifetime of study.)
When I was at University the library still had either the hard copy or a microfiche (showing my age here) of the Times newspapers and one of the many ways I would amuse myself when law got too boring was to read the newspapers in the run up to some significant event, such as the American civil war or WW1 and get an idea of how the informed people of the time saw things. My recollection, and this was 45 years ago now, was that many people saw trouble with Germany as inevitable. We had already had the race to build Dreadnaughts and there were concerns about whether the RN was as dominant as it had been for the last century. No one foresaw the bloodbath to come that I recall.
Archive.org has a good block of scans of British newspapers from the 70s/80s/90s if you fancy going back and re-living the mid to late Cold War and then the End of History.
Also britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk (££) has been filling in that sort of era. (Slightly disconcerting to find one's and one's friends' school doings in the local papers in the same breath as stuff from the 1700s.) Not so good for certain London broadsheets perhaps. But it does make one cry for what has been lost in terms of local newspapers today.
A point made forcefully by many historians, for example Michael Bentley. 'Politicians of that era (1905-1914) had no reason to think that they needed to complete everything before the chiming of some solemn midnight hour in 1914...diaries of Liberal politicians (in spring 1914) have an optimistic future tense reference to the election of 1915...in their imagination, those young men in the summer of 1914 rode the crest of an open future.'
An idea of how people thought and felt in any era can be gained by reading newspapers of the period for several days*, and the results are usually interesting. AI is doing the same thing, just quicker.
*Something that will be to put it mildly more challenging for historians of our own times.
Not just 'quicker', but with potentially far broader reach in terms of reading. Like all AIs, it will be a fallible tool which needs someone with actual knowledge of a given period to use most effectively, but it might be quite a powerful one, since it could/can have access to a vast amount of texts in any language.
(Consider, for example, the massive volumes of Korean court histories, which on their own might otherwise require a lifetime of study.)
When I was at University the library still had either the hard copy or a microfiche (showing my age here) of the Times newspapers and one of the many ways I would amuse myself when law got too boring was to read the newspapers in the run up to some significant event, such as the American civil war or WW1 and get an idea of how the informed people of the time saw things. My recollection, and this was 45 years ago now, was that many people saw trouble with Germany as inevitable. We had already had the race to build Dreadnaughts and there were concerns about whether the RN was as dominant as it had been for the last century. No one foresaw the bloodbath to come that I recall.
It is pretty universal that predictions of the future are wrong and fail to anticipate major events correctly.
Well within our lifetimes no one really saw how quickly the Soviet Union would collapse in 89-90 either.
These things tend to be much more obvious with the advantage of hindsight.
A point made forcefully by many historians, for example Michael Bentley. 'Politicians of that era (1905-1914) had no reason to think that they needed to complete everything before the chiming of some solemn midnight hour in 1914...diaries of Liberal politicians (in spring 1914) have an optimistic future tense reference to the election of 1915...in their imagination, those young men in the summer of 1914 rode the crest of an open future.'
An idea of how people thought and felt in any era can be gained by reading newspapers of the period for several days*, and the results are usually interesting. AI is doing the same thing, just quicker.
*Something that will be to put it mildly more challenging for historians of our own times.
Not just 'quicker', but with potentially far broader reach in terms of reading. Like all AIs, it will be a fallible tool which needs someone with actual knowledge of a given period to use most effectively, but it might be quite a powerful one, since it could/can have access to a vast amount of texts in any language.
(Consider, for example, the massive volumes of Korean court histories, which on their own might otherwise require a lifetime of study.)
When I was at University the library still had either the hard copy or a microfiche (showing my age here) of the Times newspapers and one of the many ways I would amuse myself when law got too boring was to read the newspapers in the run up to some significant event, such as the American civil war or WW1 and get an idea of how the informed people of the time saw things. My recollection, and this was 45 years ago now, was that many people saw trouble with Germany as inevitable. We had already had the race to build Dreadnaughts and there were concerns about whether the RN was as dominant as it had been for the last century. No one foresaw the bloodbath to come that I recall.
It is pretty universal that predictions of the future are wrong and fail to anticipate major events correctly.
Well within our lifetimes no one really saw how quickly the Soviet Union would collapse in 89-90 either.
These things tend to be much more obvious with the advantage of hindsight.
Sadly, the lottery numbers are a particularly good example of that!
Am several days and several hundred pounds into the process and unless I've misunderstood, there seems to be a gaping security hole at the end. I've probably misunderstood. It looks like the penultimate step in establishing a verified chain of identity is to hand over the top secret code to a complete stranger and hope they can be trusted to (a) keep it securely and (b) not misuse it. But that would be absurd so I've probably misunderstood. If I could find the helpline number I'm sure was there earlier, I could check.
But most age and ID verification is rubbish anyway. We can see that from various data leaks including the details of Pornhub users.
So over 2025 the main movement has been Labour to Green and Conservatives to Reform.
While Kemi's approval rating has improved amongst 2024 Conservative and Reform voters still only just over 60% of 2024 Tories and 50% of 2024 Reform voters have a favourable view of her. The fact that less than 20% of LD voters and less than 10% of Labour and Green voters have a favourable view of her also means she is not getting the tactical votes she needs for Conservative candidates to beat Reform
The last PB post by TSE was 'Will this bug John Swinney and the SNP until election day?', and here is the thing while TSE used a humourous play on the latest SNP scandal, it should have been a far bigger story here with far more scrutiny because of the implications for the Holyrood Parliament. But it won't be because frustratingly it involves a really shocking scandal that involves one of our devolved governments...
So the PB thread like the UK main stream media totally ignored it, literal tumble weed here and elsewhere, special shout out to SkyNews for mentioning it but doing sod all else to investigate it. Now just imagine if this had been a governing party at Westminster where now THREE female elected MPs had been reported to have had their offices bugged by party staffers?! I have no doubt that the Westminster Lobby would have been all over the story and it would have been wall to wall coverage in the 24/7 News channels, especially when the original breaking story reported that the male aid who bugged one female MSP had since moved to work for an SNP MP?!
Sorry TSE but I was really annoyed when you almost affectionately made fun of and dismissed this shocking scandal, and it is incredible serious story that should have resulted in not only a Parliamentary investigation, but a Police investigation too. I said early yesterday that Holyrood was not only broken, it really is not fit for purpose and that matters with a big election looming there in May next year and I stand by that claim today more than ever. But again I was just so saddened and frustrated at the lack of response here or in the media, not even the most basic questions asked. And to say this scandal stinks is an understatement, no one has asked why or to what end these female SNP MSPs who remain anonymous were bugged, but the Scottish Sun is reporting it suggests internal SNP infighting.
But the cynic in me after 18 eighteen years of this appalling SNP Government did have one question, why did it take until yesterday for this breaking story to finally see the light of day just as Holyrood went into Christmas recess and both politicians and political journalists departed to go on their festive holidays until the New Year.. Its almost as if this story finally having to break was stage managed so it would hopefully get the least attention or any proper scrutiny by the Holyrood Parliament, the local media or the public. This is how the SNP operate, totally secretive and utterly ruthless in their media management and so cynically in their media operation but they get away with it time and time again because Scotland is deemed a side show despite the fact that they control so much of our public services up here and including taxation when it comes to budgets but we like Wales and NI are totally failed by the UK media!
And the PB crew fell for it yet again yesterday because they were not even interested.... Oh to be a female MSP in the work place at Holyrood right now!
Again tumble weed on this site for a huge political scandal at Holyrood that has implications if properely scrutinised and reported in the UK before the devolved elections in May, but hey, its not Westminster...
X Susan Dalgety@DalgetySusan.26m A week in the life of our own dear Parliament. Angela Constance’s breach of ministerial code. Ash Regan’s ‘punishment’. Now this. Women MSPs spied on by their own male staff. It’s a ‘BLEEP omnishambles’ as Malcom Tucker would say, but great material for columnists. Not great governance though 🤦🏼♀️ https://x.com/DalgetySusan/status/2001943509402869831
Joanna Cherry KC@joannaccherry Newspaper reports that more than one female SNP MSP was spied on by her own staff members. This was the climate created under the Sturgeon leadership. It’s a climate of fear in which I worked for years and about which I write in my forthcoming memoir. https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/keepin https://x.com/joannaccherry/status/2001930396049752288
Oh to be a woman in Scotland who speaks out or dares to defend womens right, espescially if they have a high profile politically elected voice....
They dosh up their mates and make the rest of us foot the bill.
This may be true Alan, but in which respects does this differ from their predecessors?
So their position is they are as bad as the Tories.
Im sure that will inspire support.
Werent they meant to be better, cleaner the adults in the room ?
I'd have settled for less corrupt and incompetent.
They are certainly the former, and probably the latter too , but it's still early days. Give it another twelve years or so and I'll let you know.
LOL
In August 2024 I upset PB Lefties by saying Reeves was a bag of crap and would be a terrible CoE. Hows that looking now ? If you think this is early days its not ;this government has charted its path for the next 2 years and has nothing to show for it. The crruption will get in to full gear when the government has been in office a bit longer. It always works out that way.
A point made forcefully by many historians, for example Michael Bentley. 'Politicians of that era (1905-1914) had no reason to think that they needed to complete everything before the chiming of some solemn midnight hour in 1914...diaries of Liberal politicians (in spring 1914) have an optimistic future tense reference to the election of 1915...in their imagination, those young men in the summer of 1914 rode the crest of an open future.'
An idea of how people thought and felt in any era can be gained by reading newspapers of the period for several days*, and the results are usually interesting. AI is doing the same thing, just quicker.
*Something that will be to put it mildly more challenging for historians of our own times.
Not just 'quicker', but with potentially far broader reach in terms of reading. Like all AIs, it will be a fallible tool which needs someone with actual knowledge of a given period to use most effectively, but it might be quite a powerful one, since it could/can have access to a vast amount of texts in any language.
(Consider, for example, the massive volumes of Korean court histories, which on their own might otherwise require a lifetime of study.)
When I was at University the library still had either the hard copy or a microfiche (showing my age here) of the Times newspapers and one of the many ways I would amuse myself when law got too boring was to read the newspapers in the run up to some significant event, such as the American civil war or WW1 and get an idea of how the informed people of the time saw things. My recollection, and this was 45 years ago now, was that many people saw trouble with Germany as inevitable. We had already had the race to build Dreadnaughts and there were concerns about whether the RN was as dominant as it had been for the last century. No one foresaw the bloodbath to come that I recall.
It is pretty universal that predictions of the future are wrong and fail to anticipate major events correctly.
Well within our lifetimes no one really saw how quickly the Soviet Union would collapse in 89-90 either.
These things tend to be much more obvious with the advantage of hindsight.
Sadly, the lottery numbers are a particularly good example of that!
In the early days, when the lottery was drawn, I used to speculate on whether I could have chosen those numbers and won the jackpot. Was there a repeated pattern, say multiples of three or geometric shapes on the lottery slip, or were they all low numbers that might be a family's birthdays, or two high and four low, which might be a 4-child family's ages? We had to make our own amusement. Unless you had friends, of course!
So over 2025 the main movement has been Labour to Green and Conservatives to Reform.
While Kemi's approval rating has improved amongst 2024 Conservative and Reform voters still only just over 60% of 2024 Tories and 50% of 2024 Reform voters have a favourable view of her. The fact that less than 20% of LD voters and less than 10% of Labour and Green voters have a favourable view of her also means she is not getting the tactical votes she needs for Conservative candidates to beat Reform
Yes, the idea that centrists will vote Tory tactically to keep out Reform is mistaken. There's no way that I am doing that in my constituency which is probably a Tory/Reform marginal.
Yestetdays crass comments by Badenoch on the proposals to tackle misogyny in schools is a prime example of why she is repellent.
Not quite sure how Badenoch's "standing with Labour voters" counts for much when there are now so few Labour voters? (9 of them in the Cornish by-election overnight...)
The question is about 2024 (not current) Labour voters.
Which is definitely a WTF? metric. Like asking the voting intentions of Betamax owners...
I know that you want to depict the catastrophic Tory defeat of July 2024 as ancient history, but it is only 18 months ago.
The Tories have gone backwards against a disasterously unpopular government, and are heading for another drubbing in the May elections.
Outside of the narrow YouGov metric, the story for 2025 is that - certainly since early summer - Labour's vote has been eaten by the Greens. The Tories' rise has mirrored the drop in the Reform vote. The LibDems have flat lined.
The Tories are now averaging ahead of Labour, for the first time in yonks. Labour are at risk of being reeled in by the Greens. I know you want to depict the Tories as dead, but that may not be the story of 2026-8.
The latest Nowcast projection is a small Reform majority. Reform 331 MPs, Labour 102, LDs 74, Cons 50, SNP 45 and Greens 13.
So even if the Tories are now near tied with Labour in polls, Reform are still well ahead of them and the Conservatives are still projected to have fewer seats than Labour and the LDs. The main reason for that is more LD and Green voters are willing to vote for incumbent Labour MPs to beat Reform than they and Labour voters are willing to vote for Tory MPs to beat Reform at present
(Although truthfully it slipped away with yet another dozy batting performance in the first innings.)
Wasn't that bad, Doc. The basic problem is that they are not good enough, and it's difficult to do much about that.
Other than pick better players, of course.
Assuming we have some, how would we know? Nobody plays red ball cricket these days.
It’s hardly a stretch to say that any one of Hameed, Compton, Haines, Charlesworth or Lees would be a better option at the top of the order than Crawley (or indeed one of them also replacing Pope).
It’s not difficult to imagine Foakes would be a better keeper than Smith, or that James Rew would score as many runs as Smith does as well as being a better keeper.
It’s not daft to suggest Potts would take more wickets and offer more control than Carse, or Leach be a better option than Jacks or Bashir with the ball. True, he might not take wickets but nor do they, and he wouldn’t leak runs at such a rate.
And yet they are shoved out of the way for players who play ‘the Bazball way.’
I do not think they would necessarily win the Ashes in Australia, but nor would they endlessly self-destruct as this lot have repeatedly over the last twelve months.
Which tells me there is something fundamentally wrong with the national selectors that needs changing.
All true, but I wish I could believe it's just a selection issue. It is indicative of the state of the game here in the UK that even a regular follower like me is unable to comment on all the names you suggest. As far as I can tell selection is based on the evidence of white ball results (of which there is plenty) with the expectation that those selected can adjust to red ball in due course. Maybe that works against lesser opposition, but not in Australia against the locals.
Anyway I am now satisfied that my long-running complaints against picking a batsman who can keeping wicket a bit rather than a wicketkeeper who can bat a bit are widely held and justified by results.
This is the most disappointing Ashes series I can remember. Is the world's greatest international sporting series losing its allure and descending into irrelevance?
Figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed public sector net borrowing – the difference between spending and income – was £11.7bn last month, £1.9bn less than in the same month a year earlier.
You forgot to mention that the borrowing has been revised up £3.9bn from last month:
Or that Borrowing in the financial year to November 2025 was £132.3 billion; this was £10.0 billion (or 8.2%) more than in the same eight-month period of 2024 and the second-highest April to November borrowing on record (not adjusted for inflation), after that of 2020.
When discussing our eye watering 95% debt to GDP ratio, it’s worth also reminding everyone of the USA’s 125% debt to GDP ratio, which is about to soar further towards an estimated 140% by 2030 following the OB3 act.
The last PB post by TSE was 'Will this bug John Swinney and the SNP until election day?', and here is the thing while TSE used a humourous play on the latest SNP scandal, it should have been a far bigger story here with far more scrutiny because of the implications for the Holyrood Parliament. But it won't be because frustratingly it involves a really shocking scandal that involves one of our devolved governments...
So the PB thread like the UK main stream media totally ignored it, literal tumble weed here and elsewhere, special shout out to SkyNews for mentioning it but doing sod all else to investigate it. Now just imagine if this had been a governing party at Westminster where now THREE female elected MPs had been reported to have had their offices bugged by party staffers?! I have no doubt that the Westminster Lobby would have been all over the story and it would have been wall to wall coverage in the 24/7 News channels, especially when the original breaking story reported that the male aid who bugged one female MSP had since moved to work for an SNP MP?!
Sorry TSE but I was really annoyed when you almost affectionately made fun of and dismissed this shocking scandal, and it is incredible serious story that should have resulted in not only a Parliamentary investigation, but a Police investigation too. I said early yesterday that Holyrood was not only broken, it really is not fit for purpose and that matters with a big election looming there in May next year and I stand by that claim today more than ever. But again I was just so saddened and frustrated at the lack of response here or in the media, not even the most basic questions asked. And to say this scandal stinks is an understatement, no one has asked why or to what end these female SNP MSPs who remain anonymous were bugged, but the Scottish Sun is reporting it suggests internal SNP infighting.
But the cynic in me after 18 eighteen years of this appalling SNP Government did have one question, why did it take until yesterday for this breaking story to finally see the light of day just as Holyrood went into Christmas recess and both politicians and political journalists departed to go on their festive holidays until the New Year.. Its almost as if this story finally having to break was stage managed so it would hopefully get the least attention or any proper scrutiny by the Holyrood Parliament, the local media or the public. This is how the SNP operate, totally secretive and utterly ruthless in their media management and so cynically in their media operation but they get away with it time and time again because Scotland is deemed a side show despite the fact that they control so much of our public services up here and including taxation when it comes to budgets but we like Wales and NI are totally failed by the UK media!
And the PB crew fell for it yet again yesterday because they were not even interested.... Oh to be a female MSP in the work place at Holyrood right now!
Again tumble weed on this site for a huge political scandal at Holyrood that has implications if properely scrutinised and reported in the UK before the devolved elections in May, but hey, its not Westminster...
X Susan Dalgety@DalgetySusan.26m A week in the life of our own dear Parliament. Angela Constance’s breach of ministerial code. Ash Regan’s ‘punishment’. Now this. Women MSPs spied on by their own male staff. It’s a ‘BLEEP omnishambles’ as Malcom Tucker would say, but great material for columnists. Not great governance though 🤦🏼♀️ https://x.com/DalgetySusan/status/2001943509402869831
Joanna Cherry KC@joannaccherry Newspaper reports that more than one female SNP MSP was spied on by her own staff members. This was the climate created under the Sturgeon leadership. It’s a climate of fear in which I worked for years and about which I write in my forthcoming memoir. https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/keepin https://x.com/joannaccherry/status/2001930396049752288
Oh to be a woman in Scotland who speaks out or dares to defend womens right, espescially if they have a high profile politically elected voice....
It's as boring as fuck. Nobody cares. I'd rather read a MattW post about bollards or some shite.
The principle challenge of elevating this issue into the epoch shaking cataclysm that you clearly wish it to be, is that it lacks a snappy portmanteau with a -gate suffix. There's always "buggate" but it has that awkward diagraph in the middle. Anway, good luck with it all. Cheers. 👍
The last PB post by TSE was 'Will this bug John Swinney and the SNP until election day?', and here is the thing while TSE used a humourous play on the latest SNP scandal, it should have been a far bigger story here with far more scrutiny because of the implications for the Holyrood Parliament. But it won't be because frustratingly it involves a really shocking scandal that involves one of our devolved governments...
So the PB thread like the UK main stream media totally ignored it, literal tumble weed here and elsewhere, special shout out to SkyNews for mentioning it but doing sod all else to investigate it. Now just imagine if this had been a governing party at Westminster where now THREE female elected MPs had been reported to have had their offices bugged by party staffers?! I have no doubt that the Westminster Lobby would have been all over the story and it would have been wall to wall coverage in the 24/7 News channels, especially when the original breaking story reported that the male aid who bugged one female MSP had since moved to work for an SNP MP?!
Sorry TSE but I was really annoyed when you almost affectionately made fun of and dismissed this shocking scandal, and it is incredible serious story that should have resulted in not only a Parliamentary investigation, but a Police investigation too. I said early yesterday that Holyrood was not only broken, it really is not fit for purpose and that matters with a big election looming there in May next year and I stand by that claim today more than ever. But again I was just so saddened and frustrated at the lack of response here or in the media, not even the most basic questions asked. And to say this scandal stinks is an understatement, no one has asked why or to what end these female SNP MSPs who remain anonymous were bugged, but the Scottish Sun is reporting it suggests internal SNP infighting.
But the cynic in me after 18 eighteen years of this appalling SNP Government did have one question, why did it take until yesterday for this breaking story to finally see the light of day just as Holyrood went into Christmas recess and both politicians and political journalists departed to go on their festive holidays until the New Year.. Its almost as if this story finally having to break was stage managed so it would hopefully get the least attention or any proper scrutiny by the Holyrood Parliament, the local media or the public. This is how the SNP operate, totally secretive and utterly ruthless in their media management and so cynically in their media operation but they get away with it time and time again because Scotland is deemed a side show despite the fact that they control so much of our public services up here and including taxation when it comes to budgets but we like Wales and NI are totally failed by the UK media!
And the PB crew fell for it yet again yesterday because they were not even interested.... Oh to be a female MSP in the work place at Holyrood right now!
Seems to be a national rather than solely PB thing. Here, for example, is the Guardian's Scotland page: https://www.theguardian.com/uk/scotland They're the national most likely to run with the story, and so far, crickets.
Depends how you define national! I tend to use 'Scottish' and 'London-based' if only tio avoid ambguity.
Sure, rehashing, but clearly the story isn't being ignored. I think rather as @AugustusCarp2 and @TSE made clear nobody has any idea what is going on or cui bono...
I didn't comment on it, as there so little to go on (so far) I had nothing useful to say. I get @fitalass 's frustration at the lack of interest, but TBF I don't think it's entirely how she sets it out.
In any event, it's sparked an idea for a header, if I can make my thoughts about it a bit more coherent.
Not quite sure how Badenoch's "standing with Labour voters" counts for much when there are now so few Labour voters? (9 of them in the Cornish by-election overnight...)
The question is about 2024 (not current) Labour voters.
