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.
It’s going to be fun to watch the government’s supporters praise the changes to the lobby system in the UK, white condemning similar changes in the US.
The media landscape has charged a lot in the past couple of decades, and the old clique of the Lobby seems ever more anachronistic with each passing year. It will be good to see different faces asking questions, and more new media being invited to attend.
There will still be a daily lobby briefing in the UK and they're not kicking media agencies out on ideological grounds. It's nothing like what the Trump administration is doing.
Nor has Starmer put plaques slagging off former PMs under their pictures in No. 10!
You can take even the tackiest politician here and they'd be crucified for doing something like that in Downing St. It shows how far Donald Trump has debauched politics in the US. Some of it is bound to bleed across the pond, America being such a global influence, but it really is worth fighting against it.
I think it's actually quite a good innovation that should be copied. Forcing each new Prime Minister to write a couple of paragraphs to sum up how they see each of their predecessors would be very instructive and help contextualise their long-term decision making.
Which works fine until, as seen in the US, end up with someone with no filter whatsoever, who makes a fool of himself by thinking it’s supposed to be for Twitter-level humour.
Post of the day, Sandpit. I sense you've just about had it with him.
*Good pub quiz question, which seems to resist googling.
“When I first came here, this was all swamp. Everyone said I was daft to build a cathedral on a swamp, but I built in all the same, just to show them. It sank into the swamp. So I built a second one. That sank into the swamp. So I built a third. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp. But the fourth one stayed up. And that's what you're going to get, Lad, the strongest cathedral in all of England.”
In more defence news as we boost spending to 3 per cent of GDP by the cunning ruse of reducing GDP...
The £70m farce that exposes rot at the heart of the Royal Navy Critics call deal to sell HMS Bulwark to Brazil for a knockdown price ‘a spectacular failure’ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/5cb3b12a20aff2aa (gift link so no paywall)
In more defence news as we boost spending to 3 per cent of GDP by the cunning ruse of reducing GDP...
The £70m farce that exposes rot at the heart of the Royal Navy Critics call deal to sell HMS Bulwark to Brazil for a knockdown price ‘a spectacular failure’ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/5cb3b12a20aff2aa (gift link so no paywall)
How true is this?
The refit costs appear to be based on this quote "This excludes HMS Bulwark's 2022-2025 refit which was estimated to cost £72.1 million. As HMS Bulwark was retired before her refit was completed, the refit costs are under review." https://www.theyworkforyou.com/wrans/?id=2024-11-27.16458.h
So probably much less than the estimate as we stopped at least a year early.
And for the sale even the Telegraph state: Navy sources disputed the £20m figure but declined to say what the actual sale price was, citing “commercial sensitivities”. “It’s significantly higher. Selling it for £20m would be giving it away,” the insider said.
Not to mention that for the Labour government the refit costs from 2022-4 were a sunk cost obviously out of their control.
True enough but the main interest is in the rest of the article with charts showing the long term decline of the Royal Navy.
With drones able to take big ships out, is that not pretty sensible?
No.
Cross out drones and write missiles, and that has long been the case. Torpedoes even longer. But these are small-ish ships. No-one has built massive battleships since aircraft carriers came along.
Here is everything you need to know about warships:-
Aircraft carriers: we've got two but not enough planes to fill one. Submarines: the ones not laid up are at sea for years because we've run out of sailors so can't let the crew take holidays in case they don't come back. Destroyers: shoot down planes and missiles to protect carriers. Frigates: hunt and sink submarines to protect carriers.
Re the subs, that was what the RN used to do till about 1815. Nothing new.
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.
It’s going to be fun to watch the government’s supporters praise the changes to the lobby system in the UK, white condemning similar changes in the US.
The media landscape has charged a lot in the past couple of decades, and the old clique of the Lobby seems ever more anachronistic with each passing year. It will be good to see different faces asking questions, and more new media being invited to attend.
There will still be a daily lobby briefing in the UK and they're not kicking media agencies out on ideological grounds. It's nothing like what the Trump administration is doing.
Nor has Starmer put plaques slagging off former PMs under their pictures in No. 10!
You can take even the tackiest politician here and they'd be crucified for doing something like that in Downing St. It shows how far Donald Trump has debauched politics in the US. Some of it is bound to bleed across the pond, America being such a global influence, but it really is worth fighting against it.
The dispiriting thing is people like the cringey style. Heck, I know otherwise sensible people who got irate about MPs in leader debates sharing a non-confrontational discussion before/afterwards, claiming it shows the opposition to each other is just confected, as if getting along with an opponent (or even just civility) is a weird, even negative thing.
It's like how Speakers sometimes bemoan MPs heckling or party leaders just insulting each other, when the truth is people like that, even if they say they don't - otherwise they'd stop doing it.
Which is not to say being polite or chummy with each other is the be all and end all in politics, certainly you want a degree of conflict and disagreement (indeed, I'd say the idea people shoudl not 'play politics' and seek 'unity' in all things is misplaced), and a blunt, even rude style, has it's place. But the idea it is desirable as a general approach is unfortunate.