Which is definitely a WTF? metric. Like asking the voting intentions of Betamax owners...
I know that you want to depict the catastrophic Tory defeat of July 2024 as ancient history, but it is only 18 months ago.
The Tories have gone backwards against a disasterously unpopular government, and are heading for another drubbing in the May elections.
Outside of the narrow YouGov metric, the story for 2025 is that - certainly since early summer - Labour's vote has been eaten by the Greens. The Tories' rise has mirrored the drop in the Reform vote. The LibDems have flat lined.
The Tories are now averaging ahead of Labour, for the first time in yonks. Labour are at risk of being reeled in by the Greens. I know you want to depict the Tories as dead, but that may not be the story of 2026-8.
Yes, but it isn't a rise that is putting the Tories higher than Labour, it is that Labour is sinking even faster than the Tories.
To be polling 7% worse than the worst Tory election result in 2 centuries is not good for the Tories.
It isn't just the polling that shows this very poor mid term performance by the Tories it is also the almost weekly defections of former Tory MPs and councillors to Reform. They know that their only way back into elected positions is to defect to another party.
There isn't going to be an election for over 3 years. It's all pretty moot until late 2028.
The comfort I take from current polling is that an event that would push the Tories further back - the Rise of Jenrick - seems to have stalled if not actually lost wheels.
A point made forcefully by many historians, for example Michael Bentley. 'Politicians of that era (1905-1914) had no reason to think that they needed to complete everything before the chiming of some solemn midnight hour in 1914...diaries of Liberal politicians (in spring 1914) have an optimistic future tense reference to the election of 1915...in their imagination, those young men in the summer of 1914 rode the crest of an open future.'
An idea of how people thought and felt in any era can be gained by reading newspapers of the period for several days*, and the results are usually interesting. AI is doing the same thing, just quicker.
*Something that will be to put it mildly more challenging for historians of our own times.
Not just 'quicker', but with potentially far broader reach in terms of reading. Like all AIs, it will be a fallible tool which needs someone with actual knowledge of a given period to use most effectively, but it might be quite a powerful one, since it could/can have access to a vast amount of texts in any language.
(Consider, for example, the massive volumes of Korean court histories, which on their own might otherwise require a lifetime of study.)
When I was at University the library still had either the hard copy or a microfiche (showing my age here) of the Times newspapers and one of the many ways I would amuse myself when law got too boring was to read the newspapers in the run up to some significant event, such as the American civil war or WW1 and get an idea of how the informed people of the time saw things. My recollection, and this was 45 years ago now, was that many people saw trouble with Germany as inevitable. We had already had the race to build Dreadnaughts and there were concerns about whether the RN was as dominant as it had been for the last century. No one foresaw the bloodbath to come that I recall.
My son has started reading Victorian newspapers for his (hobby) research.
(Although truthfully it slipped away with yet another dozy batting performance in the first innings.)
Wasn't that bad, Doc. The basic problem is that they are not good enough, and it's difficult to do much about that.
Other than pick better players, of course.
Assuming we have some, how would we know? Nobody plays red ball cricket these days.
It’s hardly a stretch to say that any one of Hameed, Compton, Haines, Charlesworth or Lees would be a better option at the top of the order than Crawley (or indeed one of them also replacing Pope).
It’s not difficult to imagine Foakes would be a better keeper than Smith, or that James Rew would score as many runs as Smith does as well as being a better keeper.
It’s not daft to suggest Potts would take more wickets and offer more control than Carse, or Leach be a better option than Jacks or Bashir with the ball. True, he might not take wickets but nor do they, and he wouldn’t leak runs at such a rate.
And yet they are shoved out of the way for players who play ‘the Bazball way.’
I do not think they would necessarily win the Ashes in Australia, but nor would they endlessly self-destruct as this lot have repeatedly over the last twelve months.
Which tells me there is something fundamentally wrong with the national selectors that needs changing.
All true, but I wish I could believe it's just a selection issue. It is indicative of the state of the game here in the UK that even a regular follower like me is unable to comment on all the names you suggest. As far as I can tell selection is based on the evidence of white ball results (of which there is plenty) with the expectation that those selected can adjust to red ball in due course. Maybe that works against lesser opposition, but not in Australia against the locals.
Anyway I am now satisfied that my long-running complaints against picking a batsman who can keeping wicket a bit rather than a wicketkeeper who can bat a bit are widely held and justified by results.
This is the most disappointing Ashes series I can remember. Is the world's greatest international sporting series losing its allure and descending into irrelevance?
Yes. For a start, cricket is no longer on proper telly or played at all schools, especially those with no playing fields. Second, for a lot of cricket fans, India vs Pakistan is more interesting than the Ashes. Even a couple of decades back, it would have been England vs the West Indies. Of course, in 20th Century cricket's heyday, most fans had never seen first class cricket, following via newspaper reports.
ETA and pundits have complained about the selectors preferring all-rounders to specialist keepers for as long as I've been around.
When discussing our eye watering 95% debt to GDP ratio, it’s worth also reminding everyone of the USA’s 125% debt to GDP ratio, which is about to soar further towards an estimated 140% by 2030 following the OB3 act.
OB3 act - is that Orangeman's Big Bastard Bankruptcy Act?
Not quite sure how Badenoch's "standing with Labour voters" counts for much when there are now so few Labour voters? (9 of them in the Cornish by-election overnight...)
The question is about 2024 (not current) Labour voters.
Which is definitely a WTF? metric. Like asking the voting intentions of Betamax owners...
I know that you want to depict the catastrophic Tory defeat of July 2024 as ancient history, but it is only 18 months ago.
The Tories have gone backwards against a disasterously unpopular government, and are heading for another drubbing in the May elections.
Outside of the narrow YouGov metric, the story for 2025 is that - certainly since early summer - Labour's vote has been eaten by the Greens. The Tories' rise has mirrored the drop in the Reform vote. The LibDems have flat lined.
The Tories are now averaging ahead of Labour, for the first time in yonks. Labour are at risk of being reeled in by the Greens. I know you want to depict the Tories as dead, but that may not be the story of 2026-8.
The latest Nowcast projection is a small Reform majority. Reform 331 MPs, Labour 102, LDs 74, Cons 50, SNP 45 and Greens 13.
So even if the Tories are now near tied with Labour in polls, Reform are still well ahead of them and the Conservatives are still projected to have fewer seats than Labour and the LDs. The main reason for that is more LD and Green voters are willing to vote for incumbent Labour MPs to beat Reform than they and Labour voters are willing to vote for Tory MPs to beat Reform at present
It's probably impossible to accurately model how vote share turns into seats with this many parties, so buckets of salt, natch. But a couple of observations.
First is that, despite everything, that nowcast still has Labour in second. A distant, dismal second, sure, but they still have a niche in a way that the Conservatives don't seem to.
Second is the Greens on 13. Percentage vote is vanity, winning seats is sanity, and there is a lot of vanity in Zak's politics. It's the nature of Big Beast Populism.
They dosh up their mates and make the rest of us foot the bill.
This may be true Alan, but in which respects does this differ from their predecessors?
In that Alan is wrong and the previous administration, specifically the Johnson era, was far far worse?
Mone, David Mellor (not that one!), Andrew Mills, Cummings, Gove, Hancock, Chadlington, is just a small number of the spivs who made millions from PPE that was unfit for purpose and politicians who at the very least did not deal with perceived conflicts of interest properly.
If Alan is able to point to any Labour ministers or advisers guilty of similar then they should be investigated and dealt with.
I see your problem. You cant actually point to how this government is performing to the level they claimed they would so you have to look backwards.
Where's the growth, where's the housebuilding, where's the debt reduction ?
There isnt any.
Not yet no, but none of that is corruption it's underperformance.
"They dosh up their mates and make the rest of us foot the bill" is what the Johnson govt did to the tune of £billions.
Labour has had some scandals, which they have dealt with in the main, Rayner, Siddique, Mandelson, but mainly they've just been a bit crap and not delivered on promises.
You should be glad, just think how angry you'd be if Labour were delivering on their manifesto promises, they might even be popular.
Well if overpaying the public sector isnt doshi9ng up their mates what is ? Or changing legislation to suit their main funders in the unions ? Which everyone in the private sector will end up footing the bill. Whereas anything touched by Lord Alli usually fails the sniff test.
But at least you can accept this is a failing government and there is no prospect short term of things improving.
The only short term change Govts are capable of is destructive, building/rebuilding takes time and the benefits are usually only apparent to the public after they've voted out the responsible Govt.
There's plenty of overpayment for failure in the private sector, which we all pay for as well through underperformance of pension funds, Govt intervention etc.
The employment rights bill will benefit employees in both the public and private sectors, while upsetting poor employers in both sectors.
The last PB post by TSE was 'Will this bug John Swinney and the SNP until election day?', and here is the thing while TSE used a humourous play on the latest SNP scandal, it should have been a far bigger story here with far more scrutiny because of the implications for the Holyrood Parliament. But it won't be because frustratingly it involves a really shocking scandal that involves one of our devolved governments...
So the PB thread like the UK main stream media totally ignored it, literal tumble weed here and elsewhere, special shout out to SkyNews for mentioning it but doing sod all else to investigate it. Now just imagine if this had been a governing party at Westminster where now THREE female elected MPs had been reported to have had their offices bugged by party staffers?! I have no doubt that the Westminster Lobby would have been all over the story and it would have been wall to wall coverage in the 24/7 News channels, especially when the original breaking story reported that the male aid who bugged one female MSP had since moved to work for an SNP MP?!
Sorry TSE but I was really annoyed when you almost affectionately made fun of and dismissed this shocking scandal, and it is incredible serious story that should have resulted in not only a Parliamentary investigation, but a Police investigation too. I said early yesterday that Holyrood was not only broken, it really is not fit for purpose and that matters with a big election looming there in May next year and I stand by that claim today more than ever. But again I was just so saddened and frustrated at the lack of response here or in the media, not even the most basic questions asked. And to say this scandal stinks is an understatement, no one has asked why or to what end these female SNP MSPs who remain anonymous were bugged, but the Scottish Sun is reporting it suggests internal SNP infighting.
But the cynic in me after 18 eighteen years of this appalling SNP Government did have one question, why did it take until yesterday for this breaking story to finally see the light of day just as Holyrood went into Christmas recess and both politicians and political journalists departed to go on their festive holidays until the New Year.. Its almost as if this story finally having to break was stage managed so it would hopefully get the least attention or any proper scrutiny by the Holyrood Parliament, the local media or the public. This is how the SNP operate, totally secretive and utterly ruthless in their media management and so cynically in their media operation but they get away with it time and time again because Scotland is deemed a side show despite the fact that they control so much of our public services up here and including taxation when it comes to budgets but we like Wales and NI are totally failed by the UK media!
And the PB crew fell for it yet again yesterday because they were not even interested.... Oh to be a female MSP in the work place at Holyrood right now!
Seems to be a national rather than solely PB thing. Here, for example, is the Guardian's Scotland page: https://www.theguardian.com/uk/scotland They're the national most likely to run with the story, and so far, crickets.
Depends how you define national! I tend to use 'Scottish' and 'London-based' if only tio avoid ambguity.
Sure, rehashing, but clearly the story isn't being ignored. I think rather as @AugustusCarp2 and @TSE made clear nobody has any idea what is going on or cui bono...
I didn't comment on it, as there so little to go on (so far) I had nothing useful to say. I get @fitalass 's frustration at the lack of interest, but TBF I don't think it's entirely how she sets it out.
In any event, it's sparked an idea for a header, if I can make my thoughts about it a bit more coherent.
DJL's first law of politics – things that ought to matter, usually don't.
Underestimating Polanski is a mistake. He is a very good communicator with charisma.
To an extent he is the same as Farage, though wwithout the foreign ownership.
Between Farage and Polanski supporters there is half of our electorate. We might be appalled at that but it looks like the future, with Polanski representing a Populist left.
I think that's right - certainly the Greens look more interesting to folk like me on the left of Labour than they did when they were a nebulous environmental party. I'm old enough to be wary of Polanski's cheerful embrace of any popular left-wing policies without embracing the cost (YourParty would be more tempting, but for the chaotic start), but for a casual left-winger the Greens are more attractive than the alternatives.
The salient point, though, is that neither Reform nor the Greens have any experience in Government, and that's a big plus point for our morose electorate. "We may as well give X a try" is a potent sales argument for the fairly cynical electorate.
Underestimating Polanski is a mistake. He is a very good communicator with charisma.
To an extent he is the same as Farage, though wwithout the foreign ownership.
Between Farage and Polanski supporters there is half of our electorate. We might be appalled at that but it looks like the future, with Polanski representing a Populist left.
I think that's right - certainly the Greens look more interesting to folk like me on the left of Labour than they did when they were a nebulous environmental party.
Underestimating Polanski is a mistake. He is a very good communicator with charisma.
To an extent he is the same as Farage, though wwithout the foreign ownership.
Between Farage and Polanski supporters there is half of our electorate. We might be appalled at that but it looks like the future, with Polanski representing a Populist left.
I think that's right - certainly the Greens look more interesting to folk like me on the left of Labour than they did when they were a nebulous environmental party. I'm old enough to be wary of Polanski's cheerful embrace of any popular left-wing policies without embracing the cost (YourParty would be more tempting, but for the chaotic start), but for a casual left-winger the Greens are more attractive than the alternatives.
The salient point, though, is that neither Reform nor the Greens have any experience in Government, and that's a big plus point for our morose electorate. "We may as well give X a try" is a potent sales argument for the fairly cynical electorate.
It’s the Billions Shmillions party. No wonder it attracts so many old lefties
The last PB post by TSE was 'Will this bug John Swinney and the SNP until election day?', and here is the thing while TSE used a humourous play on the latest SNP scandal, it should have been a far bigger story here with far more scrutiny because of the implications for the Holyrood Parliament. But it won't be because frustratingly it involves a really shocking scandal that involves one of our devolved governments...
So the PB thread like the UK main stream media totally ignored it, literal tumble weed here and elsewhere, special shout out to SkyNews for mentioning it but doing sod all else to investigate it. Now just imagine if this had been a governing party at Westminster where now THREE female elected MPs had been reported to have had their offices bugged by party staffers?! I have no doubt that the Westminster Lobby would have been all over the story and it would have been wall to wall coverage in the 24/7 News channels, especially when the original breaking story reported that the male aid who bugged one female MSP had since moved to work for an SNP MP?!
Sorry TSE but I was really annoyed when you almost affectionately made fun of and dismissed this shocking scandal, and it is incredible serious story that should have resulted in not only a Parliamentary investigation, but a Police investigation too. I said early yesterday that Holyrood was not only broken, it really is not fit for purpose and that matters with a big election looming there in May next year and I stand by that claim today more than ever. But again I was just so saddened and frustrated at the lack of response here or in the media, not even the most basic questions asked. And to say this scandal stinks is an understatement, no one has asked why or to what end these female SNP MSPs who remain anonymous were bugged, but the Scottish Sun is reporting it suggests internal SNP infighting.
But the cynic in me after 18 eighteen years of this appalling SNP Government did have one question, why did it take until yesterday for this breaking story to finally see the light of day just as Holyrood went into Christmas recess and both politicians and political journalists departed to go on their festive holidays until the New Year.. Its almost as if this story finally having to break was stage managed so it would hopefully get the least attention or any proper scrutiny by the Holyrood Parliament, the local media or the public. This is how the SNP operate, totally secretive and utterly ruthless in their media management and so cynically in their media operation but they get away with it time and time again because Scotland is deemed a side show despite the fact that they control so much of our public services up here and including taxation when it comes to budgets but we like Wales and NI are totally failed by the UK media!
And the PB crew fell for it yet again yesterday because they were not even interested.... Oh to be a female MSP in the work place at Holyrood right now!
Again tumble weed on this site for a huge political scandal at Holyrood that has implications if properely scrutinised and reported in the UK before the devolved elections in May, but hey, its not Westminster...
X Susan Dalgety@DalgetySusan.26m A week in the life of our own dear Parliament. Angela Constance’s breach of ministerial code. Ash Regan’s ‘punishment’. Now this. Women MSPs spied on by their own male staff. It’s a ‘BLEEP omnishambles’ as Malcom Tucker would say, but great material for columnists. Not great governance though 🤦🏼♀️ https://x.com/DalgetySusan/status/2001943509402869831
Joanna Cherry KC@joannaccherry Newspaper reports that more than one female SNP MSP was spied on by her own staff members. This was the climate created under the Sturgeon leadership. It’s a climate of fear in which I worked for years and about which I write in my forthcoming memoir. https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/keepin https://x.com/joannaccherry/status/2001930396049752288
Oh to be a woman in Scotland who speaks out or dares to defend womens right, espescially if they have a high profile politically elected voice....
It's as boring as fuck. Nobody cares. I'd rather read a MattW post about bollards or some shite.
The principle challenge of elevating this issue into the epoch shaking cataclysm that you clearly wish it to be, is that it lacks a snappy portmanteau with a -gate suffix. There's always "buggate" but it has that awkward diagraph in the middle. Anway, good luck with it all. Cheers. 👍
Good to know, and that is why the the once never huge female presence on this site has now fallen off a cliff in recent years and as having been in contact with a couple of former female posters who have finally given, your post delivered in spades why they have done so!! Anway, good luck with it all. Cheers because its not like half the UK population being female would dare to have an opinion on politics in this country, but hey lets not even attempt to have any gender balance on this site anymore!! So go you for making it a less welcoming place for women!
When discussing our eye watering 95% debt to GDP ratio, it’s worth also reminding everyone of the USA’s 125% debt to GDP ratio, which is about to soar further towards an estimated 140% by 2030 following the OB3 act.
Without a Greece style event, we'll plod on for quite some time.
(Although truthfully it slipped away with yet another dozy batting performance in the first innings.)
Wasn't that bad, Doc. The basic problem is that they are not good enough, and it's difficult to do much about that.
Other than pick better players, of course.
Assuming we have some, how would we know? Nobody plays red ball cricket these days.
It’s hardly a stretch to say that any one of Hameed, Compton, Haines, Charlesworth or Lees would be a better option at the top of the order than Crawley (or indeed one of them also replacing Pope).
It’s not difficult to imagine Foakes would be a better keeper than Smith, or that James Rew would score as many runs as Smith does as well as being a better keeper.
It’s not daft to suggest Potts would take more wickets and offer more control than Carse, or Leach be a better option than Jacks or Bashir with the ball. True, he might not take wickets but nor do they, and he wouldn’t leak runs at such a rate.
And yet they are shoved out of the way for players who play ‘the Bazball way.’
I do not think they would necessarily win the Ashes in Australia, but nor would they endlessly self-destruct as this lot have repeatedly over the last twelve months.
Which tells me there is something fundamentally wrong with the national selectors that needs changing.
All true, but I wish I could believe it's just a selection issue. It is indicative of the state of the game here in the UK that even a regular follower like me is unable to comment on all the names you suggest. As far as I can tell selection is based on the evidence of white ball results (of which there is plenty) with the expectation that those selected can adjust to red ball in due course. Maybe that works against lesser opposition, but not in Australia against the locals.
Anyway I am now satisfied that my long-running complaints against picking a batsman who can keeping wicket a bit rather than a wicketkeeper who can bat a bit are widely held and justified by results.
This is the most disappointing Ashes series I can remember. Is the world's greatest international sporting series losing its allure and descending into irrelevance?
Yes. For a start, cricket is no longer on proper telly or played at all schools, especially those with no playing fields. Second, for a lot of cricket fans, India vs Pakistan is more interesting than the Ashes. Even a couple of decades back, it would have been England vs the West Indies. Of course, in 20th Century cricket's heyday, most fans had never seen first class cricket, following via newspaper reports.
ETA and pundits have complained about the selectors preferring all-rounders to specialist keepers for as long as I've been around.
And picking spinners for their batting / holding ability rather than wicket-taking.
Cricket at club and school level has a problem, as it is played less and less then the disparity between those who do play and those playing occasionally has increased. So it is difficult for new players unless the coaches are very inclusive because the established kids will do all the batting and bowling, they end up just fielding and watching so get disillusioned.
(Although truthfully it slipped away with yet another dozy batting performance in the first innings.)
Wasn't that bad, Doc. The basic problem is that they are not good enough, and it's difficult to do much about that.
Other than pick better players, of course.
Assuming we have some, how would we know? Nobody plays red ball cricket these days.
It’s hardly a stretch to say that any one of Hameed, Compton, Haines, Charlesworth or Lees would be a better option at the top of the order than Crawley (or indeed one of them also replacing Pope).
It’s not difficult to imagine Foakes would be a better keeper than Smith, or that James Rew would score as many runs as Smith does as well as being a better keeper.
It’s not daft to suggest Potts would take more wickets and offer more control than Carse, or Leach be a better option than Jacks or Bashir with the ball. True, he might not take wickets but nor do they, and he wouldn’t leak runs at such a rate.
And yet they are shoved out of the way for players who play ‘the Bazball way.’
I do not think they would necessarily win the Ashes in Australia, but nor would they endlessly self-destruct as this lot have repeatedly over the last twelve months.
Which tells me there is something fundamentally wrong with the national selectors that needs changing.
All true, but I wish I could believe it's just a selection issue. It is indicative of the state of the game here in the UK that even a regular follower like me is unable to comment on all the names you suggest. As far as I can tell selection is based on the evidence of white ball results (of which there is plenty) with the expectation that those selected can adjust to red ball in due course. Maybe that works against lesser opposition, but not in Australia against the locals.
Anyway I am now satisfied that my long-running complaints against picking a batsman who can keeping wicket a bit rather than a wicketkeeper who can bat a bit are widely held and justified by results.
This is the most disappointing Ashes series I can remember. Is the world's greatest international sporting series losing its allure and descending into irrelevance?
Yes. For a start, cricket is no longer on proper telly or played at all schools, especially those with no playing fields. Second, for a lot of cricket fans, India vs Pakistan is more interesting than the Ashes. Even a couple of decades back, it would have been England vs the West Indies. Of course, in 20th Century cricket's heyday, most fans had never seen first class cricket, following via newspaper reports.
ETA and pundits have complained about the selectors preferring all-rounders to specialist keepers for as long as I've been around.
The last wicketkeeper who didn't bat at all that I can remember being selected for England was Keith Andrews, although I think Bob Taylor might also qualify.
Jim Parks is the first wk I saw who was primarily a batsman but he was a pretty decent keeper too.
Players who keep and bat at the very highest level are rare as hens' teeth, Gilchrist and Dujohn being the standounts. In the absence of such titans, best to pick a good wicketkeeper who can bat plausibly at seven or eight. Picking a batsman who is no more than a plausible keeper should not be an option.
They dosh up their mates and make the rest of us foot the bill.
This may be true Alan, but in which respects does this differ from their predecessors?
So their position is they are as bad as the Tories.
Im sure that will inspire support.
Werent they meant to be better, cleaner the adults in the room ?
I'd have settled for less corrupt and incompetent.
They are certainly the former, and probably the latter too , but it's still early days. Give it another twelve years or so and I'll let you know.
LOL
In August 2024 I upset PB Lefties by saying Reeves was a bag of crap and would be a terrible CoE. Hows that looking now ? If you think this is early days its not ;this government has charted its path for the next 2 years and has nothing to show for it. The crruption will get in to full gear when the government has been in office a bit longer. It always works out that way.
So how does she differ from the previous bags of crap, about whom I assume you were equally critical?
Neither of us knows the extent to which this government will attain the levels of corruption and incompetent of its predecessors. All we can say for the moment is that the bar is set pretty high.
Betting thoughts re SPotY. Restricting votes to BBC account holders has meant an end to teenagers dialling in hundreds of votes for their favourites and effectively returned SPotY almost to the days when middle class men in the Home Counties would fill in and post the coupon in the Radio Times.
So this year, football and darts lost out to golf and rugby and Formula 1. (Obviously I shall have forgotten this by the time next winter's betting opens.)
The last PB post by TSE was 'Will this bug John Swinney and the SNP until election day?', and here is the thing while TSE used a humourous play on the latest SNP scandal, it should have been a far bigger story here with far more scrutiny because of the implications for the Holyrood Parliament. But it won't be because frustratingly it involves a really shocking scandal that involves one of our devolved governments...
So the PB thread like the UK main stream media totally ignored it, literal tumble weed here and elsewhere, special shout out to SkyNews for mentioning it but doing sod all else to investigate it. Now just imagine if this had been a governing party at Westminster where now THREE female elected MPs had been reported to have had their offices bugged by party staffers?! I have no doubt that the Westminster Lobby would have been all over the story and it would have been wall to wall coverage in the 24/7 News channels, especially when the original breaking story reported that the male aid who bugged one female MSP had since moved to work for an SNP MP?!
Sorry TSE but I was really annoyed when you almost affectionately made fun of and dismissed this shocking scandal, and it is incredible serious story that should have resulted in not only a Parliamentary investigation, but a Police investigation too. I said early yesterday that Holyrood was not only broken, it really is not fit for purpose and that matters with a big election looming there in May next year and I stand by that claim today more than ever. But again I was just so saddened and frustrated at the lack of response here or in the media, not even the most basic questions asked. And to say this scandal stinks is an understatement, no one has asked why or to what end these female SNP MSPs who remain anonymous were bugged, but the Scottish Sun is reporting it suggests internal SNP infighting.
But the cynic in me after 18 eighteen years of this appalling SNP Government did have one question, why did it take until yesterday for this breaking story to finally see the light of day just as Holyrood went into Christmas recess and both politicians and political journalists departed to go on their festive holidays until the New Year.. Its almost as if this story finally having to break was stage managed so it would hopefully get the least attention or any proper scrutiny by the Holyrood Parliament, the local media or the public. This is how the SNP operate, totally secretive and utterly ruthless in their media management and so cynically in their media operation but they get away with it time and time again because Scotland is deemed a side show despite the fact that they control so much of our public services up here and including taxation when it comes to budgets but we like Wales and NI are totally failed by the UK media!
And the PB crew fell for it yet again yesterday because they were not even interested.... Oh to be a female MSP in the work place at Holyrood right now!
Blaw Blaw your kilt awa two snp donkeys spying on each other 2 years ago , get a life
The Green surge is the one that Yougov didn't really explore in this article, perhaps because Polanski only came to prominence mid year.
Its obvious that while Badenoch continues to shed support to Farage, Polanski continues to gain supporters from Starmer. The Greens are where those former Labour voters have gone.
Incidentally Polanski is also the most popular of the party leaders, albeit slightly negative and 49% not taking a view.
I think there will be a lot of attention to the Greens in 2026, particularly they are likely to do well in the May elections in England.
Good morning
The Greens are a problem for the left including the lib dems but anyone who supports Polanski's promises is no better than those supporting Farage
Both are extreme and incoherent
I dont expect The Only Tory in the PB Village to like Polanski or his policies, but certainly the story of the year politically is the Labour to Green swing over the year, which is double the size of the Con to Reform swing.
How much of that is Gaza? Do the Gaza voters come back if there is relative peace? How much is typical mid term blues? How much withstands a tactical battle vs Reform?
Feels very volatile to me. Polanski is an impressive communicator for sure, but doesn't have the answers, so the Farage parallel is valid imo.
I think very little is Gaza, or Polanski. How many voters even know who he is?
It feels like mainly the left wing disappointment vote now Labour is actually in government.
Underestimating Polanski is a mistake. He is a very good communicator with charisma.
To an extent he is the same as Farage, though wwithout the foreign ownership.
Between Farage and Polanski supporters there is half of our electorate. We might be appalled at that but it looks like the future, with Polanski representing a Populist left.
Both anti-pragmatist. Either are going to struggle to govern in the slightest bit coherently.
We might look back on the last decade as a period of relative competence.
The big advantage Greens and Reform have is that neither Labour nor the Conservatives are in a position to advance a competence argument.
In electoral terms, absolutely. I'm just forecasting that either will likely be even worse in government.
Well maybe. But the dog that hasnt barked so far is Reform running councils. They havent done what they claimed they could but that is just facing the realities local govt financing. But nor have they imploded and they have an eager media wishing for disaster stories.
It sort of underlines the issues facing Local Government e.g Taz's comment about Council Tax discount. There is no room for manoeuvre. They have to deliver the statutory services set by the present government and those before it. There was never any discretion as such and avoiding/cutting the obligation just ends up back in court at even more cost to the taxpayer.
They could go to the Public Works Loan Board and take a loan to invest in housebuilding (Brick by Brick Croydon Ltd) or some sort of solar farm (Thurrock) but they have, so far, chosen to be unambitious. They appear to be mimicking the unadventurous approach of Labour.
Not quite sure how Badenoch's "standing with Labour voters" counts for much when there are now so few Labour voters? (9 of them in the Cornish by-election overnight...)
The question is about 2024 (not current) Labour voters.
Which is definitely a WTF? metric. Like asking the voting intentions of Betamax owners...
I know that you want to depict the catastrophic Tory defeat of July 2024 as ancient history, but it is only 18 months ago.
The Tories have gone backwards against a disasterously unpopular government, and are heading for another drubbing in the May elections.
Outside of the narrow YouGov metric, the story for 2025 is that - certainly since early summer - Labour's vote has been eaten by the Greens. The Tories' rise has mirrored the drop in the Reform vote. The LibDems have flat lined.
The Tories are now averaging ahead of Labour, for the first time in yonks. Labour are at risk of being reeled in by the Greens. I know you want to depict the Tories as dead, but that may not be the story of 2026-8.
The latest Nowcast projection is a small Reform majority. Reform 331 MPs, Labour 102, LDs 74, Cons 50, SNP 45 and Greens 13.
So even if the Tories are now near tied with Labour in polls, Reform are still well ahead of them and the Conservatives are still projected to have fewer seats than Labour and the LDs. The main reason for that is more LD and Green voters are willing to vote for incumbent Labour MPs to beat Reform than they and Labour voters are willing to vote for Tory MPs to beat Reform at present
It's probably impossible to accurately model how vote share turns into seats with this many parties, so buckets of salt, natch. But a couple of observations.
First is that, despite everything, that nowcast still has Labour in second. A distant, dismal second, sure, but they still have a niche in a way that the Conservatives don't seem to.
Second is the Greens on 13. Percentage vote is vanity, winning seats is sanity, and there is a lot of vanity in Zak's politics. It's the nature of Big Beast Populism.
Yes, as I said Kemi still isn't getting the tactical votes she needs from other non Reform parties to beat Reform in Tory seats Starmer still is for all his faults in Labour held seats.
The Greens will likely come a strong second to Labour in lots of inner city seats without winning any of them while turning off voters in suburban, non university town and rural marginals. Indeed they might even lose the handful of rural seats they won last year
The Green surge is the one that Yougov didn't really explore in this article, perhaps because Polanski only came to prominence mid year.
Its obvious that while Badenoch continues to shed support to Farage, Polanski continues to gain supporters from Starmer. The Greens are where those former Labour voters have gone.
Incidentally Polanski is also the most popular of the party leaders, albeit slightly negative and 49% not taking a view.
I think there will be a lot of attention to the Greens in 2026, particularly they are likely to do well in the May elections in England.
Good morning
The Greens are a problem for the left including the lib dems but anyone who supports Polanski's promises is no better than those supporting Farage
Both are extreme and incoherent
I dont expect The Only Tory in the PB Village to like Polanski or his policies, but certainly the story of the year politically is the Labour to Green swing over the year, which is double the size of the Con to Reform swing.
How much of that is Gaza? Do the Gaza voters come back if there is relative peace? How much is typical mid term blues? How much withstands a tactical battle vs Reform?
Feels very volatile to me. Polanski is an impressive communicator for sure, but doesn't have the answers, so the Farage parallel is valid imo.
I think very little is Gaza, or Polanski. How many voters even know who he is?
It feels like mainly the left wing disappointment vote now Labour is actually in government.
Underestimating Polanski is a mistake. He is a very good communicator with charisma.
To an extent he is the same as Farage, though wwithout the foreign ownership.
Between Farage and Polanski supporters there is half of our electorate. We might be appalled at that but it looks like the future, with Polanski representing a Populist left.
Both anti-pragmatist. Either are going to struggle to govern in the slightest bit coherently.
We might look back on the last decade as a period of relative competence.
The big advantage Greens and Reform have is that neither Labour nor the Conservatives are in a position to advance a competence argument.
In electoral terms, absolutely. I'm just forecasting that either will likely be even worse in government.
Well maybe. But the dog that hasnt barked so far is Reform running councils. They havent done what they claimed they could but that is just facing the realities local govt financing. But nor have they imploded and they have an eager media wishing for disaster stories.
It sort of underlines the issues facing Local Government e.g Taz's comment about Council Tax discount. There is no room for manoeuvre. They have to deliver the statutory services set by the present government and those before it. There was never any discretion as such and avoiding/cutting the obligation just ends up back in court at even more cost to the taxpayer.
They could go to the Public Works Loan Board and take a loan to invest in housebuilding (Brick by Brick Croydon Ltd) or some sort of solar farm (Thurrock) but they have, so far, chosen to be unambitious. They appear to be mimicking the unadventurous approach of Labour.
It's a good job too as every time a local authority tries to do something adventurous they pick a bunch of cowboys to work with and it goes utterly pearshaped.
(Although truthfully it slipped away with yet another dozy batting performance in the first innings.)
Wasn't that bad, Doc. The basic problem is that they are not good enough, and it's difficult to do much about that.
Other than pick better players, of course.
Assuming we have some, how would we know? Nobody plays red ball cricket these days.
It’s hardly a stretch to say that any one of Hameed, Compton, Haines, Charlesworth or Lees would be a better option at the top of the order than Crawley (or indeed one of them also replacing Pope).
It’s not difficult to imagine Foakes would be a better keeper than Smith, or that James Rew would score as many runs as Smith does as well as being a better keeper.
It’s not daft to suggest Potts would take more wickets and offer more control than Carse, or Leach be a better option than Jacks or Bashir with the ball. True, he might not take wickets but nor do they, and he wouldn’t leak runs at such a rate.
And yet they are shoved out of the way for players who play ‘the Bazball way.’
I do not think they would necessarily win the Ashes in Australia, but nor would they endlessly self-destruct as this lot have repeatedly over the last twelve months.
Which tells me there is something fundamentally wrong with the national selectors that needs changing.
All true, but I wish I could believe it's just a selection issue. It is indicative of the state of the game here in the UK that even a regular follower like me is unable to comment on all the names you suggest. As far as I can tell selection is based on the evidence of white ball results (of which there is plenty) with the expectation that those selected can adjust to red ball in due course. Maybe that works against lesser opposition, but not in Australia against the locals.
Anyway I am now satisfied that my long-running complaints against picking a batsman who can keeping wicket a bit rather than a wicketkeeper who can bat a bit are widely held and justified by results.
This is the most disappointing Ashes series I can remember. Is the world's greatest international sporting series losing its allure and descending into irrelevance?
Yes. For a start, cricket is no longer on proper telly or played at all schools, especially those with no playing fields. Second, for a lot of cricket fans, India vs Pakistan is more interesting than the Ashes. Even a couple of decades back, it would have been England vs the West Indies. Of course, in 20th Century cricket's heyday, most fans had never seen first class cricket, following via newspaper reports.
ETA and pundits have complained about the selectors preferring all-rounders to specialist keepers for as long as I've been around.
The last wicketkeeper who didn't bat at all that I can remember being selected for England was Keith Andrews, although I think Bob Taylor might also qualify.
Jim Parks is the first wk I saw who was primarily a batsman but he was a pretty decent keeper too.
Players who keep and bat at the very highest level are rare as hens' teeth, Gilchrist and Dujohn being the standounts. In the absence of such titans, best to pick a good wicketkeeper who can bat plausibly at seven or eight. Picking a batsman who is no more than a plausible keeper should not be an option.
Bob Taylor got 97 in an Ashes test at Adelaide.
That's more than Smith managed...
(That innings ended when Taylor walked for a leg-side strangle so faint the Aussies had appealed more in hope than expectation.)
Could well be an interesting experiment on whether the training container is leak proof.
Juliet Nicolson, The Perfect Summer, England 1911 is a beautiful book on the theme. Larkin's MCMXIV captures it wonderfully:
Those long uneven lines Standing as patiently As if they were stretched outside The Oval or Villa Park, The crowns of hats, the sun On moustached archaic faces Grinning as if it were all An August Bank Holiday lark;
And the shut shops, the bleached Established names on the sunblinds, The farthings and sovereigns, And dark-clothed children at play Called after kings and queens, The tin advertisements For cocoa and twist, and the pubs Wide open all day;
And the countryside not caring The place-names all hazed over With flowering grasses, and fields Shadowing Domesday lines Under wheats' restless silence; The differently-dressed servants With tiny rooms in huge houses, The dust behind limousines;
Never such innocence, Never before or since, As changed itself to past Without a word—the men Leaving the gardens tidy, The thousands of marriages Lasting a little while longer: Never such innocence again.
It is worth noting that the summer of 1914 was a very fine one, with excellent weather and the prospect of a harvest comparable to that of 1913 (which had been very good - in fact, the Soviet Union didn't surpass the harvest of 1913 until the 1950s). This was followed by a series of wet, cold and miserable summers through the war which is an astonishing example of actual pathetic fallacy.
This tended to inspire further nostalgia about the halcyon final days of peace, followed by the greyness and grimness of war, which rather drew a veil over memories of the disasters brewing in Ireland and the coal industry.
If I recall correctly the second world war winters were notably harsh, cold and snowy, which would also have left a memory.
The last PB post by TSE was 'Will this bug John Swinney and the SNP until election day?', and here is the thing while TSE used a humourous play on the latest SNP scandal, it should have been a far bigger story here with far more scrutiny because of the implications for the Holyrood Parliament. But it won't be because frustratingly it involves a really shocking scandal that involves one of our devolved governments...
So the PB thread like the UK main stream media totally ignored it, literal tumble weed here and elsewhere, special shout out to SkyNews for mentioning it but doing sod all else to investigate it. Now just imagine if this had been a governing party at Westminster where now THREE female elected MPs had been reported to have had their offices bugged by party staffers?! I have no doubt that the Westminster Lobby would have been all over the story and it would have been wall to wall coverage in the 24/7 News channels, especially when the original breaking story reported that the male aid who bugged one female MSP had since moved to work for an SNP MP?!
Sorry TSE but I was really annoyed when you almost affectionately made fun of and dismissed this shocking scandal, and it is incredible serious story that should have resulted in not only a Parliamentary investigation, but a Police investigation too. I said early yesterday that Holyrood was not only broken, it really is not fit for purpose and that matters with a big election looming there in May next year and I stand by that claim today more than ever. But again I was just so saddened and frustrated at the lack of response here or in the media, not even the most basic questions asked. And to say this scandal stinks is an understatement, no one has asked why or to what end these female SNP MSPs who remain anonymous were bugged, but the Scottish Sun is reporting it suggests internal SNP infighting.
But the cynic in me after 18 eighteen years of this appalling SNP Government did have one question, why did it take until yesterday for this breaking story to finally see the light of day just as Holyrood went into Christmas recess and both politicians and political journalists departed to go on their festive holidays until the New Year.. Its almost as if this story finally having to break was stage managed so it would hopefully get the least attention or any proper scrutiny by the Holyrood Parliament, the local media or the public. This is how the SNP operate, totally secretive and utterly ruthless in their media management and so cynically in their media operation but they get away with it time and time again because Scotland is deemed a side show despite the fact that they control so much of our public services up here and including taxation when it comes to budgets but we like Wales and NI are totally failed by the UK media!
And the PB crew fell for it yet again yesterday because they were not even interested.... Oh to be a female MSP in the work place at Holyrood right now!
Blaw Blaw your kilt awa two snp donkeys spying on each other 2 years ago , get a life
And Hi to you to MalcolmG, but the very fact you dismiss these SNP FEMALE MSPs being bugged in their Holyrood Parliament offices says it all about this site right now!! No outrage, no curiosity or even the most basic questions that should be asked about this invasion of their privacy as elected politicians! But then I still remember the way that Jewish Labour female MPs were treated at Westminster and at their own Conference!! Oh the joys of being a strong out spoken feminist female poster on this site or an elected female politician at Holyrood or Westminster in the current climate. So and I say this sarcastically, go you wee man!!
When discussing our eye watering 95% debt to GDP ratio, it’s worth also reminding everyone of the USA’s 125% debt to GDP ratio, which is about to soar further towards an estimated 140% by 2030 following the OB3 act.
Fact they are skint will help us a lot , copying them is mental but we are led by useless idiots.
Underestimating Polanski is a mistake. He is a very good communicator with charisma.
To an extent he is the same as Farage, though wwithout the foreign ownership.
Between Farage and Polanski supporters there is half of our electorate. We might be appalled at that but it looks like the future, with Polanski representing a Populist left.
I think that's right - certainly the Greens look more interesting to folk like me on the left of Labour than they did when they were a nebulous environmental party.
A nebulous lefty party ?
And who is going to represent the hardcore ecology and sustainability voter?
The last PB post by TSE was 'Will this bug John Swinney and the SNP until election day?', and here is the thing while TSE used a humourous play on the latest SNP scandal, it should have been a far bigger story here with far more scrutiny because of the implications for the Holyrood Parliament. But it won't be because frustratingly it involves a really shocking scandal that involves one of our devolved governments...
So the PB thread like the UK main stream media totally ignored it, literal tumble weed here and elsewhere, special shout out to SkyNews for mentioning it but doing sod all else to investigate it. Now just imagine if this had been a governing party at Westminster where now THREE female elected MPs had been reported to have had their offices bugged by party staffers?! I have no doubt that the Westminster Lobby would have been all over the story and it would have been wall to wall coverage in the 24/7 News channels, especially when the original breaking story reported that the male aid who bugged one female MSP had since moved to work for an SNP MP?!
Sorry TSE but I was really annoyed when you almost affectionately made fun of and dismissed this shocking scandal, and it is incredible serious story that should have resulted in not only a Parliamentary investigation, but a Police investigation too. I said early yesterday that Holyrood was not only broken, it really is not fit for purpose and that matters with a big election looming there in May next year and I stand by that claim today more than ever. But again I was just so saddened and frustrated at the lack of response here or in the media, not even the most basic questions asked. And to say this scandal stinks is an understatement, no one has asked why or to what end these female SNP MSPs who remain anonymous were bugged, but the Scottish Sun is reporting it suggests internal SNP infighting.
But the cynic in me after 18 eighteen years of this appalling SNP Government did have one question, why did it take until yesterday for this breaking story to finally see the light of day just as Holyrood went into Christmas recess and both politicians and political journalists departed to go on their festive holidays until the New Year.. Its almost as if this story finally having to break was stage managed so it would hopefully get the least attention or any proper scrutiny by the Holyrood Parliament, the local media or the public. This is how the SNP operate, totally secretive and utterly ruthless in their media management and so cynically in their media operation but they get away with it time and time again because Scotland is deemed a side show despite the fact that they control so much of our public services up here and including taxation when it comes to budgets but we like Wales and NI are totally failed by the UK media!
And the PB crew fell for it yet again yesterday because they were not even interested.... Oh to be a female MSP in the work place at Holyrood right now!
Again tumble weed on this site for a huge political scandal at Holyrood that has implications if properely scrutinised and reported in the UK before the devolved elections in May, but hey, its not Westminster...