It ties into one of my most disliked and political sayings, about how it is the job of oppositions to oppose, which is one of those lazy statements which is true as a general purpose, but never meant to be literal, since there are any number of things all (or nearly all) will agree on, without it being some 'uniparty' conspiracy or terrible establishment move. A party in opposition wouldn't be bound to oppose a government if they did something unambiguously good (or indeed something the opposition had initially proposed) for example.
Yes that's a stupid saying. The job of opposition is twofold: hold the government to account, win the next election and become the government.
And I commend your attitude. More like you would benefit us. Although to channel your own 'otoh' judiciousness we do also need a bit of the other (as it were).
Politics free of the passionate intensity that comes from party partisanship and/or ideological commitment would struggle to engage people.
Moderation in everything, including moderation - a little passion and ideological vision is a good thing.
They’d be better off developing existing platforms such as Typhoon and Gripen, which are superior to anything a conceivable enemy might be fielding within the next decade. Russia’s Su-57 and China’s J-20 and J-35 are miles away from actual serial production.
Then everyone get together to spend the R&D on an unmanned replacement next-gen fighter.
The problem with the Germans getting involved in GCAP is that they will demand a huge work share based on the claim they will buy the most aircraft. Then they will cut the buy and demand they keep the workshare - or they will collapse the project.
They’ve only done this multiple times before.
A fighter drone should be considerably cheaper than a manned aircraft, being mostly software-controlled and updated.
They are not. An MQ-25 is over double the price of an F/A-18E/F.
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.
It’s going to be fun to watch the government’s supporters praise the changes to the lobby system in the UK, white condemning similar changes in the US.
The media landscape has charged a lot in the past couple of decades, and the old clique of the Lobby seems ever more anachronistic with each passing year. It will be good to see different faces asking questions, and more new media being invited to attend.
There will still be a daily lobby briefing in the UK and they're not kicking media agencies out on ideological grounds. It's nothing like what the Trump administration is doing.
Nor has Starmer put plaques slagging off former PMs under their pictures in No. 10!
You can take even the tackiest politician here and they'd be crucified for doing something like that in Downing St. It shows how far Donald Trump has debauched politics in the US. Some of it is bound to bleed across the pond, America being such a global influence, but it really is worth fighting against it.
I think it's actually quite a good innovation that should be copied. Forcing each new Prime Minister to write a couple of paragraphs to sum up how they see each of their predecessors would be very instructive and help contextualise their long-term decision making.
Which works fine until, as seen in the US, end up with someone with no filter whatsoever, who makes a fool of himself by thinking it’s supposed to be for Twitter-level humour.
Probably an excellent private discipline; the modern political memento mori. But not for public display.
(The Letters of Last Resort, as well as a practical necessity, arguably do a bit of the same to a new PM. In a good way. What is your last instruction in a destroyed world? Now handwrite it in quadruplicate. For thou art dust, and to radioactive dust thou might return.)
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.
It’s going to be fun to watch the government’s supporters praise the changes to the lobby system in the UK, white condemning similar changes in the US.
The media landscape has charged a lot in the past couple of decades, and the old clique of the Lobby seems ever more anachronistic with each passing year. It will be good to see different faces asking questions, and more new media being invited to attend.
There will still be a daily lobby briefing in the UK and they're not kicking media agencies out on ideological grounds. It's nothing like what the Trump administration is doing.
Nor has Starmer put plaques slagging off former PMs under their pictures in No. 10!
You can take even the tackiest politician here and they'd be crucified for doing something like that in Downing St. It shows how far Donald Trump has debauched politics in the US. Some of it is bound to bleed across the pond, America being such a global influence, but it really is worth fighting against it.
The dispiriting thing is people like the cringey style. Heck, I know otherwise sensible people who got irate about MPs in leader debates sharing a non-confrontational discussion before/afterwards, claiming it shows the opposition to each other is just confected, as if getting along with an opponent (or even just civility) is a weird, even negative thing.
It's like how Speakers sometimes bemoan MPs heckling or party leaders just insulting each other, when the truth is people like that, even if they say they don't - otherwise they'd stop doing it.
Which is not to say being polite or chummy with each other is the be all and end all in politics, certainly you want a degree of conflict and disagreement (indeed, I'd say the idea people shoudl not 'play politics' and seek 'unity' in all things is misplaced), and a blunt, even rude style, has it's place. But the idea it is desirable as a general approach is unfortunate.
It ties into one of my most disliked and political sayings, about how it is the job of oppositions to oppose, which is one of those lazy statements which is true as a general purpose, but never meant to be literal, since there are any number of things all (or nearly all) will agree on, without it being some 'uniparty' conspiracy or terrible establishment move. A party in opposition wouldn't be bound to oppose a government if they did something unambiguously good (or indeed something the opposition had initially proposed) for example.