X Susan Dalgety@DalgetySusan.26m A week in the life of our own dear Parliament. Angela Constance’s breach of ministerial code. Ash Regan’s ‘punishment’. Now this. Women MSPs spied on by their own male staff. It’s a ‘BLEEP omnishambles’ as Malcom Tucker would say, but great material for columnists. Not great governance though 🤦🏼♀️ https://x.com/DalgetySusan/status/2001943509402869831
Joanna Cherry KC@joannaccherry Newspaper reports that more than one female SNP MSP was spied on by her own staff members. This was the climate created under the Sturgeon leadership. It’s a climate of fear in which I worked for years and about which I write in my forthcoming memoir. https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/keepin https://x.com/joannaccherry/status/2001930396049752288
Oh to be a woman in Scotland who speaks out or dares to defend womens right, espescially if they have a high profile politically elected voice....
It's as boring as fuck. Nobody cares. I'd rather read a MattW post about bollards or some shite.
The principle challenge of elevating this issue into the epoch shaking cataclysm that you clearly wish it to be, is that it lacks a snappy portmanteau with a -gate suffix. There's always "buggate" but it has that awkward diagraph in the middle. Anway, good luck with it all. Cheers. 👍
As a linguist you should know that the problem isn't the digraph, it's the germinate consonant that's awkward.
And two one-syllable words that, stuck together, naturally tend to be pronounced "buggit"
The last PB post by TSE was 'Will this bug John Swinney and the SNP until election day?', and here is the thing while TSE used a humourous play on the latest SNP scandal, it should have been a far bigger story here with far more scrutiny because of the implications for the Holyrood Parliament. But it won't be because frustratingly it involves a really shocking scandal that involves one of our devolved governments...
So the PB thread like the UK main stream media totally ignored it, literal tumble weed here and elsewhere, special shout out to SkyNews for mentioning it but doing sod all else to investigate it. Now just imagine if this had been a governing party at Westminster where now THREE female elected MPs had been reported to have had their offices bugged by party staffers?! I have no doubt that the Westminster Lobby would have been all over the story and it would have been wall to wall coverage in the 24/7 News channels, especially when the original breaking story reported that the male aid who bugged one female MSP had since moved to work for an SNP MP?!
Sorry TSE but I was really annoyed when you almost affectionately made fun of and dismissed this shocking scandal, and it is incredible serious story that should have resulted in not only a Parliamentary investigation, but a Police investigation too. I said early yesterday that Holyrood was not only broken, it really is not fit for purpose and that matters with a big election looming there in May next year and I stand by that claim today more than ever. But again I was just so saddened and frustrated at the lack of response here or in the media, not even the most basic questions asked. And to say this scandal stinks is an understatement, no one has asked why or to what end these female SNP MSPs who remain anonymous were bugged, but the Scottish Sun is reporting it suggests internal SNP infighting.
But the cynic in me after 18 eighteen years of this appalling SNP Government did have one question, why did it take until yesterday for this breaking story to finally see the light of day just as Holyrood went into Christmas recess and both politicians and political journalists departed to go on their festive holidays until the New Year.. Its almost as if this story finally having to break was stage managed so it would hopefully get the least attention or any proper scrutiny by the Holyrood Parliament, the local media or the public. This is how the SNP operate, totally secretive and utterly ruthless in their media management and so cynically in their media operation but they get away with it time and time again because Scotland is deemed a side show despite the fact that they control so much of our public services up here and including taxation when it comes to budgets but we like Wales and NI are totally failed by the UK media!
And the PB crew fell for it yet again yesterday because they were not even interested.... Oh to be a female MSP in the work place at Holyrood right now!
Blaw Blaw your kilt awa two snp donkeys spying on each other 2 years ago , get a life
And Hi to you to MalcolmG, but the very fact you dismiss these SNP FEMALE MSPs being bugged in their Holyrood Parliament offices says it all about this site right now!! No outrage, no curiosity or even the most basic questions that should be asked about this invasion of their privacy as elected politicians! But then I still remember the way that Jewish Labour female MPs were treated at Westminster and at their own Conference!! Oh the joys of being a strong out spoken feminist female poster on this site or an elected female politician at Holyrood or Westminster in the current climate. So and I say this sarcastically, go you wee man!!
I'll admit one reason I'm not commenting is I'm finding the story a bit baffling. The SNP was spying on its MSPs? Why? What on earth was going on? Were these people politiciking, or peculiar? So in default of more information I'm refraining from speculating.
It doesn't inspire confidence in the party's leadership but (a) I never had any and (b) I'm not Scottish so my opinion is not really relevant.
They dosh up their mates and make the rest of us foot the bill.
This may be true Alan, but in which respects does this differ from their predecessors?
So their position is they are as bad as the Tories.
Im sure that will inspire support.
Werent they meant to be better, cleaner the adults in the room ?
Actually Labour's position is to be similar to, but not quite as bad, as the Tories and Reform. Agree it's not an inspiring position for anyone to sign up to.
So over 2025 the main movement has been Labour to Green and Conservatives to Reform.
While Kemi's approval rating has improved amongst 2024 Conservative and Reform voters still only just over 60% of 2024 Tories and 50% of 2024 Reform voters have a favourable view of her. The fact that less than 20% of LD voters and less than 10% of Labour and Green voters have a favourable view of her also means she is not getting the tactical votes she needs for Conservative candidates to beat Reform
Yes, the idea that centrists will vote Tory tactically to keep out Reform is mistaken. There's no way that I am doing that in my constituency which is probably a Tory/Reform marginal.
Yestetdays crass comments by Badenoch on the proposals to tackle misogyny in schools is a prime example of why she is repellent.
Would you consider voting for a Cleverly led Tory party though in a Tory/Reform marginal? If say Cleverly ruled out supporting a Farage led government and said a Cleverly led Tories would abstain on confidence and supply in a hung parliament rather than support Labour or Reform
The last PB post by TSE was 'Will this bug John Swinney and the SNP until election day?', and here is the thing while TSE used a humourous play on the latest SNP scandal, it should have been a far bigger story here with far more scrutiny because of the implications for the Holyrood Parliament. But it won't be because frustratingly it involves a really shocking scandal that involves one of our devolved governments...
So the PB thread like the UK main stream media totally ignored it, literal tumble weed here and elsewhere, special shout out to SkyNews for mentioning it but doing sod all else to investigate it. Now just imagine if this had been a governing party at Westminster where now THREE female elected MPs had been reported to have had their offices bugged by party staffers?! I have no doubt that the Westminster Lobby would have been all over the story and it would have been wall to wall coverage in the 24/7 News channels, especially when the original breaking story reported that the male aid who bugged one female MSP had since moved to work for an SNP MP?!
Sorry TSE but I was really annoyed when you almost affectionately made fun of and dismissed this shocking scandal, and it is incredible serious story that should have resulted in not only a Parliamentary investigation, but a Police investigation too. I said early yesterday that Holyrood was not only broken, it really is not fit for purpose and that matters with a big election looming there in May next year and I stand by that claim today more than ever. But again I was just so saddened and frustrated at the lack of response here or in the media, not even the most basic questions asked. And to say this scandal stinks is an understatement, no one has asked why or to what end these female SNP MSPs who remain anonymous were bugged, but the Scottish Sun is reporting it suggests internal SNP infighting.
But the cynic in me after 18 eighteen years of this appalling SNP Government did have one question, why did it take until yesterday for this breaking story to finally see the light of day just as Holyrood went into Christmas recess and both politicians and political journalists departed to go on their festive holidays until the New Year.. Its almost as if this story finally having to break was stage managed so it would hopefully get the least attention or any proper scrutiny by the Holyrood Parliament, the local media or the public. This is how the SNP operate, totally secretive and utterly ruthless in their media management and so cynically in their media operation but they get away with it time and time again because Scotland is deemed a side show despite the fact that they control so much of our public services up here and including taxation when it comes to budgets but we like Wales and NI are totally failed by the UK media!
And the PB crew fell for it yet again yesterday because they were not even interested.... Oh to be a female MSP in the work place at Holyrood right now!
Blaw Blaw your kilt awa two snp donkeys spying on each other 2 years ago , get a life
And Hi to you to MalcolmG, but the very fact you dismiss these SNP FEMALE MSPs being bugged in their Holyrood Parliament offices says it all about this site right now!! No outrage, no curiosity or even the most basic questions that should be asked about this invasion of their privacy as elected politicians! But then I still remember the way that Jewish Labour female MPs were treated at Westminster and at their own Conference!! Oh the joys of being a strong out spoken feminist female poster on this site or an elected female politician at Holyrood or Westminster in the current climate. So and I say this sarcastically, go you wee man!!
well, for what it's worth I would like to know a lot more about this affair. I was the second poster on that thread yesterday, and I observed that it asked a lot of questions - for example, who, why, and cui bono? However, as I live in southern England and don't scour the internet with sufficient skill I doubt if I will ever find out. And I think most posters on this site will be like me - observers, and not able to pursue any meaningful enquiries.
A point made forcefully by many historians, for example Michael Bentley. 'Politicians of that era (1905-1914) had no reason to think that they needed to complete everything before the chiming of some solemn midnight hour in 1914...diaries of Liberal politicians (in spring 1914) have an optimistic future tense reference to the election of 1915...in their imagination, those young men in the summer of 1914 rode the crest of an open future.'
An idea of how people thought and felt in any era can be gained by reading newspapers of the period for several days*, and the results are usually interesting. AI is doing the same thing, just quicker.
*Something that will be to put it mildly more challenging for historians of our own times.
Not just 'quicker', but with potentially far broader reach in terms of reading. Like all AIs, it will be a fallible tool which needs someone with actual knowledge of a given period to use most effectively, but it might be quite a powerful one, since it could/can have access to a vast amount of texts in any language.
(Consider, for example, the massive volumes of Korean court histories, which on their own might otherwise require a lifetime of study.)
When I was at University the library still had either the hard copy or a microfiche (showing my age here) of the Times newspapers and one of the many ways I would amuse myself when law got too boring was to read the newspapers in the run up to some significant event, such as the American civil war or WW1 and get an idea of how the informed people of the time saw things. My recollection, and this was 45 years ago now, was that many people saw trouble with Germany as inevitable. We had already had the race to build Dreadnaughts and there were concerns about whether the RN was as dominant as it had been for the last century. No one foresaw the bloodbath to come that I recall.
Well, it probably was inevitable largely because the Kaiser wanted it. But as you say few foresaw the extent or the grimness of it. They expected perhaps something similar to the Napoleonic or Crimean wars where a small British Army would play a specialist role to back up the French and Russians, while the Navy throttled the German economy. Also, there was no special reason among the British to think it would happen in 1914. (Again, German government records paint a rather different picture.)
Wasn't there a debate in Britain whether to join in or let the war play out without being directly involved, with the ultimate decision for war driven by Germany's invasion of Belgium?
They dosh up their mates and make the rest of us foot the bill.
This may be true Alan, but in which respects does this differ from their predecessors?
So their position is they are as bad as the Tories.
Im sure that will inspire support.
Werent they meant to be better, cleaner the adults in the room ?
I'd have settled for less corrupt and incompetent.
They are certainly the former, and probably the latter too , but it's still early days. Give it another twelve years or so and I'll let you know.
This from Peter Punter is a post of wisdom and maturity. The single biggest positive development in politics would be if the public were to revise down their expectations of how much any government can realistically improve the UK's living standards and public services except over quite a long period (certainly several years). The gap between expectations and what is feasible is creating a fertile environment for the types of politicians who we can only hope are revealed to be unfit for power before they get their mitts on it.
Chances of this occurring though? Slim to non-existent. Why should unrealistic expectations of politicians be relinquished when politicians themselves do nothing but fuel them. Which is perfectly rational behaviour by them. Prospects of election are boosted if you exaggerate the positive impact you will make. Otherwise you'll fail to inspire the voters and they will reciprocate by failing to vote for you. Why that risk if you don't have to?
Fresh in memory, Labour last year, my party, I actually sent an email to Morgan McSweeney saying we should not be running on that crude CHANGE slogan, as if the morning after a Labour win people would look out to see lakes of milk and honey. Instead I recommended posters, lecterns and tee-shirts saying 'Incremental improvement in key areas that you will start to feel after a while (if alert) but subject to various factors outside of governmental control!'. Compromising with cheap populism with that exclamation mark. And guess what Morgan wrote back? Not even anything polite and considered. Just "LOL". That says it all.
Two stories here I think. The Greens are eating Labour's lunch and the Conservatives under Badenoch are making themselves more acceptable to Reform supporters. The second of these I think is the more significant story, as it might imply a coalition with Tories as junior partners. The Tories presumably hope it means former Tory supporters, now Reform, moving back into the fold.
Underestimating Polanski is a mistake. He is a very good communicator with charisma.
To an extent he is the same as Farage, though wwithout the foreign ownership.
Between Farage and Polanski supporters there is half of our electorate. We might be appalled at that but it looks like the future, with Polanski representing a Populist left.
I think that's right - certainly the Greens look more interesting to folk like me on the left of Labour than they did when they were a nebulous environmental party.
A nebulous lefty party ?
And who is going to represent the hardcore ecology and sustainability voter?
They dosh up their mates and make the rest of us foot the bill.
This may be true Alan, but in which respects does this differ from their predecessors?
So their position is they are as bad as the Tories.
Im sure that will inspire support.
Werent they meant to be better, cleaner the adults in the room ?
I'd have settled for less corrupt and incompetent.
They are certainly the former, and probably the latter too , but it's still early days. Give it another twelve years or so and I'll let you know.
This from Peter Punter is a post of wisdom and maturity. The single biggest positive development in politics would be if the public were to revise down their expectations of how much any government can realistically improve the UK's living standards and public services except over quite a long period (certainly several years). The gap between expectations and what is feasible is creating a fertile environment for the types of politicians who we can only hope are revealed to be unfit for power before they get their mitts on it.
Chances of this occurring though? Slim to non-existent. Why should unrealistic expectations of politicians be relinquished when politicians themselves do nothing but fuel them. Which is perfectly rational behaviour by them. Prospects of election are boosted if you exaggerate the positive impact you will make. Otherwise you'll fail to inspire the voters and they will reciprocate by failing to vote for you. Why that risk if you don't have to?
Fresh in memory, Labour last year, my party, I actually sent an email to Morgan McSweeney saying we should not be running on that crude CHANGE slogan, as if the morning after a Labour win people would look out to see lakes of milk and honey. Instead I recommended posters, lecterns and tee-shirts saying 'Incremental improvement in key areas that you will start to feel after a while (if alert) but subject to various factors outside of governmental control!'. Compromising with cheap populism with that exclamation mark. And guess what Morgan wrote back? Not even anything polite and considered. Just "LOL". That says it all.
As with Dom C, you can sort of see why he chose to get close to power by the tradesmans' entrance, rather than running for office himself.
The last PB post by TSE was 'Will this bug John Swinney and the SNP until election day?', and here is the thing while TSE used a humourous play on the latest SNP scandal, it should have been a far bigger story here with far more scrutiny because of the implications for the Holyrood Parliament. But it won't be because frustratingly it involves a really shocking scandal that involves one of our devolved governments...
So the PB thread like the UK main stream media totally ignored it, literal tumble weed here and elsewhere, special shout out to SkyNews for mentioning it but doing sod all else to investigate it. Now just imagine if this had been a governing party at Westminster where now THREE female elected MPs had been reported to have had their offices bugged by party staffers?! I have no doubt that the Westminster Lobby would have been all over the story and it would have been wall to wall coverage in the 24/7 News channels, especially when the original breaking story reported that the male aid who bugged one female MSP had since moved to work for an SNP MP?!
Sorry TSE but I was really annoyed when you almost affectionately made fun of and dismissed this shocking scandal, and it is incredible serious story that should have resulted in not only a Parliamentary investigation, but a Police investigation too. I said early yesterday that Holyrood was not only broken, it really is not fit for purpose and that matters with a big election looming there in May next year and I stand by that claim today more than ever. But again I was just so saddened and frustrated at the lack of response here or in the media, not even the most basic questions asked. And to say this scandal stinks is an understatement, no one has asked why or to what end these female SNP MSPs who remain anonymous were bugged, but the Scottish Sun is reporting it suggests internal SNP infighting.
But the cynic in me after 18 eighteen years of this appalling SNP Government did have one question, why did it take until yesterday for this breaking story to finally see the light of day just as Holyrood went into Christmas recess and both politicians and political journalists departed to go on their festive holidays until the New Year.. Its almost as if this story finally having to break was stage managed so it would hopefully get the least attention or any proper scrutiny by the Holyrood Parliament, the local media or the public. This is how the SNP operate, totally secretive and utterly ruthless in their media management and so cynically in their media operation but they get away with it time and time again because Scotland is deemed a side show despite the fact that they control so much of our public services up here and including taxation when it comes to budgets but we like Wales and NI are totally failed by the UK media!
And the PB crew fell for it yet again yesterday because they were not even interested.... Oh to be a female MSP in the work place at Holyrood right now!
Blaw Blaw your kilt awa two snp donkeys spying on each other 2 years ago , get a life
And Hi to you to MalcolmG, but the very fact you dismiss these SNP FEMALE MSPs being bugged in their Holyrood Parliament offices says it all about this site right now!! No outrage, no curiosity or even the most basic questions that should be asked about this invasion of their privacy as elected politicians! But then I still remember the way that Jewish Labour female MPs were treated at Westminster and at their own Conference!! Oh the joys of being a strong out spoken feminist female poster on this site or an elected female politician at Holyrood or Westminster in the current climate. So and I say this sarcastically, go you wee man!!
I'll admit one reason I'm not commenting is I'm finding the story a bit baffling. The SNP was spying on its MSPs? Why? What on earth was going on? Were these people politiciking, or peculiar? So in default of more information I'm refraining from speculating.
It doesn't inspire confidence in the party's leadership but (a) I never had any and (b) I'm not Scottish so my opinion is not really relevant.
Not even clear it was the leadership or the party as such. Compare recent events in the UK generally. Which is why I don't have a clue either.
Two stories here I think. The Greens are eating Labour's lunch and the Conservatives under Badenoch are making themselves more acceptable to Reform supporters. The second of these I think is the more significant story, as it might imply a coalition with Tories as junior partners. The Tories presumably hope it means former Tory supporters, now Reform, moving back into the fold.
Hope yes but little evidence of it actually happening yet. The Tories are still on 17 to 20% so still even below the 24% Rishi got in 2024 and even then Reform got 14%, so Reform have still made net gains from both the Tories and Labour since the 2024 GE
A point made forcefully by many historians, for example Michael Bentley. 'Politicians of that era (1905-1914) had no reason to think that they needed to complete everything before the chiming of some solemn midnight hour in 1914...diaries of Liberal politicians (in spring 1914) have an optimistic future tense reference to the election of 1915...in their imagination, those young men in the summer of 1914 rode the crest of an open future.'
An idea of how people thought and felt in any era can be gained by reading newspapers of the period for several days*, and the results are usually interesting. AI is doing the same thing, just quicker.
*Something that will be to put it mildly more challenging for historians of our own times.
Not just 'quicker', but with potentially far broader reach in terms of reading. Like all AIs, it will be a fallible tool which needs someone with actual knowledge of a given period to use most effectively, but it might be quite a powerful one, since it could/can have access to a vast amount of texts in any language.
(Consider, for example, the massive volumes of Korean court histories, which on their own might otherwise require a lifetime of study.)
When I was at University the library still had either the hard copy or a microfiche (showing my age here) of the Times newspapers and one of the many ways I would amuse myself when law got too boring was to read the newspapers in the run up to some significant event, such as the American civil war or WW1 and get an idea of how the informed people of the time saw things. My recollection, and this was 45 years ago now, was that many people saw trouble with Germany as inevitable. We had already had the race to build Dreadnaughts and there were concerns about whether the RN was as dominant as it had been for the last century. No one foresaw the bloodbath to come that I recall.
Well, it probably was inevitable largely because the Kaiser wanted it. But as you say few foresaw the extent or the grimness of it. They expected perhaps something similar to the Napoleonic or Crimean wars where a small British Army would play a specialist role to back up the French and Russians, while the Navy throttled the German economy. Also, there was no special reason among the British to think it would happen in 1914. (Again, German government records paint a rather different picture.)
Wasn't there a debate in Britain whether to join in or let the war play out without being directly involved, with the ultimate decision for war driven by Germany's invasion of Belgium?
Yes, and of course the Entente Cordiale.
The war was enormously popular with the public at the outset. Populists take note.
A point made forcefully by many historians, for example Michael Bentley. 'Politicians of that era (1905-1914) had no reason to think that they needed to complete everything before the chiming of some solemn midnight hour in 1914...diaries of Liberal politicians (in spring 1914) have an optimistic future tense reference to the election of 1915...in their imagination, those young men in the summer of 1914 rode the crest of an open future.'
An idea of how people thought and felt in any era can be gained by reading newspapers of the period for several days*, and the results are usually interesting. AI is doing the same thing, just quicker.
*Something that will be to put it mildly more challenging for historians of our own times.
Not just 'quicker', but with potentially far broader reach in terms of reading. Like all AIs, it will be a fallible tool which needs someone with actual knowledge of a given period to use most effectively, but it might be quite a powerful one, since it could/can have access to a vast amount of texts in any language.
(Consider, for example, the massive volumes of Korean court histories, which on their own might otherwise require a lifetime of study.)
When I was at University the library still had either the hard copy or a microfiche (showing my age here) of the Times newspapers and one of the many ways I would amuse myself when law got too boring was to read the newspapers in the run up to some significant event, such as the American civil war or WW1 and get an idea of how the informed people of the time saw things. My recollection, and this was 45 years ago now, was that many people saw trouble with Germany as inevitable. We had already had the race to build Dreadnaughts and there were concerns about whether the RN was as dominant as it had been for the last century. No one foresaw the bloodbath to come that I recall.
It is pretty universal that predictions of the future are wrong and fail to anticipate major events correctly.
Well within our lifetimes no one really saw how quickly the Soviet Union would collapse in 89-90 either.
These things tend to be much more obvious with the advantage of hindsight.
Sadly, the lottery numbers are a particularly good example of that!
In the early days, when the lottery was drawn, I used to speculate on whether I could have chosen those numbers and won the jackpot. Was there a repeated pattern, say multiples of three or geometric shapes on the lottery slip, or were they all low numbers that might be a family's birthdays, or two high and four low, which might be a 4-child family's ages? We had to make our own amusement. Unless you had friends, of course!
How to keep oneself amused in the days before TV and even music hall ...
Two stories here I think. The Greens are eating Labour's lunch and the Conservatives under Badenoch are making themselves more acceptable to Reform supporters. The second of these I think is the more significant story, as it might imply a coalition with Tories as junior partners. The Tories presumably hope it means former Tory supporters, now Reform, moving back into the fold.
Hope yes but little evidence of it actually happening yet. The Tories are still on 17 to 20% so still even below the 24% Rishi got in 2024 and even then Reform got 14%, so Reform have still made net gains from both the Tories and Labour since the 2024 GE
It is quite extraordinary that the two main parties to have dominated our politics for over a century both stand around 20%.
In due course the electorate will have to sober up and pick someone to actually govern the country. That may lead to a very different outcome to the kind of projections we are now seeing or something stranger and more troubling than anything we have seen in my lifetime.
They dosh up their mates and make the rest of us foot the bill.
This may be true Alan, but in which respects does this differ from their predecessors?
So their position is they are as bad as the Tories.
Im sure that will inspire support.
Werent they meant to be better, cleaner the adults in the room ?
I'd have settled for less corrupt and incompetent.
They are certainly the former, and probably the latter too , but it's still early days. Give it another twelve years or so and I'll let you know.
This from Peter Punter is a post of wisdom and maturity. The single biggest positive development in politics would be if the public were to revise down their expectations of how much any government can realistically improve the UK's living standards and public services except over quite a long period (certainly several years). The gap between expectations and what is feasible is creating a fertile environment for the types of politicians who we can only hope are revealed to be unfit for power before they get their mitts on it.
Chances of this occurring though? Slim to non-existent. Why should unrealistic expectations of politicians be relinquished when politicians themselves do nothing but fuel them. Which is perfectly rational behaviour by them. Prospects of election are boosted if you exaggerate the positive impact you will make. Otherwise you'll fail to inspire the voters and they will reciprocate by failing to vote for you. Why that risk if you don't have to?
Fresh in memory, Labour last year, my party, I actually sent an email to Morgan McSweeney saying we should not be running on that crude CHANGE slogan, as if the morning after a Labour win people would look out to see lakes of milk and honey. Instead I recommended posters, lecterns and tee-shirts saying 'Incremental improvement in key areas that you will start to feel after a while (if alert) but subject to various factors outside of governmental control!'. Compromising with cheap populism with that exclamation mark. And guess what Morgan wrote back? Not even anything polite and considered. Just "LOL". That says it all.
Just one question, please: were you a stranger to him or an old schoolfriend or ...? Difficult to judge fully without knowing.
So over 2025 the main movement has been Labour to Green and Conservatives to Reform.
While Kemi's approval rating has improved amongst 2024 Conservative and Reform voters still only just over 60% of 2024 Tories and 50% of 2024 Reform voters have a favourable view of her. The fact that less than 20% of LD voters and less than 10% of Labour and Green voters have a favourable view of her also means she is not getting the tactical votes she needs for Conservative candidates to beat Reform
Yet
And of course Johnson would be infinitely better !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
They dosh up their mates and make the rest of us foot the bill.
This may be true Alan, but in which respects does this differ from their predecessors?
So their position is they are as bad as the Tories.
Im sure that will inspire support.
Werent they meant to be better, cleaner the adults in the room ?
I'd have settled for less corrupt and incompetent.
They are certainly the former, and probably the latter too , but it's still early days. Give it another twelve years or so and I'll let you know.
This from Peter Punter is a post of wisdom and maturity. The single biggest positive development in politics would be if the public were to revise down their expectations of how much any government can realistically improve the UK's living standards and public services except over quite a long period (certainly several years). The gap between expectations and what is feasible is creating a fertile environment for the types of politicians who we can only hope are revealed to be unfit for power before they get their mitts on it.
Chances of this occurring though? Slim to non-existent. Why should unrealistic expectations of politicians be relinquished when politicians themselves do nothing but fuel them. Which is perfectly rational behaviour by them. Prospects of election are boosted if you exaggerate the positive impact you will make. Otherwise you'll fail to inspire the voters and they will reciprocate by failing to vote for you. Why that risk if you don't have to?
Fresh in memory, Labour last year, my party, I actually sent an email to Morgan McSweeney saying we should not be running on that crude CHANGE slogan, as if the morning after a Labour win people would look out to see lakes of milk and honey. Instead I recommended posters, lecterns and tee-shirts saying 'Incremental improvement in key areas that you will start to feel after a while (if alert) but subject to various factors outside of governmental control!'. Compromising with cheap populism with that exclamation mark. And guess what Morgan wrote back? Not even anything polite and considered. Just "LOL". That says it all.
As with Dom C, you can sort of see why he chose to get close to power by the tradesmans' entrance, rather than running for office himself.
Found out something about Morgan Sweeney where it all suddenly made sense. He was campaign director for Liz Kendall in the 2015 Labour Leader election. He took an OK candidate - certainly better than Corbyn the eventual leader - with significant parliamentary support, and delivered a STATISTICALLY ZERO vote. Literally more people believe the moon landings were fake than voted for his candidate.
They dosh up their mates and make the rest of us foot the bill.
This may be true Alan, but in which respects does this differ from their predecessors?
So their position is they are as bad as the Tories.
Im sure that will inspire support.
Werent they meant to be better, cleaner the adults in the room ?
I'd have settled for less corrupt and incompetent.
They are certainly the former, and probably the latter too , but it's still early days. Give it another twelve years or so and I'll let you know.
This from Peter Punter is a post of wisdom and maturity. The single biggest positive development in politics would be if the public were to revise down their expectations of how much any government can realistically improve the UK's living standards and public services except over quite a long period (certainly several years). The gap between expectations and what is feasible is creating a fertile environment for the types of politicians who we can only hope are revealed to be unfit for power before they get their mitts on it.
Chances of this occurring though? Slim to non-existent. Why should unrealistic expectations of politicians be relinquished when politicians themselves do nothing but fuel them. Which is perfectly rational behaviour by them. Prospects of election are boosted if you exaggerate the positive impact you will make. Otherwise you'll fail to inspire the voters and they will reciprocate by failing to vote for you. Why that risk if you don't have to?
Fresh in memory, Labour last year, my party, I actually sent an email to Morgan McSweeney saying we should not be running on that crude CHANGE slogan, as if the morning after a Labour win people would look out to see lakes of milk and honey. Instead I recommended posters, lecterns and tee-shirts saying 'Incremental improvement in key areas that you will start to feel after a while (if alert) but subject to various factors outside of governmental control!'. Compromising with cheap populism with that exclamation mark. And guess what Morgan wrote back? Not even anything polite and considered. Just "LOL". That says it all.
Just one question, please: were you a stranger to him or an old schoolfriend or ...? Difficult to judge fully without knowing.
No, we are not acquainted, but after such adulation my career on PB is surely at an end.
They dosh up their mates and make the rest of us foot the bill.
This may be true Alan, but in which respects does this differ from their predecessors?
So their position is they are as bad as the Tories.
Im sure that will inspire support.
Werent they meant to be better, cleaner the adults in the room ?
I'd have settled for less corrupt and incompetent.
They are certainly the former, and probably the latter too , but it's still early days. Give it another twelve years or so and I'll let you know.
This from Peter Punter is a post of wisdom and maturity. The single biggest positive development in politics would be if the public were to revise down their expectations of how much any government can realistically improve the UK's living standards and public services except over quite a long period (certainly several years). The gap between expectations and what is feasible is creating a fertile environment for the types of politicians who we can only hope are revealed to be unfit for power before they get their mitts on it.
Chances of this occurring though? Slim to non-existent. Why should unrealistic expectations of politicians be relinquished when politicians themselves do nothing but fuel them. Which is perfectly rational behaviour by them. Prospects of election are boosted if you exaggerate the positive impact you will make. Otherwise you'll fail to inspire the voters and they will reciprocate by failing to vote for you. Why that risk if you don't have to?
Fresh in memory, Labour last year, my party, I actually sent an email to Morgan McSweeney saying we should not be running on that crude CHANGE slogan, as if the morning after a Labour win people would look out to see lakes of milk and honey. Instead I recommended posters, lecterns and tee-shirts saying 'Incremental improvement in key areas that you will start to feel after a while (if alert) but subject to various factors outside of governmental control!'. Compromising with cheap populism with that exclamation mark. And guess what Morgan wrote back? Not even anything polite and considered. Just "LOL". That says it all.
Just one question, please: were you a stranger to him or an old schoolfriend or ...? Difficult to judge fully without knowing.
No, we are not acquainted, but after such adulation my career on PB is surely at an end.
Been nice knowing you all.
That was actually a question to Kinabulu in re Mr Sweeney ... not sure what hapepned!
The last PB post by TSE was 'Will this bug John Swinney and the SNP until election day?', and here is the thing while TSE used a humourous play on the latest SNP scandal, it should have been a far bigger story here with far more scrutiny because of the implications for the Holyrood Parliament. But it won't be because frustratingly it involves a really shocking scandal that involves one of our devolved governments...
So the PB thread like the UK main stream media totally ignored it, literal tumble weed here and elsewhere, special shout out to SkyNews for mentioning it but doing sod all else to investigate it. Now just imagine if this had been a governing party at Westminster where now THREE female elected MPs had been reported to have had their offices bugged by party staffers?! I have no doubt that the Westminster Lobby would have been all over the story and it would have been wall to wall coverage in the 24/7 News channels, especially when the original breaking story reported that the male aid who bugged one female MSP had since moved to work for an SNP MP?!
Sorry TSE but I was really annoyed when you almost affectionately made fun of and dismissed this shocking scandal, and it is incredible serious story that should have resulted in not only a Parliamentary investigation, but a Police investigation too. I said early yesterday that Holyrood was not only broken, it really is not fit for purpose and that matters with a big election looming there in May next year and I stand by that claim today more than ever. But again I was just so saddened and frustrated at the lack of response here or in the media, not even the most basic questions asked. And to say this scandal stinks is an understatement, no one has asked why or to what end these female SNP MSPs who remain anonymous were bugged, but the Scottish Sun is reporting it suggests internal SNP infighting.
But the cynic in me after 18 eighteen years of this appalling SNP Government did have one question, why did it take until yesterday for this breaking story to finally see the light of day just as Holyrood went into Christmas recess and both politicians and political journalists departed to go on their festive holidays until the New Year.. Its almost as if this story finally having to break was stage managed so it would hopefully get the least attention or any proper scrutiny by the Holyrood Parliament, the local media or the public. This is how the SNP operate, totally secretive and utterly ruthless in their media management and so cynically in their media operation but they get away with it time and time again because Scotland is deemed a side show despite the fact that they control so much of our public services up here and including taxation when it comes to budgets but we like Wales and NI are totally failed by the UK media!
And the PB crew fell for it yet again yesterday because they were not even interested.... Oh to be a female MSP in the work place at Holyrood right now!
Blaw Blaw your kilt awa two snp donkeys spying on each other 2 years ago , get a life
And Hi to you to MalcolmG, but the very fact you dismiss these SNP FEMALE MSPs being bugged in their Holyrood Parliament offices says it all about this site right now!! No outrage, no curiosity or even the most basic questions that should be asked about this invasion of their privacy as elected politicians! But then I still remember the way that Jewish Labour female MPs were treated at Westminster and at their own Conference!! Oh the joys of being a strong out spoken feminist female poster on this site or an elected female politician at Holyrood or Westminster in the current climate. So and I say this sarcastically, go you wee man!!
I'll admit one reason I'm not commenting is I'm finding the story a bit baffling. The SNP was spying on its MSPs? Why? What on earth was going on? Were these people politiciking, or peculiar? So in default of more information I'm refraining from speculating.
It doesn't inspire confidence in the party's leadership but (a) I never had any and (b) I'm not Scottish so my opinion is not really relevant.
Not even clear it was the leadership or the party as such. Compare recent events in the UK generally. Which is why I don't have a clue either.
That is not only pathetic, its just embarrassing and desperate, all the more so for what has been reported about this scandal already. You are just insulting the non SNP cult in Scotland's intelligence.
A point made forcefully by many historians, for example Michael Bentley. 'Politicians of that era (1905-1914) had no reason to think that they needed to complete everything before the chiming of some solemn midnight hour in 1914...diaries of Liberal politicians (in spring 1914) have an optimistic future tense reference to the election of 1915...in their imagination, those young men in the summer of 1914 rode the crest of an open future.'
An idea of how people thought and felt in any era can be gained by reading newspapers of the period for several days*, and the results are usually interesting. AI is doing the same thing, just quicker.
*Something that will be to put it mildly more challenging for historians of our own times.
Not just 'quicker', but with potentially far broader reach in terms of reading. Like all AIs, it will be a fallible tool which needs someone with actual knowledge of a given period to use most effectively, but it might be quite a powerful one, since it could/can have access to a vast amount of texts in any language.
(Consider, for example, the massive volumes of Korean court histories, which on their own might otherwise require a lifetime of study.)
When I was at University the library still had either the hard copy or a microfiche (showing my age here) of the Times newspapers and one of the many ways I would amuse myself when law got too boring was to read the newspapers in the run up to some significant event, such as the American civil war or WW1 and get an idea of how the informed people of the time saw things. My recollection, and this was 45 years ago now, was that many people saw trouble with Germany as inevitable. We had already had the race to build Dreadnaughts and there were concerns about whether the RN was as dominant as it had been for the last century. No one foresaw the bloodbath to come that I recall.
Well, it probably was inevitable largely because the Kaiser wanted it. But as you say few foresaw the extent or the grimness of it. They expected perhaps something similar to the Napoleonic or Crimean wars where a small British Army would play a specialist role to back up the French and Russians, while the Navy throttled the German economy. Also, there was no special reason among the British to think it would happen in 1914. (Again, German government records paint a rather different picture.)
Wasn't there a debate in Britain whether to join in or let the war play out without being directly involved, with the ultimate decision for war driven by Germany's invasion of Belgium?
Only a couple of days' uncertainty. Germany declared war on France 1st August 1914. Germany invaded Belgium on the 3rd.
The last PB post by TSE was 'Will this bug John Swinney and the SNP until election day?', and here is the thing while TSE used a humourous play on the latest SNP scandal, it should have been a far bigger story here with far more scrutiny because of the implications for the Holyrood Parliament. But it won't be because frustratingly it involves a really shocking scandal that involves one of our devolved governments...
So the PB thread like the UK main stream media totally ignored it, literal tumble weed here and elsewhere, special shout out to SkyNews for mentioning it but doing sod all else to investigate it. Now just imagine if this had been a governing party at Westminster where now THREE female elected MPs had been reported to have had their offices bugged by party staffers?! I have no doubt that the Westminster Lobby would have been all over the story and it would have been wall to wall coverage in the 24/7 News channels, especially when the original breaking story reported that the male aid who bugged one female MSP had since moved to work for an SNP MP?!
Sorry TSE but I was really annoyed when you almost affectionately made fun of and dismissed this shocking scandal, and it is incredible serious story that should have resulted in not only a Parliamentary investigation, but a Police investigation too. I said early yesterday that Holyrood was not only broken, it really is not fit for purpose and that matters with a big election looming there in May next year and I stand by that claim today more than ever. But again I was just so saddened and frustrated at the lack of response here or in the media, not even the most basic questions asked. And to say this scandal stinks is an understatement, no one has asked why or to what end these female SNP MSPs who remain anonymous were bugged, but the Scottish Sun is reporting it suggests internal SNP infighting.
But the cynic in me after 18 eighteen years of this appalling SNP Government did have one question, why did it take until yesterday for this breaking story to finally see the light of day just as Holyrood went into Christmas recess and both politicians and political journalists departed to go on their festive holidays until the New Year.. Its almost as if this story finally having to break was stage managed so it would hopefully get the least attention or any proper scrutiny by the Holyrood Parliament, the local media or the public. This is how the SNP operate, totally secretive and utterly ruthless in their media management and so cynically in their media operation but they get away with it time and time again because Scotland is deemed a side show despite the fact that they control so much of our public services up here and including taxation when it comes to budgets but we like Wales and NI are totally failed by the UK media!
And the PB crew fell for it yet again yesterday because they were not even interested.... Oh to be a female MSP in the work place at Holyrood right now!
Again tumble weed on this site for a huge political scandal at Holyrood that has implications if properely scrutinised and reported in the UK before the devolved elections in May, but hey, its not Westminster...
X Susan Dalgety@DalgetySusan.26m A week in the life of our own dear Parliament. Angela Constance’s breach of ministerial code. Ash Regan’s ‘punishment’. Now this. Women MSPs spied on by their own male staff. It’s a ‘BLEEP omnishambles’ as Malcom Tucker would say, but great material for columnists. Not great governance though 🤦🏼♀️ https://x.com/DalgetySusan/status/2001943509402869831
Joanna Cherry KC@joannaccherry Newspaper reports that more than one female SNP MSP was spied on by her own staff members. This was the climate created under the Sturgeon leadership. It’s a climate of fear in which I worked for years and about which I write in my forthcoming memoir. https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/keepin https://x.com/joannaccherry/status/2001930396049752288
Oh to be a woman in Scotland who speaks out or dares to defend womens right, espescially if they have a high profile politically elected voice....
It's as boring as fuck. Nobody cares. I'd rather read a MattW post about bollards or some shite.
The principle challenge of elevating this issue into the epoch shaking cataclysm that you clearly wish it to be, is that it lacks a snappy portmanteau with a -gate suffix. There's always "buggate" but it has that awkward diagraph in the middle. Anway, good luck with it all. Cheers. 👍
As a linguist you should know that the problem isn't the digraph, it's the germinate consonant that's awkward.
And two one-syllable words that, stuck together, naturally tend to be pronounced "buggit"
Probably the reason my birthplace of Kannur in Kerala was known as Cannanore during Raj times. Extra syllabubble!
So over 2025 the main movement has been Labour to Green and Conservatives to Reform.
While Kemi's approval rating has improved amongst 2024 Conservative and Reform voters still only just over 60% of 2024 Tories and 50% of 2024 Reform voters have a favourable view of her. The fact that less than 20% of LD voters and less than 10% of Labour and Green voters have a favourable view of her also means she is not getting the tactical votes she needs for Conservative candidates to beat Reform
Yet
And of course Johnson would be infinitely better !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Johnson would not have leaked the voters to Reform the Tories have since he went.
Kemi is popular with the Tory rock solid core vote but that is only 20% of voters at best.
The problem Kemi has otherwise is she is not as popular with Reform voters as Jenrick is and still not rightwing populist enough for those backing Farage. She is too rightwing still for Labour and LD voters who might tactically vote for a Cleverly led Tories but not for her
(Although truthfully it slipped away with yet another dozy batting performance in the first innings.)
Wasn't that bad, Doc. The basic problem is that they are not good enough, and it's difficult to do much about that.
Other than pick better players, of course.
Assuming we have some, how would we know? Nobody plays red ball cricket these days.
It’s hardly a stretch to say that any one of Hameed, Compton, Haines, Charlesworth or Lees would be a better option at the top of the order than Crawley (or indeed one of them also replacing Pope).
It’s not difficult to imagine Foakes would be a better keeper than Smith, or that James Rew would score as many runs as Smith does as well as being a better keeper.
It’s not daft to suggest Potts would take more wickets and offer more control than Carse, or Leach be a better option than Jacks or Bashir with the ball. True, he might not take wickets but nor do they, and he wouldn’t leak runs at such a rate.
And yet they are shoved out of the way for players who play ‘the Bazball way.’
I do not think they would necessarily win the Ashes in Australia, but nor would they endlessly self-destruct as this lot have repeatedly over the last twelve months.
Which tells me there is something fundamentally wrong with the national selectors that needs changing.
All true, but I wish I could believe it's just a selection issue. It is indicative of the state of the game here in the UK that even a regular follower like me is unable to comment on all the names you suggest. As far as I can tell selection is based on the evidence of white ball results (of which there is plenty) with the expectation that those selected can adjust to red ball in due course. Maybe that works against lesser opposition, but not in Australia against the locals.
Anyway I am now satisfied that my long-running complaints against picking a batsman who can keeping wicket a bit rather than a wicketkeeper who can bat a bit are widely held and justified by results.
This is the most disappointing Ashes series I can remember. Is the world's greatest international sporting series losing its allure and descending into irrelevance?
Yes. For a start, cricket is no longer on proper telly or played at all schools, especially those with no playing fields. Second, for a lot of cricket fans, India vs Pakistan is more interesting than the Ashes. Even a couple of decades back, it would have been England vs the West Indies. Of course, in 20th Century cricket's heyday, most fans had never seen first class cricket, following via newspaper reports.
ETA and pundits have complained about the selectors preferring all-rounders to specialist keepers for as long as I've been around.
The last wicketkeeper who didn't bat at all that I can remember being selected for England was Keith Andrews, although I think Bob Taylor might also qualify.
Jim Parks is the first wk I saw who was primarily a batsman but he was a pretty decent keeper too.
Players who keep and bat at the very highest level are rare as hens' teeth, Gilchrist and Dujohn being the standounts. In the absence of such titans, best to pick a good wicketkeeper who can bat plausibly at seven or eight. Picking a batsman who is no more than a plausible keeper should not be an option.
Two stories here I think. The Greens are eating Labour's lunch and the Conservatives under Badenoch are making themselves more acceptable to Reform supporters. The second of these I think is the more significant story, as it might imply a coalition with Tories as junior partners. The Tories presumably hope it means former Tory supporters, now Reform, moving back into the fold.
Hope yes but little evidence of it actually happening yet. The Tories are still on 17 to 20% so still even below the 24% Rishi got in 2024 and even then Reform got 14%, so Reform have still made net gains from both the Tories and Labour since the 2024 GE
Hope matters when you don't have anything else. Short of Reform collapsing into dust, which is a non -zero probability, I don't see a way back to dominance for the Tories. Badenoch's policy of Reform alternative is probably the least bad option for her but it's a policy that will take her party to the same position as the Greens versus SNP in Holyrood.
The last PB post by TSE was 'Will this bug John Swinney and the SNP until election day?', and here is the thing while TSE used a humourous play on the latest SNP scandal, it should have been a far bigger story here with far more scrutiny because of the implications for the Holyrood Parliament. But it won't be because frustratingly it involves a really shocking scandal that involves one of our devolved governments...
So the PB thread like the UK main stream media totally ignored it, literal tumble weed here and elsewhere, special shout out to SkyNews for mentioning it but doing sod all else to investigate it. Now just imagine if this had been a governing party at Westminster where now THREE female elected MPs had been reported to have had their offices bugged by party staffers?! I have no doubt that the Westminster Lobby would have been all over the story and it would have been wall to wall coverage in the 24/7 News channels, especially when the original breaking story reported that the male aid who bugged one female MSP had since moved to work for an SNP MP?!
Sorry TSE but I was really annoyed when you almost affectionately made fun of and dismissed this shocking scandal, and it is incredible serious story that should have resulted in not only a Parliamentary investigation, but a Police investigation too. I said early yesterday that Holyrood was not only broken, it really is not fit for purpose and that matters with a big election looming there in May next year and I stand by that claim today more than ever. But again I was just so saddened and frustrated at the lack of response here or in the media, not even the most basic questions asked. And to say this scandal stinks is an understatement, no one has asked why or to what end these female SNP MSPs who remain anonymous were bugged, but the Scottish Sun is reporting it suggests internal SNP infighting.
But the cynic in me after 18 eighteen years of this appalling SNP Government did have one question, why did it take until yesterday for this breaking story to finally see the light of day just as Holyrood went into Christmas recess and both politicians and political journalists departed to go on their festive holidays until the New Year.. Its almost as if this story finally having to break was stage managed so it would hopefully get the least attention or any proper scrutiny by the Holyrood Parliament, the local media or the public. This is how the SNP operate, totally secretive and utterly ruthless in their media management and so cynically in their media operation but they get away with it time and time again because Scotland is deemed a side show despite the fact that they control so much of our public services up here and including taxation when it comes to budgets but we like Wales and NI are totally failed by the UK media!
And the PB crew fell for it yet again yesterday because they were not even interested.... Oh to be a female MSP in the work place at Holyrood right now!
Blaw Blaw your kilt awa two snp donkeys spying on each other 2 years ago , get a life
And Hi to you to MalcolmG, but the very fact you dismiss these SNP FEMALE MSPs being bugged in their Holyrood Parliament offices says it all about this site right now!! No outrage, no curiosity or even the most basic questions that should be asked about this invasion of their privacy as elected politicians! But then I still remember the way that Jewish Labour female MPs were treated at Westminster and at their own Conference!! Oh the joys of being a strong out spoken feminist female poster on this site or an elected female politician at Holyrood or Westminster in the current climate. So and I say this sarcastically, go you wee man!!
I'll admit one reason I'm not commenting is I'm finding the story a bit baffling. The SNP was spying on its MSPs? Why? What on earth was going on? Were these people politiciking, or peculiar? So in default of more information I'm refraining from speculating.
It doesn't inspire confidence in the party's leadership but (a) I never had any and (b) I'm not Scottish so my opinion is not really relevant.
Not even clear it was the leadership or the party as such. Compare recent events in the UK generally. Which is why I don't have a clue either.
That is not only pathetic, its just embarrassing and desperate, all the more so for what has been reported about this scandal already. You are just insulting the non SNP cult in Scotland's intelligence.
You need to read more carefully. My wording allows for the possibilities that it could be a faction *within* the party, it could be some external organization, it could be anything. Note in particular that I didn't say it wasn't the party leadership.
They dosh up their mates and make the rest of us foot the bill.
This may be true Alan, but in which respects does this differ from their predecessors?
So their position is they are as bad as the Tories.
Im sure that will inspire support.
Werent they meant to be better, cleaner the adults in the room ?
I'd have settled for less corrupt and incompetent.
They are certainly the former, and probably the latter too , but it's still early days. Give it another twelve years or so and I'll let you know.
This from Peter Punter is a post of wisdom and maturity. The single biggest positive development in politics would be if the public were to revise down their expectations of how much any government can realistically improve the UK's living standards and public services except over quite a long period (certainly several years). The gap between expectations and what is feasible is creating a fertile environment for the types of politicians who we can only hope are revealed to be unfit for power before they get their mitts on it.
Chances of this occurring though? Slim to non-existent. Why should unrealistic expectations of politicians be relinquished when politicians themselves do nothing but fuel them. Which is perfectly rational behaviour by them. Prospects of election are boosted if you exaggerate the positive impact you will make. Otherwise you'll fail to inspire the voters and they will reciprocate by failing to vote for you. Why that risk if you don't have to?
Fresh in memory, Labour last year, my party, I actually sent an email to Morgan McSweeney saying we should not be running on that crude CHANGE slogan, as if the morning after a Labour win people would look out to see lakes of milk and honey. Instead I recommended posters, lecterns and tee-shirts saying 'Incremental improvement in key areas that you will start to feel after a while (if alert) but subject to various factors outside of governmental control!'. Compromising with cheap populism with that exclamation mark. And guess what Morgan wrote back? Not even anything polite and considered. Just "LOL". That says it all.
I am so getting a couple of those made up.
...tee-shirts saying 'Incremental improvement in key areas that you will start to feel after a while (if alert) but subject to various factors outside of governmental control !'..
Two stories here I think. The Greens are eating Labour's lunch and the Conservatives under Badenoch are making themselves more acceptable to Reform supporters. The second of these I think is the more significant story, as it might imply a coalition with Tories as junior partners. The Tories presumably hope it means former Tory supporters, now Reform, moving back into the fold.
Hope yes but little evidence of it actually happening yet. The Tories are still on 17 to 20% so still even below the 24% Rishi got in 2024 and even then Reform got 14%, so Reform have still made net gains from both the Tories and Labour since the 2024 GE
Hope matters when you don't have anything else. Short of Reform collapsing into dust, which is a non -zero probability, I don't see a way back to dominance for the Tories. Badenoch's policy of Reform alternative is probably the least bad option for her but it's a policy that will take her party to the same position as the Greens versus SNP in Holyrood.
And that is not enough for Tory MPs at risk of losing their seats to Reform.
Kemi needs a strong set of local and devolved election results for the Conservatives next May and to at least get the party back to the 24% or so Rishi got at the last GE or a VONC next Spring in her leadership is likely
They dosh up their mates and make the rest of us foot the bill.
This may be true Alan, but in which respects does this differ from their predecessors?
So their position is they are as bad as the Tories.
Im sure that will inspire support.
Werent they meant to be better, cleaner the adults in the room ?
I'd have settled for less corrupt and incompetent.
They are certainly the former, and probably the latter too , but it's still early days. Give it another twelve years or so and I'll let you know.
This from Peter Punter is a post of wisdom and maturity. The single biggest positive development in politics would be if the public were to revise down their expectations of how much any government can realistically improve the UK's living standards and public services except over quite a long period (certainly several years). The gap between expectations and what is feasible is creating a fertile environment for the types of politicians who we can only hope are revealed to be unfit for power before they get their mitts on it.
Chances of this occurring though? Slim to non-existent. Why should unrealistic expectations of politicians be relinquished when politicians themselves do nothing but fuel them. Which is perfectly rational behaviour by them. Prospects of election are boosted if you exaggerate the positive impact you will make. Otherwise you'll fail to inspire the voters and they will reciprocate by failing to vote for you. Why that risk if you don't have to?
Fresh in memory, Labour last year, my party, I actually sent an email to Morgan McSweeney saying we should not be running on that crude CHANGE slogan, as if the morning after a Labour win people would look out to see lakes of milk and honey. Instead I recommended posters, lecterns and tee-shirts saying 'Incremental improvement in key areas that you will start to feel after a while (if alert) but subject to various factors outside of governmental control!'. Compromising with cheap populism with that exclamation mark. And guess what Morgan wrote back? Not even anything polite and considered. Just "LOL". That says it all.
I am so getting a couple of those made up.
...tee-shirts saying 'Incremental improvement in key areas that you will start to feel after a while (if alert) but subject to various factors outside of governmental control !'..
At least it doesn’t have an unfortunate abbreviation.
The last PB post by TSE was 'Will this bug John Swinney and the SNP until election day?', and here is the thing while TSE used a humourous play on the latest SNP scandal, it should have been a far bigger story here with far more scrutiny because of the implications for the Holyrood Parliament. But it won't be because frustratingly it involves a really shocking scandal that involves one of our devolved governments...
So the PB thread like the UK main stream media totally ignored it, literal tumble weed here and elsewhere, special shout out to SkyNews for mentioning it but doing sod all else to investigate it. Now just imagine if this had been a governing party at Westminster where now THREE female elected MPs had been reported to have had their offices bugged by party staffers?! I have no doubt that the Westminster Lobby would have been all over the story and it would have been wall to wall coverage in the 24/7 News channels, especially when the original breaking story reported that the male aid who bugged one female MSP had since moved to work for an SNP MP?!
Sorry TSE but I was really annoyed when you almost affectionately made fun of and dismissed this shocking scandal, and it is incredible serious story that should have resulted in not only a Parliamentary investigation, but a Police investigation too. I said early yesterday that Holyrood was not only broken, it really is not fit for purpose and that matters with a big election looming there in May next year and I stand by that claim today more than ever. But again I was just so saddened and frustrated at the lack of response here or in the media, not even the most basic questions asked. And to say this scandal stinks is an understatement, no one has asked why or to what end these female SNP MSPs who remain anonymous were bugged, but the Scottish Sun is reporting it suggests internal SNP infighting.
But the cynic in me after 18 eighteen years of this appalling SNP Government did have one question, why did it take until yesterday for this breaking story to finally see the light of day just as Holyrood went into Christmas recess and both politicians and political journalists departed to go on their festive holidays until the New Year.. Its almost as if this story finally having to break was stage managed so it would hopefully get the least attention or any proper scrutiny by the Holyrood Parliament, the local media or the public. This is how the SNP operate, totally secretive and utterly ruthless in their media management and so cynically in their media operation but they get away with it time and time again because Scotland is deemed a side show despite the fact that they control so much of our public services up here and including taxation when it comes to budgets but we like Wales and NI are totally failed by the UK media!
And the PB crew fell for it yet again yesterday because they were not even interested.... Oh to be a female MSP in the work place at Holyrood right now!
Blaw Blaw your kilt awa two snp donkeys spying on each other 2 years ago , get a life
And Hi to you to MalcolmG, but the very fact you dismiss these SNP FEMALE MSPs being bugged in their Holyrood Parliament offices says it all about this site right now!! No outrage, no curiosity or even the most basic questions that should be asked about this invasion of their privacy as elected politicians! But then I still remember the way that Jewish Labour female MPs were treated at Westminster and at their own Conference!! Oh the joys of being a strong out spoken feminist female poster on this site or an elected female politician at Holyrood or Westminster in the current climate. So and I say this sarcastically, go you wee man!!
I'll admit one reason I'm not commenting is I'm finding the story a bit baffling. The SNP was spying on its MSPs? Why? What on earth was going on? Were these people politiciking, or peculiar? So in default of more information I'm refraining from speculating.
It doesn't inspire confidence in the party's leadership but (a) I never had any and (b) I'm not Scottish so my opinion is not really relevant.
Not even clear it was the leadership or the party as such. Compare recent events in the UK generally. Which is why I don't have a clue either.
That is not only pathetic, its just embarrassing and desperate, all the more so for what has been reported about this scandal already. You are just insulting the non SNP cult in Scotland's intelligence.
So, to be clear, do we as yet have any hard evidence to say
... what was the purpose of the bugging (political or sexual); ... was it one individual, or several perpetrating the bugging; ... were any male MSPs similarly surveilled; ... was there any party leadership involvement ?
The Green surge is the one that Yougov didn't really explore in this article, perhaps because Polanski only came to prominence mid year.
Its obvious that while Badenoch continues to shed support to Farage, Polanski continues to gain supporters from Starmer. The Greens are where those former Labour voters have gone.
Incidentally Polanski is also the most popular of the party leaders, albeit slightly negative and 49% not taking a view.
I think there will be a lot of attention to the Greens in 2026, particularly they are likely to do well in the May elections in England.
Good morning
The Greens are a problem for the left including the lib dems but anyone who supports Polanski's promises is no better than those supporting Farage
Both are extreme and incoherent
I dont expect The Only Tory in the PB Village to like Polanski or his policies, but certainly the story of the year politically is the Labour to Green swing over the year, which is double the size of the Con to Reform swing.
How much of that is Gaza? Do the Gaza voters come back if there is relative peace? How much is typical mid term blues? How much withstands a tactical battle vs Reform?
Feels very volatile to me. Polanski is an impressive communicator for sure, but doesn't have the answers, so the Farage parallel is valid imo.
Some is Gaza, but there is clearly a rejection of Starmerite apeing of Reform policy by those on the left of Labour on domestic economic and social issues too.
Which is why the replacement of Starmer will be someone from the centre-left of the party, not Streeting or Mahmood.
Reform don’t have a domestic economic policy to ape.
Controlling our borders and migration is a sensible thing. The Greens are merely, like Lib Dem’s, open door fanatics. That’s fair enough but to pretend controlling borders and migration is reform lite is wrong, there’s no remigration talk.
Also changing the rules on the years needed to get ILR is absolutely right. The Boriswave was an economic time bomb. As has been discussed previously.
A lot of the more moderate approaches to controlling our borders and migration have already been enacted by Sunak and Starmer, with the consequence that net immigration to the UK is plummeting. It’s not quite “tens of thousands”, but it’s getting closer to that than has been the case for a long time.
So, does that filter through to voters’ perceptions and they reward the incumbent government? Or does anti-immigration rhetoric on social media that is less concerned with reality keep sections of the electorate angry?
I am content with Badenoch and indeed pleased she has upped her game and ruffling Starmer and labour
The fact she is upsetting @Foxy and others is not an issue, as she has a different audience than those who wouldn't vote conservative under any circumstances
Starmer playing games with the lobby indicates he is 'frit' and if he does hold regular Press Conferences instead, I would suggest Badenoch does the same within 24 hours as she needs to continue to increase her public profile and does get that opportunity as official leader of the opposition
Actually, my wife has found her fascinating, especially at PMQs and thinks she has the measure of Starmer
I am hopeful 2026 will see her continuing improvement though the May elections will be difficult, but I expect Starmer will come under more pressure especially if labour are decimated in Wales
On Wales, I have an instinctive feeling that Plaid will overperform and Reform underperform with the result of a Plaid First Minister governing in a minority, nor least because I think to go onto coalition with labour would be a very silly decision
The last PB post by TSE was 'Will this bug John Swinney and the SNP until election day?', and here is the thing while TSE used a humourous play on the latest SNP scandal, it should have been a far bigger story here with far more scrutiny because of the implications for the Holyrood Parliament. But it won't be because frustratingly it involves a really shocking scandal that involves one of our devolved governments...
So the PB thread like the UK main stream media totally ignored it, literal tumble weed here and elsewhere, special shout out to SkyNews for mentioning it but doing sod all else to investigate it. Now just imagine if this had been a governing party at Westminster where now THREE female elected MPs had been reported to have had their offices bugged by party staffers?! I have no doubt that the Westminster Lobby would have been all over the story and it would have been wall to wall coverage in the 24/7 News channels, especially when the original breaking story reported that the male aid who bugged one female MSP had since moved to work for an SNP MP?!
Sorry TSE but I was really annoyed when you almost affectionately made fun of and dismissed this shocking scandal, and it is incredible serious story that should have resulted in not only a Parliamentary investigation, but a Police investigation too. I said early yesterday that Holyrood was not only broken, it really is not fit for purpose and that matters with a big election looming there in May next year and I stand by that claim today more than ever. But again I was just so saddened and frustrated at the lack of response here or in the media, not even the most basic questions asked. And to say this scandal stinks is an understatement, no one has asked why or to what end these female SNP MSPs who remain anonymous were bugged, but the Scottish Sun is reporting it suggests internal SNP infighting.
But the cynic in me after 18 eighteen years of this appalling SNP Government did have one question, why did it take until yesterday for this breaking story to finally see the light of day just as Holyrood went into Christmas recess and both politicians and political journalists departed to go on their festive holidays until the New Year.. Its almost as if this story finally having to break was stage managed so it would hopefully get the least attention or any proper scrutiny by the Holyrood Parliament, the local media or the public. This is how the SNP operate, totally secretive and utterly ruthless in their media management and so cynically in their media operation but they get away with it time and time again because Scotland is deemed a side show despite the fact that they control so much of our public services up here and including taxation when it comes to budgets but we like Wales and NI are totally failed by the UK media!
And the PB crew fell for it yet again yesterday because they were not even interested.... Oh to be a female MSP in the work place at Holyrood right now!
Blaw Blaw your kilt awa two snp donkeys spying on each other 2 years ago , get a life
And Hi to you to MalcolmG, but the very fact you dismiss these SNP FEMALE MSPs being bugged in their Holyrood Parliament offices says it all about this site right now!! No outrage, no curiosity or even the most basic questions that should be asked about this invasion of their privacy as elected politicians! But then I still remember the way that Jewish Labour female MPs were treated at Westminster and at their own Conference!! Oh the joys of being a strong out spoken feminist female poster on this site or an elected female politician at Holyrood or Westminster in the current climate. So and I say this sarcastically, go you wee man!!
I would say outspoken feminist females are well represented on this site. Other females much less so, which is a problem.
The last PB post by TSE was 'Will this bug John Swinney and the SNP until election day?', and here is the thing while TSE used a humourous play on the latest SNP scandal, it should have been a far bigger story here with far more scrutiny because of the implications for the Holyrood Parliament. But it won't be because frustratingly it involves a really shocking scandal that involves one of our devolved governments...
So the PB thread like the UK main stream media totally ignored it, literal tumble weed here and elsewhere, special shout out to SkyNews for mentioning it but doing sod all else to investigate it. Now just imagine if this had been a governing party at Westminster where now THREE female elected MPs had been reported to have had their offices bugged by party staffers?! I have no doubt that the Westminster Lobby would have been all over the story and it would have been wall to wall coverage in the 24/7 News channels, especially when the original breaking story reported that the male aid who bugged one female MSP had since moved to work for an SNP MP?!
Sorry TSE but I was really annoyed when you almost affectionately made fun of and dismissed this shocking scandal, and it is incredible serious story that should have resulted in not only a Parliamentary investigation, but a Police investigation too. I said early yesterday that Holyrood was not only broken, it really is not fit for purpose and that matters with a big election looming there in May next year and I stand by that claim today more than ever. But again I was just so saddened and frustrated at the lack of response here or in the media, not even the most basic questions asked. And to say this scandal stinks is an understatement, no one has asked why or to what end these female SNP MSPs who remain anonymous were bugged, but the Scottish Sun is reporting it suggests internal SNP infighting.
But the cynic in me after 18 eighteen years of this appalling SNP Government did have one question, why did it take until yesterday for this breaking story to finally see the light of day just as Holyrood went into Christmas recess and both politicians and political journalists departed to go on their festive holidays until the New Year.. Its almost as if this story finally having to break was stage managed so it would hopefully get the least attention or any proper scrutiny by the Holyrood Parliament, the local media or the public. This is how the SNP operate, totally secretive and utterly ruthless in their media management and so cynically in their media operation but they get away with it time and time again because Scotland is deemed a side show despite the fact that they control so much of our public services up here and including taxation when it comes to budgets but we like Wales and NI are totally failed by the UK media!
And the PB crew fell for it yet again yesterday because they were not even interested.... Oh to be a female MSP in the work place at Holyrood right now!
Blaw Blaw your kilt awa two snp donkeys spying on each other 2 years ago , get a life
And Hi to you to MalcolmG, but the very fact you dismiss these SNP FEMALE MSPs being bugged in their Holyrood Parliament offices says it all about this site right now!! No outrage, no curiosity or even the most basic questions that should be asked about this invasion of their privacy as elected politicians! But then I still remember the way that Jewish Labour female MPs were treated at Westminster and at their own Conference!! Oh the joys of being a strong out spoken feminist female poster on this site or an elected female politician at Holyrood or Westminster in the current climate. So and I say this sarcastically, go you wee man!!
I would say outspoken feminist females are well represented on this site. Other females much less so, which is a problem.
OMG! Did you even read that post before you pressed send?!
The last PB post by TSE was 'Will this bug John Swinney and the SNP until election day?', and here is the thing while TSE used a humourous play on the latest SNP scandal, it should have been a far bigger story here with far more scrutiny because of the implications for the Holyrood Parliament. But it won't be because frustratingly it involves a really shocking scandal that involves one of our devolved governments...
So the PB thread like the UK main stream media totally ignored it, literal tumble weed here and elsewhere, special shout out to SkyNews for mentioning it but doing sod all else to investigate it. Now just imagine if this had been a governing party at Westminster where now THREE female elected MPs had been reported to have had their offices bugged by party staffers?! I have no doubt that the Westminster Lobby would have been all over the story and it would have been wall to wall coverage in the 24/7 News channels, especially when the original breaking story reported that the male aid who bugged one female MSP had since moved to work for an SNP MP?!
Sorry TSE but I was really annoyed when you almost affectionately made fun of and dismissed this shocking scandal, and it is incredible serious story that should have resulted in not only a Parliamentary investigation, but a Police investigation too. I said early yesterday that Holyrood was not only broken, it really is not fit for purpose and that matters with a big election looming there in May next year and I stand by that claim today more than ever. But again I was just so saddened and frustrated at the lack of response here or in the media, not even the most basic questions asked. And to say this scandal stinks is an understatement, no one has asked why or to what end these female SNP MSPs who remain anonymous were bugged, but the Scottish Sun is reporting it suggests internal SNP infighting.
But the cynic in me after 18 eighteen years of this appalling SNP Government did have one question, why did it take until yesterday for this breaking story to finally see the light of day just as Holyrood went into Christmas recess and both politicians and political journalists departed to go on their festive holidays until the New Year.. Its almost as if this story finally having to break was stage managed so it would hopefully get the least attention or any proper scrutiny by the Holyrood Parliament, the local media or the public. This is how the SNP operate, totally secretive and utterly ruthless in their media management and so cynically in their media operation but they get away with it time and time again because Scotland is deemed a side show despite the fact that they control so much of our public services up here and including taxation when it comes to budgets but we like Wales and NI are totally failed by the UK media!
And the PB crew fell for it yet again yesterday because they were not even interested.... Oh to be a female MSP in the work place at Holyrood right now!
Blaw Blaw your kilt awa two snp donkeys spying on each other 2 years ago , get a life
And Hi to you to MalcolmG, but the very fact you dismiss these SNP FEMALE MSPs being bugged in their Holyrood Parliament offices says it all about this site right now!! No outrage, no curiosity or even the most basic questions that should be asked about this invasion of their privacy as elected politicians! But then I still remember the way that Jewish Labour female MPs were treated at Westminster and at their own Conference!! Oh the joys of being a strong out spoken feminist female poster on this site or an elected female politician at Holyrood or Westminster in the current climate. So and I say this sarcastically, go you wee man!!
I'll admit one reason I'm not commenting is I'm finding the story a bit baffling. The SNP was spying on its MSPs? Why? What on earth was going on? Were these people politiciking, or peculiar? So in default of more information I'm refraining from speculating.
It doesn't inspire confidence in the party's leadership but (a) I never had any and (b) I'm not Scottish so my opinion is not really relevant.
Not even clear it was the leadership or the party as such. Compare recent events in the UK generally. Which is why I don't have a clue either.
That is not only pathetic, its just embarrassing and desperate, all the more so for what has been reported about this scandal already. You are just insulting the non SNP cult in Scotland's intelligence.
So, to be clear, do we as yet have any hard evidence to say
... what was the purpose of the bugging (political or sexual); ... was it one individual, or several perpetrating the bugging; ... were any male MSPs similarly surveilled; ... was there any party leadership involvement ?
I am unclear on all of those questions.
You could add whether the primary targeting, if political, is gender or party EDIT: or both at the same time. Given the current composition of the parties, it might well not be that unexpected that targeting the SNP gets three women MSPs just by chance, or targeting women gets three SNP ...
The last PB post by TSE was 'Will this bug John Swinney and the SNP until election day?', and here is the thing while TSE used a humourous play on the latest SNP scandal, it should have been a far bigger story here with far more scrutiny because of the implications for the Holyrood Parliament. But it won't be because frustratingly it involves a really shocking scandal that involves one of our devolved governments...
So the PB thread like the UK main stream media totally ignored it, literal tumble weed here and elsewhere, special shout out to SkyNews for mentioning it but doing sod all else to investigate it. Now just imagine if this had been a governing party at Westminster where now THREE female elected MPs had been reported to have had their offices bugged by party staffers?! I have no doubt that the Westminster Lobby would have been all over the story and it would have been wall to wall coverage in the 24/7 News channels, especially when the original breaking story reported that the male aid who bugged one female MSP had since moved to work for an SNP MP?!
Sorry TSE but I was really annoyed when you almost affectionately made fun of and dismissed this shocking scandal, and it is incredible serious story that should have resulted in not only a Parliamentary investigation, but a Police investigation too. I said early yesterday that Holyrood was not only broken, it really is not fit for purpose and that matters with a big election looming there in May next year and I stand by that claim today more than ever. But again I was just so saddened and frustrated at the lack of response here or in the media, not even the most basic questions asked. And to say this scandal stinks is an understatement, no one has asked why or to what end these female SNP MSPs who remain anonymous were bugged, but the Scottish Sun is reporting it suggests internal SNP infighting.
But the cynic in me after 18 eighteen years of this appalling SNP Government did have one question, why did it take until yesterday for this breaking story to finally see the light of day just as Holyrood went into Christmas recess and both politicians and political journalists departed to go on their festive holidays until the New Year.. Its almost as if this story finally having to break was stage managed so it would hopefully get the least attention or any proper scrutiny by the Holyrood Parliament, the local media or the public. This is how the SNP operate, totally secretive and utterly ruthless in their media management and so cynically in their media operation but they get away with it time and time again because Scotland is deemed a side show despite the fact that they control so much of our public services up here and including taxation when it comes to budgets but we like Wales and NI are totally failed by the UK media!
And the PB crew fell for it yet again yesterday because they were not even interested.... Oh to be a female MSP in the work place at Holyrood right now!
Blaw Blaw your kilt awa two snp donkeys spying on each other 2 years ago , get a life
And Hi to you to MalcolmG, but the very fact you dismiss these SNP FEMALE MSPs being bugged in their Holyrood Parliament offices says it all about this site right now!! No outrage, no curiosity or even the most basic questions that should be asked about this invasion of their privacy as elected politicians! But then I still remember the way that Jewish Labour female MPs were treated at Westminster and at their own Conference!! Oh the joys of being a strong out spoken feminist female poster on this site or an elected female politician at Holyrood or Westminster in the current climate. So and I say this sarcastically, go you wee man!!
I'll admit one reason I'm not commenting is I'm finding the story a bit baffling. The SNP was spying on its MSPs? Why? What on earth was going on? Were these people politiciking, or peculiar? So in default of more information I'm refraining from speculating.
It doesn't inspire confidence in the party's leadership but (a) I never had any and (b) I'm not Scottish so my opinion is not really relevant.
Not even clear it was the leadership or the party as such. Compare recent events in the UK generally. Which is why I don't have a clue either.
That is not only pathetic, its just embarrassing and desperate, all the more so for what has been reported about this scandal already. You are just insulting the non SNP cult in Scotland's intelligence.
For someone who’s always moaning about no one engaging with your noisy claims, you’re incredibly rude to and dismissive of anyone not supinely agreeing with whatever conspiracy theory the Yoonosphere has come up with.
After all your bleating about no one bothering with the last thread, I checked and afaics your sole post was a link to a Sun tweet. Time to check the big old Scots Pine in your own eye.
The Green surge is the one that Yougov didn't really explore in this article, perhaps because Polanski only came to prominence mid year.
Its obvious that while Badenoch continues to shed support to Farage, Polanski continues to gain supporters from Starmer. The Greens are where those former Labour voters have gone.
Incidentally Polanski is also the most popular of the party leaders, albeit slightly negative and 49% not taking a view.
I think there will be a lot of attention to the Greens in 2026, particularly they are likely to do well in the May elections in England.
Good morning
The Greens are a problem for the left including the lib dems but anyone who supports Polanski's promises is no better than those supporting Farage
Both are extreme and incoherent
I dont expect The Only Tory in the PB Village to like Polanski or his policies, but certainly the story of the year politically is the Labour to Green swing over the year, which is double the size of the Con to Reform swing.
How much of that is Gaza? Do the Gaza voters come back if there is relative peace? How much is typical mid term blues? How much withstands a tactical battle vs Reform?
Feels very volatile to me. Polanski is an impressive communicator for sure, but doesn't have the answers, so the Farage parallel is valid imo.
Some is Gaza, but there is clearly a rejection of Starmerite apeing of Reform policy by those on the left of Labour on domestic economic and social issues too.
Which is why the replacement of Starmer will be someone from the centre-left of the party, not Streeting or Mahmood.
Reform don’t have a domestic economic policy to ape.
Controlling our borders and migration is a sensible thing. The Greens are merely, like Lib Dem’s, open door fanatics. That’s fair enough but to pretend controlling borders and migration is reform lite is wrong, there’s no remigration talk.
Also changing the rules on the years needed to get ILR is absolutely right. The Boriswave was an economic time bomb. As has been discussed previously.
A lot of the more moderate approaches to controlling our borders and migration have already been enacted by Sunak and Starmer, with the consequence that net immigration to the UK is plummeting. It’s not quite “tens of thousands”, but it’s getting closer to that than has been the case for a long time.
So, does that filter through to voters’ perceptions and they reward the incumbent government? Or does anti-immigration rhetoric on social media that is less concerned with reality keep sections of the electorate angry?
Until the boats are stopped this will remain an active and toxic part of our political debate
Certainly Sunak is responsible for the substantial drop in migration to date
(Although truthfully it slipped away with yet another dozy batting performance in the first innings.)
Wasn't that bad, Doc. The basic problem is that they are not good enough, and it's difficult to do much about that.
Other than pick better players, of course.
Assuming we have some, how would we know? Nobody plays red ball cricket these days.
It’s hardly a stretch to say that any one of Hameed, Compton, Haines, Charlesworth or Lees would be a better option at the top of the order than Crawley (or indeed one of them also replacing Pope).
It’s not difficult to imagine Foakes would be a better keeper than Smith, or that James Rew would score as many runs as Smith does as well as being a better keeper.
It’s not daft to suggest Potts would take more wickets and offer more control than Carse, or Leach be a better option than Jacks or Bashir with the ball. True, he might not take wickets but nor do they, and he wouldn’t leak runs at such a rate.
And yet they are shoved out of the way for players who play ‘the Bazball way.’
I do not think they would necessarily win the Ashes in Australia, but nor would they endlessly self-destruct as this lot have repeatedly over the last twelve months.
Which tells me there is something fundamentally wrong with the national selectors that needs changing.
All true, but I wish I could believe it's just a selection issue. It is indicative of the state of the game here in the UK that even a regular follower like me is unable to comment on all the names you suggest. As far as I can tell selection is based on the evidence of white ball results (of which there is plenty) with the expectation that those selected can adjust to red ball in due course. Maybe that works against lesser opposition, but not in Australia against the locals.
Anyway I am now satisfied that my long-running complaints against picking a batsman who can keeping wicket a bit rather than a wicketkeeper who can bat a bit are widely held and justified by results.
This is the most disappointing Ashes series I can remember. Is the world's greatest international sporting series losing its allure and descending into irrelevance?
They should be picking a wicketkeeper the same way they pick a bowler, primarily for their ‘keeping. A good keeper makes a huge difference, perhaps a couple of catches per innings, more so than anyone other than a star bowler.
If they can bat a bit then great, but batting shouldn’t be the primary consideration in selection. The first half dozen men on the team sheet need to be able to bat well, and that’s been more of a problem recently.
They dosh up their mates and make the rest of us foot the bill.
This may be true Alan, but in which respects does this differ from their predecessors?
So their position is they are as bad as the Tories.
Im sure that will inspire support.
Werent they meant to be better, cleaner the adults in the room ?
I'd have settled for less corrupt and incompetent.
They are certainly the former, and probably the latter too , but it's still early days. Give it another twelve years or so and I'll let you know.
This from Peter Punter is a post of wisdom and maturity. The single biggest positive development in politics would be if the public were to revise down their expectations of how much any government can realistically improve the UK's living standards and public services except over quite a long period (certainly several years). The gap between expectations and what is feasible is creating a fertile environment for the types of politicians who we can only hope are revealed to be unfit for power before they get their mitts on it.
Chances of this occurring though? Slim to non-existent. Why should unrealistic expectations of politicians be relinquished when politicians themselves do nothing but fuel them. Which is perfectly rational behaviour by them. Prospects of election are boosted if you exaggerate the positive impact you will make. Otherwise you'll fail to inspire the voters and they will reciprocate by failing to vote for you. Why that risk if you don't have to?
Fresh in memory, Labour last year, my party, I actually sent an email to Morgan McSweeney saying we should not be running on that crude CHANGE slogan, as if the morning after a Labour win people would look out to see lakes of milk and honey. Instead I recommended posters, lecterns and tee-shirts saying 'Incremental improvement in key areas that you will start to feel after a while (if alert) but subject to various factors outside of governmental control!'. Compromising with cheap populism with that exclamation mark. And guess what Morgan wrote back? Not even anything polite and considered. Just "LOL". That says it all.
As with Dom C, you can sort of see why he chose to get close to power by the tradesmans' entrance, rather than running for office himself.
I suppose what you could do is run on a general 'vibe' of We Will Fix It! and then in office do the things (many unpopular) you judge most likely to pay sustainable long term dividends for the country. I think that's a fair enough expectation. Ok, it's made harder with tight finances and a structurally sluggish economy, and it's an ongoing communication challenge, but that's why the best politicians, the sort we want, go into politics - to achieve difficult things to the benefit of the country.
So over 2025 the main movement has been Labour to Green and Conservatives to Reform.
While Kemi's approval rating has improved amongst 2024 Conservative and Reform voters still only just over 60% of 2024 Tories and 50% of 2024 Reform voters have a favourable view of her. The fact that less than 20% of LD voters and less than 10% of Labour and Green voters have a favourable view of her also means she is not getting the tactical votes she needs for Conservative candidates to beat Reform
Yet
And of course Johnson would be infinitely better !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Johnson would not have leaked the voters to Reform the Tories have since he went.
Kemi is popular with the Tory rock solid core vote but that is only 20% of voters at best.
The problem Kemi has otherwise is she is not as popular with Reform voters as Jenrick is and still not rightwing populist enough for those backing Farage. She is too rightwing still for Labour and LD voters who might tactically vote for a Cleverly led Tories but not for her
'The problem Kemi has otherwise is she is not as popular with Reform voters as Jenrick is and still not rightwing populist enough for those backing Farage'
Excellent news
Badenoch has to be a clear and different choice than the right wing toxic Farage and Reform
A point made forcefully by many historians, for example Michael Bentley. 'Politicians of that era (1905-1914) had no reason to think that they needed to complete everything before the chiming of some solemn midnight hour in 1914...diaries of Liberal politicians (in spring 1914) have an optimistic future tense reference to the election of 1915...in their imagination, those young men in the summer of 1914 rode the crest of an open future.'
An idea of how people thought and felt in any era can be gained by reading newspapers of the period for several days*, and the results are usually interesting. AI is doing the same thing, just quicker.
*Something that will be to put it mildly more challenging for historians of our own times.
Not just 'quicker', but with potentially far broader reach in terms of reading. Like all AIs, it will be a fallible tool which needs someone with actual knowledge of a given period to use most effectively, but it might be quite a powerful one, since it could/can have access to a vast amount of texts in any language.
(Consider, for example, the massive volumes of Korean court histories, which on their own might otherwise require a lifetime of study.)
When I was at University the library still had either the hard copy or a microfiche (showing my age here) of the Times newspapers and one of the many ways I would amuse myself when law got too boring was to read the newspapers in the run up to some significant event, such as the American civil war or WW1 and get an idea of how the informed people of the time saw things. My recollection, and this was 45 years ago now, was that many people saw trouble with Germany as inevitable. We had already had the race to build Dreadnaughts and there were concerns about whether the RN was as dominant as it had been for the last century. No one foresaw the bloodbath to come that I recall.
It is pretty universal that predictions of the future are wrong and fail to anticipate major events correctly.
Well within our lifetimes no one really saw how quickly the Soviet Union would collapse in 89-90 either.
These things tend to be much more obvious with the advantage of hindsight.
Actually, a large number of people saw through the Potemkin Village that was the SU.
For example - a CIA analyst (one of many) who did some statistical sampling of crops, buildings etc from overhead imagery. And found the Soviet economy was a fraction of the size they claimed.
The problem was that the pyramid of lies inside the SU meant that the reports shown to the leaders were lies x lies x lies x lies…. And these reports were the target for espionage. So the CIA went with the numbers presented to Politburo from the reports they had so brilliantly stolen.
The last PB post by TSE was 'Will this bug John Swinney and the SNP until election day?', and here is the thing while TSE used a humourous play on the latest SNP scandal, it should have been a far bigger story here with far more scrutiny because of the implications for the Holyrood Parliament. But it won't be because frustratingly it involves a really shocking scandal that involves one of our devolved governments...
So the PB thread like the UK main stream media totally ignored it, literal tumble weed here and elsewhere, special shout out to SkyNews for mentioning it but doing sod all else to investigate it. Now just imagine if this had been a governing party at Westminster where now THREE female elected MPs had been reported to have had their offices bugged by party staffers?! I have no doubt that the Westminster Lobby would have been all over the story and it would have been wall to wall coverage in the 24/7 News channels, especially when the original breaking story reported that the male aid who bugged one female MSP had since moved to work for an SNP MP?!
Sorry TSE but I was really annoyed when you almost affectionately made fun of and dismissed this shocking scandal, and it is incredible serious story that should have resulted in not only a Parliamentary investigation, but a Police investigation too. I said early yesterday that Holyrood was not only broken, it really is not fit for purpose and that matters with a big election looming there in May next year and I stand by that claim today more than ever. But again I was just so saddened and frustrated at the lack of response here or in the media, not even the most basic questions asked. And to say this scandal stinks is an understatement, no one has asked why or to what end these female SNP MSPs who remain anonymous were bugged, but the Scottish Sun is reporting it suggests internal SNP infighting.
But the cynic in me after 18 eighteen years of this appalling SNP Government did have one question, why did it take until yesterday for this breaking story to finally see the light of day just as Holyrood went into Christmas recess and both politicians and political journalists departed to go on their festive holidays until the New Year.. Its almost as if this story finally having to break was stage managed so it would hopefully get the least attention or any proper scrutiny by the Holyrood Parliament, the local media or the public. This is how the SNP operate, totally secretive and utterly ruthless in their media management and so cynically in their media operation but they get away with it time and time again because Scotland is deemed a side show despite the fact that they control so much of our public services up here and including taxation when it comes to budgets but we like Wales and NI are totally failed by the UK media!
And the PB crew fell for it yet again yesterday because they were not even interested.... Oh to be a female MSP in the work place at Holyrood right now!
Blaw Blaw your kilt awa two snp donkeys spying on each other 2 years ago , get a life
And Hi to you to MalcolmG, but the very fact you dismiss these SNP FEMALE MSPs being bugged in their Holyrood Parliament offices says it all about this site right now!! No outrage, no curiosity or even the most basic questions that should be asked about this invasion of their privacy as elected politicians! But then I still remember the way that Jewish Labour female MPs were treated at Westminster and at their own Conference!! Oh the joys of being a strong out spoken feminist female poster on this site or an elected female politician at Holyrood or Westminster in the current climate. So and I say this sarcastically, go you wee man!!
I'll admit one reason I'm not commenting is I'm finding the story a bit baffling. The SNP was spying on its MSPs? Why? What on earth was going on? Were these people politiciking, or peculiar? So in default of more information I'm refraining from speculating.
It doesn't inspire confidence in the party's leadership but (a) I never had any and (b) I'm not Scottish so my opinion is not really relevant.
Not even clear it was the leadership or the party as such. Compare recent events in the UK generally. Which is why I don't have a clue either.
That is not only pathetic, its just embarrassing and desperate, all the more so for what has been reported about this scandal already. You are just insulting the non SNP cult in Scotland's intelligence.
So, to be clear, do we as yet have any hard evidence to say
... what was the purpose of the bugging (political or sexual); ... was it one individual, or several perpetrating the bugging; ... were any male MSPs similarly surveilled; ... was there any party leadership involvement ?
I am unclear on all of those questions.
So we await the indepth media scrutiny and questions that might answer those questions, or we just watch this latest SNP scandal being brushed under the carpet due to the ususal lack of scrutiny that would have been afforded to a similar scandal at Westminster. As I said, the cynical timing of this story finally breaking on the day that the Holyrood Parliament broke up for Christmas recess as both politicians and Scottish Lobby journalists headed off on their festive holidays speaks volumes... So the big question should be how and when did this scandal finally come to light within Holyrood estate, and why did it conveniently take until the last day of Parliament for it to break in the media when there would clearly be the least chance of it getting the scrutiny it deserves?
The Green surge is the one that Yougov didn't really explore in this article, perhaps because Polanski only came to prominence mid year.
Its obvious that while Badenoch continues to shed support to Farage, Polanski continues to gain supporters from Starmer. The Greens are where those former Labour voters have gone.
Incidentally Polanski is also the most popular of the party leaders, albeit slightly negative and 49% not taking a view.
I think there will be a lot of attention to the Greens in 2026, particularly they are likely to do well in the May elections in England.
Good morning
The Greens are a problem for the left including the lib dems but anyone who supports Polanski's promises is no better than those supporting Farage
Both are extreme and incoherent
I dont expect The Only Tory in the PB Village to like Polanski or his policies, but certainly the story of the year politically is the Labour to Green swing over the year, which is double the size of the Con to Reform swing.
How much of that is Gaza? Do the Gaza voters come back if there is relative peace? How much is typical mid term blues? How much withstands a tactical battle vs Reform?
Feels very volatile to me. Polanski is an impressive communicator for sure, but doesn't have the answers, so the Farage parallel is valid imo.
Some is Gaza, but there is clearly a rejection of Starmerite apeing of Reform policy by those on the left of Labour on domestic economic and social issues too.
Which is why the replacement of Starmer will be someone from the centre-left of the party, not Streeting or Mahmood.
Reform don’t have a domestic economic policy to ape.
Controlling our borders and migration is a sensible thing. The Greens are merely, like Lib Dem’s, open door fanatics. That’s fair enough but to pretend controlling borders and migration is reform lite is wrong, there’s no remigration talk.
Also changing the rules on the years needed to get ILR is absolutely right. The Boriswave was an economic time bomb. As has been discussed previously.
A lot of the more moderate approaches to controlling our borders and migration have already been enacted by Sunak and Starmer, with the consequence that net immigration to the UK is plummeting. It’s not quite “tens of thousands”, but it’s getting closer to that than has been the case for a long time.
So, does that filter through to voters’ perceptions and they reward the incumbent government? Or does anti-immigration rhetoric on social media that is less concerned with reality keep sections of the electorate angry?
Until the boats are stopped this will remain an active and toxic part of our political debate
Certainly Sunak is responsible for the substantial drop in migration to date
It was under Sunak that we saw the massive peak in small boats in 2022 - the biggest year on record. It was under Sunak that the Treasury agitated for massive immigration to fill the jobs vacancies after COVID-19.
I don't understand the motivation for pumping Sunak's reputation. He's not coming back, and I don't get any sense anyone except a couple of PBers want him to.
I am content with Badenoch and indeed pleased she has upped her game and ruffling Starmer and labour
The fact she is upsetting @Foxy and others is not an issue, as she has a different audience than those who wouldn't vote conservative under any circumstances
Starmer playing games with the lobby indicates he is 'frit' and if he does hold regular Press Conferences instead, I would suggest Badenoch does the same within 24 hours as she needs to continue to increase her public profile and does get that opportunity as official leader of the opposition
Actually, my wife has found her fascinating, especially at PMQs and thinks she has the measure of Starmer
I am hopeful 2026 will see her continuing improvement though the May elections will be difficult, but I expect Starmer will come under more pressure especially if labour are decimated in Wales
On Wales, I have an instinctive feeling that Plaid will overperform and Reform underperform with the result of a Plaid First Minister governing in a minority, nor least because I think to go onto coalition with labour would be a very silly decision
I would be content with that for Wales
The biggest block to reforming the lobby system is the lobby system.
Just as with the pre-briefing of policies, before they are presented in the Commons, it’s about power.
Without the “inside info” the politicians can’t court journalists. And the journalists need the inside info to differentiate themselves from the rest of the pack.
They dosh up their mates and make the rest of us foot the bill.
This may be true Alan, but in which respects does this differ from their predecessors?
So their position is they are as bad as the Tories.
Im sure that will inspire support.
Werent they meant to be better, cleaner the adults in the room ?
I'd have settled for less corrupt and incompetent.
They are certainly the former, and probably the latter too , but it's still early days. Give it another twelve years or so and I'll let you know.
This from Peter Punter is a post of wisdom and maturity. The single biggest positive development in politics would be if the public were to revise down their expectations of how much any government can realistically improve the UK's living standards and public services except over quite a long period (certainly several years). The gap between expectations and what is feasible is creating a fertile environment for the types of politicians who we can only hope are revealed to be unfit for power before they get their mitts on it.
Chances of this occurring though? Slim to non-existent. Why should unrealistic expectations of politicians be relinquished when politicians themselves do nothing but fuel them. Which is perfectly rational behaviour by them. Prospects of election are boosted if you exaggerate the positive impact you will make. Otherwise you'll fail to inspire the voters and they will reciprocate by failing to vote for you. Why that risk if you don't have to?
Fresh in memory, Labour last year, my party, I actually sent an email to Morgan McSweeney saying we should not be running on that crude CHANGE slogan, as if the morning after a Labour win people would look out to see lakes of milk and honey. Instead I recommended posters, lecterns and tee-shirts saying 'Incremental improvement in key areas that you will start to feel after a while (if alert) but subject to various factors outside of governmental control!'. Compromising with cheap populism with that exclamation mark. And guess what Morgan wrote back? Not even anything polite and considered. Just "LOL". That says it all.
As with Dom C, you can sort of see why he chose to get close to power by the tradesmans' entrance, rather than running for office himself.
Found out something about Morgan Sweeney where it all suddenly made sense. He was campaign director for Liz Kendall in the 2015 Labour Leader election. He took an OK candidate - certainly better than Corbyn the eventual leader - with significant parliamentary support, and delivered a STATISTICALLY ZERO vote. Literally more people believe the moon landings were fake than voted for his candidate.
The secret of success in politics is often just hanging around because the PPE mob remember the ups more than the downs. This goes for both sides.
Peter Mandelson was an expert in the dark arts, the genius behind New Labour who drove Neil Kinnock to a surprising defeat, and had to resign from every job he has held before coming back for more. Tory election guru Lynton Crosby masterminded Are you thinking what we're thinking? before turning Cameron's poll leads into a hung parliament and losing Theresa May's majority. And so for Dominic Cummings (who made his name campaigning successfully against joining the euro, starting two years after Gordon Brown had already ruled it out) and now Morgan McSweeney, the titan whose Ming vase strategy brought victory against a blue team that barely troubled the scorers.
OT - Any Lab supporters out there should be sending that YouGov 'report' to No 10 and to their local Lab MPs. Not particularly to spark a Lab revival, for me at least, but because they just have to do a much better job. They are the Govt for 3+ more years and we can't afford them to continue to get almost everything so badly wrong. The feeling is much as after Johnson's election and hoping the country can get out the other side without too much damage isn't a great place to be.
They dosh up their mates and make the rest of us foot the bill.
This may be true Alan, but in which respects does this differ from their predecessors?
So their position is they are as bad as the Tories.
Im sure that will inspire support.
Werent they meant to be better, cleaner the adults in the room ?
I'd have settled for less corrupt and incompetent.
They are certainly the former, and probably the latter too , but it's still early days. Give it another twelve years or so and I'll let you know.
This from Peter Punter is a post of wisdom and maturity. The single biggest positive development in politics would be if the public were to revise down their expectations of how much any government can realistically improve the UK's living standards and public services except over quite a long period (certainly several years). The gap between expectations and what is feasible is creating a fertile environment for the types of politicians who we can only hope are revealed to be unfit for power before they get their mitts on it.
Chances of this occurring though? Slim to non-existent. Why should unrealistic expectations of politicians be relinquished when politicians themselves do nothing but fuel them. Which is perfectly rational behaviour by them. Prospects of election are boosted if you exaggerate the positive impact you will make. Otherwise you'll fail to inspire the voters and they will reciprocate by failing to vote for you. Why that risk if you don't have to?
Fresh in memory, Labour last year, my party, I actually sent an email to Morgan McSweeney saying we should not be running on that crude CHANGE slogan, as if the morning after a Labour win people would look out to see lakes of milk and honey. Instead I recommended posters, lecterns and tee-shirts saying 'Incremental improvement in key areas that you will start to feel after a while (if alert) but subject to various factors outside of governmental control!'. Compromising with cheap populism with that exclamation mark. And guess what Morgan wrote back? Not even anything polite and considered. Just "LOL". That says it all.
Just one question, please: were you a stranger to him or an old schoolfriend or ...? Difficult to judge fully without knowing.
Ah, confession time - it was a rhetorical device for my post. But I did nearly do it.
The Green surge is the one that Yougov didn't really explore in this article, perhaps because Polanski only came to prominence mid year.
Its obvious that while Badenoch continues to shed support to Farage, Polanski continues to gain supporters from Starmer. The Greens are where those former Labour voters have gone.
Incidentally Polanski is also the most popular of the party leaders, albeit slightly negative and 49% not taking a view.
I think there will be a lot of attention to the Greens in 2026, particularly they are likely to do well in the May elections in England.
Good morning
The Greens are a problem for the left including the lib dems but anyone who supports Polanski's promises is no better than those supporting Farage
Both are extreme and incoherent
I dont expect The Only Tory in the PB Village to like Polanski or his policies, but certainly the story of the year politically is the Labour to Green swing over the year, which is double the size of the Con to Reform swing.
How much of that is Gaza? Do the Gaza voters come back if there is relative peace? How much is typical mid term blues? How much withstands a tactical battle vs Reform?
Feels very volatile to me. Polanski is an impressive communicator for sure, but doesn't have the answers, so the Farage parallel is valid imo.
Some is Gaza, but there is clearly a rejection of Starmerite apeing of Reform policy by those on the left of Labour on domestic economic and social issues too.
Which is why the replacement of Starmer will be someone from the centre-left of the party, not Streeting or Mahmood.
Reform don’t have a domestic economic policy to ape.
Controlling our borders and migration is a sensible thing. The Greens are merely, like Lib Dem’s, open door fanatics. That’s fair enough but to pretend controlling borders and migration is reform lite is wrong, there’s no remigration talk.
Also changing the rules on the years needed to get ILR is absolutely right. The Boriswave was an economic time bomb. As has been discussed previously.
A lot of the more moderate approaches to controlling our borders and migration have already been enacted by Sunak and Starmer, with the consequence that net immigration to the UK is plummeting. It’s not quite “tens of thousands”, but it’s getting closer to that than has been the case for a long time.
So, does that filter through to voters’ perceptions and they reward the incumbent government? Or does anti-immigration rhetoric on social media that is less concerned with reality keep sections of the electorate angry?
Until the boats are stopped this will remain an active and toxic part of our political debate
Certainly Sunak is responsible for the substantial drop in migration to date
It was under Sunak that we saw the massive peak in small boats in 2022 - the biggest year on record. It was under Sunak that the Treasury agitated for massive immigration to fill the jobs vacancies after COVID-19.
And it was Sunak who tightened the rules and the subsequent fall in numbers
OT - Any Lab supporters out there should be sending that YouGov 'report' to No 10 and to their local Lab MPs. Not particularly to spark a Lab revival, for me at least, but because they just have to do a much better job. They are the Govt for 3+ more years and we can't afford them to continue to get almost everything so badly wrong. The feeling is much as after Johnson's election and hoping the country can get out the other side without too much damage isn't a great place to be.
Reeves has already baked in long term youth unemployment with her NI and, especially, minimum wage increases for 18 - 24 year olds
Comments
They are certainly the former, and probably the latter too , but it's still early days. Give it another twelve years or so and I'll let you know.
Well within our lifetimes no one really saw how quickly the Soviet Union would collapse in 89-90 either.
These things tend to be much more obvious with the advantage of hindsight.
Am several days and several hundred pounds into the process and unless I've misunderstood, there seems to be a gaping security hole at the end. I've probably misunderstood. It looks like the penultimate step in establishing a verified chain of identity is to hand over the top secret code to a complete stranger and hope they can be trusted to (a) keep it securely and (b) not misuse it. But that would be absurd so I've probably misunderstood. If I could find the helpline number I'm sure was there earlier, I could check.
But most age and ID verification is rubbish anyway. We can see that from various data leaks including the details of Pornhub users.
He could say “I’m going to b. Head them”
While Kemi's approval rating has improved amongst 2024 Conservative and Reform voters still only just over 60% of 2024 Tories and 50% of 2024 Reform voters have a favourable view of her. The fact that less than 20% of LD voters and less than 10% of Labour and Green voters have a favourable view of her also means she is not getting the tactical votes she needs for Conservative candidates to beat Reform
X
Susan Dalgety@DalgetySusan.26m
A week in the life of our own dear Parliament. Angela Constance’s breach of ministerial code. Ash Regan’s ‘punishment’. Now this. Women MSPs spied on by their own male staff. It’s a ‘BLEEP omnishambles’ as Malcom Tucker would say, but great material for columnists. Not great governance though 🤦🏼♀️
https://x.com/DalgetySusan/status/2001943509402869831
Joanna Cherry KC@joannaccherry
Newspaper reports that more than one female SNP MSP was spied on by her own staff members. This was the climate created under the Sturgeon leadership. It’s a climate of fear in which I worked for years and about which I write in my forthcoming memoir. https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/keepin
https://x.com/joannaccherry/status/2001930396049752288
Oh to be a woman in Scotland who speaks out or dares to defend womens right, espescially if they have a high profile politically elected voice....
In August 2024 I upset PB Lefties by saying Reeves was a bag of crap and would be a terrible CoE. Hows that looking now ? If you think this is early days its not ;this government has charted its path for the next 2 years and has nothing to show for it. The crruption will get in to full gear when the government has been in office a bit longer. It always works out that way.
Yestetdays crass comments by Badenoch on the proposals to tackle misogyny in schools is a prime example of why she is repellent.
So even if the Tories are now near tied with Labour in polls, Reform are still well ahead of them and the Conservatives are still projected to have fewer seats than Labour and the LDs. The main reason for that is more LD and Green voters are willing to vote for incumbent Labour MPs to beat Reform than they and Labour voters are willing to vote for Tory MPs to beat Reform at present
https://electionmaps.uk/nowcast
Anyway I am now satisfied that my long-running complaints against picking a batsman who can keeping wicket a bit rather than a wicketkeeper who can bat a bit are widely held and justified by results.
This is the most disappointing Ashes series I can remember. Is the world's greatest international sporting series losing its allure and descending into irrelevance?
https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/governmentpublicsectorandtaxes/publicsectorfinance/bulletins/publicsectorfinances/november2025#revisions
Or that Borrowing in the financial year to November 2025 was £132.3 billion; this was £10.0 billion (or 8.2%) more than in the same eight-month period of 2024 and the second-highest April to November borrowing on record (not adjusted for inflation), after that of 2020.
The principle challenge of elevating this issue into the epoch shaking cataclysm that you clearly wish it to be, is that it lacks a snappy portmanteau with a -gate suffix. There's always "buggate" but it has that awkward diagraph in the middle. Anway, good luck with it all. Cheers. 👍
I get @fitalass 's frustration at the lack of interest, but TBF I don't think it's entirely how she sets it out.
In any event, it's sparked an idea for a header, if I can make my thoughts about it a bit more coherent.
The comfort I take from current polling is that an event that would push the Tories further back - the Rise of Jenrick - seems to have stalled if not actually lost wheels.
ETA and pundits have complained about the selectors preferring all-rounders to specialist keepers for as long as I've been around.
First is that, despite everything, that nowcast still has Labour in second. A distant, dismal second, sure, but they still have a niche in a way that the Conservatives don't seem to.
Second is the Greens on 13. Percentage vote is vanity, winning seats is sanity, and there is a lot of vanity in Zak's politics. It's the nature of Big Beast Populism.
There's plenty of overpayment for failure in the private sector, which we all pay for as well through underperformance of pension funds, Govt intervention etc.
The employment rights bill will benefit employees in both the public and private sectors, while upsetting poor employers in both sectors.
Because the England cricket team seems to spend all their spare time playing golf.
The salient point, though, is that neither Reform nor the Greens have any experience in Government, and that's a big plus point for our morose electorate. "We may as well give X a try" is a potent sales argument for the fairly cynical electorate.
And as for Greece:
Greece’s early repayment of its first bailout loans underscores an important turnaround, cutting future interest costs and accelerating debt reduction as the country seeks to strengthen market confidence.
https://www.euronews.com/business/2025/12/16/greece-pays-eu-creditors-ahead-of-schedule-to-boost-market-confidence
Cricket at club and school level has a problem, as it is played less and less then the disparity between those who do play and those playing occasionally has increased. So it is difficult for new players unless the coaches are very inclusive because the established kids will do all the batting and bowling, they end up just fielding and watching so get disillusioned.
Jim Parks is the first wk I saw who was primarily a batsman but he was a pretty decent keeper too.
Players who keep and bat at the very highest level are rare as hens' teeth, Gilchrist and Dujohn being the standounts. In the absence of such titans, best to pick a good wicketkeeper who can bat plausibly at seven or eight. Picking a batsman who is no more than a plausible keeper should not be an option.
Neither of us knows the extent to which this government will attain the levels of corruption and incompetent of its predecessors. All we can say for the moment is that the bar is set pretty high.
So this year, football and darts lost out to golf and rugby and Formula 1. (Obviously I shall have forgotten this by the time next winter's betting opens.)
two snp donkeys spying on each other 2 years ago , get a life
They could go to the Public Works Loan Board and take a loan to invest in housebuilding (Brick by Brick Croydon Ltd) or some sort of solar farm (Thurrock) but they have, so far, chosen to be unambitious. They appear to be mimicking the unadventurous approach of Labour.
The Greens will likely come a strong second to Labour in lots of inner city seats without winning any of them while turning off voters in suburban, non university town and rural marginals. Indeed they might even lose the handful of rural seats they won last year
That's more than Smith managed...
(That innings ended when Taylor walked for a leg-side strangle so faint the Aussies had appealed more in hope than expectation.)
And two one-syllable words that, stuck together, naturally tend to be pronounced "buggit"
It doesn't inspire confidence in the party's leadership but (a) I never had any and (b) I'm not Scottish so my opinion is not really relevant.
Chances of this occurring though? Slim to non-existent. Why should unrealistic expectations of politicians be relinquished when politicians themselves do nothing but fuel them. Which is perfectly rational behaviour by them. Prospects of election are boosted if you exaggerate the positive impact you will make. Otherwise you'll fail to inspire the voters and they will reciprocate by failing to vote for you. Why that risk if you don't have to?
Fresh in memory, Labour last year, my party, I actually sent an email to Morgan McSweeney saying we should not be running on that crude CHANGE slogan, as if the morning after a Labour win people would look out to see lakes of milk and honey. Instead I recommended posters, lecterns and tee-shirts saying 'Incremental improvement in key areas that you will start to feel after a while (if alert) but subject to various factors outside of governmental control!'. Compromising with cheap populism with that exclamation mark. And guess what Morgan wrote back? Not even anything polite and considered. Just "LOL". That says it all.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cj4qpwprw9vo
How lucky for us Labour seem intent on digital ID cards, and supporting the Chinese mega-embassy despite security concerns.
The war was enormously popular with the public at the outset. Populists take note.
https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/georgian-britain-age-modernity/lottery-tickets/
In due course the electorate will have to sober up and pick someone to actually govern the country. That may lead to a very different outcome to the kind of projections we are now seeing or something stranger and more troubling than anything we have seen in my lifetime.
We just cannot know as yet.
And of course Johnson would be infinitely better !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Been nice knowing you all.
Kemi is popular with the Tory rock solid core vote but that is only 20% of voters at best.
The problem Kemi has otherwise is she is not as popular with Reform voters as Jenrick is and still not rightwing populist enough for those backing Farage. She is too rightwing still for Labour and LD voters who might tactically vote for a Cleverly led Tories but not for her
...tee-shirts saying 'Incremental improvement in key areas that you will start to feel after a while (if alert) but subject to various factors outside of governmental control !'..
Kemi needs a strong set of local and devolved election results for the Conservatives next May and to at least get the party back to the 24% or so Rishi got at the last GE or a VONC next Spring in her leadership is likely
Ukraine has carried out its first drone strike in the Mediterranean on a Russian shadow fleet tanker.
Message: nowhere is safe.
#explodey
... what was the purpose of the bugging (political or sexual);
... was it one individual, or several perpetrating the bugging;
... were any male MSPs similarly surveilled;
... was there any party leadership involvement ?
I am unclear on all of those questions.
So, does that filter through to voters’ perceptions and they reward the incumbent government? Or does anti-immigration rhetoric on social media that is less concerned with reality keep sections of the electorate angry?
The fact she is upsetting @Foxy and others is not an issue, as she has a different audience than those who wouldn't vote conservative under any circumstances
Starmer playing games with the lobby indicates he is 'frit' and if he does hold regular Press Conferences instead, I would suggest Badenoch does the same within 24 hours as she needs to continue to increase her public profile and does get that opportunity as official leader of the opposition
Actually, my wife has found her fascinating, especially at PMQs and thinks she has the measure of Starmer
I am hopeful 2026 will see her continuing improvement though the May elections will be difficult, but I expect Starmer will come under more pressure especially if labour are decimated in Wales
On Wales, I have an instinctive feeling that Plaid will overperform and Reform underperform with the result of a Plaid First Minister governing in a minority, nor least because I think to go onto coalition with labour would be a very silly decision
I would be content with that for Wales
https://x.com/osinttechnical/status/2001976692915794090
https://x.com/visionergeo/status/2001926938915480058
Although not a Xmas film the hill I die on is that this is the best Xmas part of any film ever.
https://youtu.be/mCGoGMHIrto?si=0QYW_VGy8q1mvFs0
After all your bleating about no one bothering with the last thread, I checked and afaics your sole post was a link to a Sun tweet. Time to check the big old Scots Pine in your own eye.
Certainly Sunak is responsible for the substantial drop in migration to date
If they can bat a bit then great, but batting shouldn’t be the primary consideration in selection. The first half dozen men on the team sheet need to be able to bat well, and that’s been more of a problem recently.
Excellent news
Badenoch has to be a clear and different choice than the right wing toxic Farage and Reform
For example - a CIA analyst (one of many) who did some statistical sampling of crops, buildings etc from overhead imagery. And found the Soviet economy was a fraction of the size they claimed.
The problem was that the pyramid of lies inside the SU meant that the reports shown to the leaders were lies x lies x lies x lies…. And these reports were the target for espionage. So the CIA went with the numbers presented to Politburo from the reports they had so brilliantly stolen.
I don't understand the motivation for pumping Sunak's reputation. He's not coming back, and I don't get any sense anyone except a couple of PBers want him to.
Just as with the pre-briefing of policies, before they are presented in the Commons, it’s about power.
Without the “inside info” the politicians can’t court journalists. And the journalists need the inside info to differentiate themselves from the rest of the pack.
Peter Mandelson was an expert in the dark arts, the genius behind New Labour who drove Neil Kinnock to a surprising defeat, and had to resign from every job he has held before coming back for more. Tory election guru Lynton Crosby masterminded Are you thinking what we're thinking? before turning Cameron's poll leads into a hung parliament and losing Theresa May's majority. And so for Dominic Cummings (who made his name campaigning successfully against joining the euro, starting two years after Gordon Brown had already ruled it out) and now Morgan McSweeney, the titan whose Ming vase strategy brought victory against a blue team that barely troubled the scorers.