Yes that's a stupid saying. The job of opposition is twofold: hold the government to account, win the next election and become the government.
And I commend your attitude. More like you would benefit us. Although to channel your own 'otoh' judiciousness we do also need a bit of the other (as it were).
Politics free of the passionate intensity that comes from party partisanship and/or ideological commitment would struggle to engage people.
But politics as it is now also struggles to engage people.
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.
It’s going to be fun to watch the government’s supporters praise the changes to the lobby system in the UK, white condemning similar changes in the US.
The media landscape has charged a lot in the past couple of decades, and the old clique of the Lobby seems ever more anachronistic with each passing year. It will be good to see different faces asking questions, and more new media being invited to attend.
There will still be a daily lobby briefing in the UK and they're not kicking media agencies out on ideological grounds. It's nothing like what the Trump administration is doing.
Nor has Starmer put plaques slagging off former PMs under their pictures in No. 10!
You can take even the tackiest politician here and they'd be crucified for doing something like that in Downing St. It shows how far Donald Trump has debauched politics in the US. Some of it is bound to bleed across the pond, America being such a global influence, but it really is worth fighting against it.
I think it's actually quite a good innovation that should be copied. Forcing each new Prime Minister to write a couple of paragraphs to sum up how they see each of their predecessors would be very instructive and help contextualise their long-term decision making.
Ok you've convinced me, you silver-tongued rascal you.
It's preferable that Trump spends what attention remains to him on nonsense like that, I guess. The next incumbent (unless it's Vance via the 25th) will probably give more attention to how the East Wing might be rebuilt.
*Good pub quiz question, which seems to resist googling.
Aren't most English Anglican cathedrals Catholic cathedrals that were stolen?
Arguably every one of them has been, erm, redecorated (or rather undecorated) and had its crucial internal ritual arrangements modified, certainly from the point of view of a RC.
And how about 19th century cathedrals such as Westminster?
Exclusive: Top lawyer for military joint chiefs told chairman that officers should retire if faced with an unlawful order. That advice is raising serious concerns among current and former officials.
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.
It’s going to be fun to watch the government’s supporters praise the changes to the lobby system in the UK, white condemning similar changes in the US.
The media landscape has charged a lot in the past couple of decades, and the old clique of the Lobby seems ever more anachronistic with each passing year. It will be good to see different faces asking questions, and more new media being invited to attend.
There will still be a daily lobby briefing in the UK and they're not kicking media agencies out on ideological grounds. It's nothing like what the Trump administration is doing.
Nor has Starmer put plaques slagging off former PMs under their pictures in No. 10!
You can take even the tackiest politician here and they'd be crucified for doing something like that in Downing St. It shows how far Donald Trump has debauched politics in the US. Some of it is bound to bleed across the pond, America being such a global influence, but it really is worth fighting against it.
I think it's actually quite a good innovation that should be copied. Forcing each new Prime Minister to write a couple of paragraphs to sum up how they see each of their predecessors would be very instructive and help contextualise their long-term decision making.
Ok you've convinced me, you silver-tongued rascal you.
It's preferable that Trump spends what attention remains to him on nonsense like that, I guess. The next incumbent (unless it's Vance via the 25th) will probably give more attention to how the East Wing might be rebuilt.
There are few laughing 'with' him now I wouldn't have thought.
Regarding Tempest, this is all becoming relevant again (except the very high temperatures) as control of heat signature in fighter aircraft, which will of necessity generate a lot of power*, and therefore heat, for their electronics, is the new stealth challenge.
(*over a MW for Tempest.)
Which is the other reason for Tempest's very large internal fuel capacity.
How can you fly an airplane three times the speed of sound safely? Here is a quote from SR 71 pilot Rich Graham. He explains it best . The JP-7 fuel reaches temperatures well over 300 degrees F. during Mach 3 cruise. , making the fumes in each of the six fuel tanks very volatile and potentially explosive. The aircraft's metal skin approaches 400 degrees F., further increasing the volatility of the fuel in the tanks. One of our aircraft's limitations was a maximum speed of Mach 2.6 without an inert atmosphere inside the fuel tanks.
“The aircraft had three liquid nitrogen Dewar flasks containing 260 liters of liquid nitrogen located in the nose wheel well. The only way to ensure a 100 percent inert atmosphere in each fuel tank was to refuel the plane in flight completely full of JP-7, allowing ambient air in each fuel tank to vent overboard. Once full of fuel, gaseous nitrogen would now dominate each fuel tank’s empty space above as it burned off JP-7. The nitrogen gas pressurized each fuel tank to 1.5 psi above ambient pressure and inerts the space above the heated fuel to prevent autogenous ignition. This is why we refueled after takeoff.” “Then we could safely accelerate beyond Mach 2.6.” “There was another way of achieving tank inerting, called a Yo-Yo. But this was a maintenance nightmare. A few of our missions required the SR-71 to accelerate to Mach 3+ right after takeoff with a 65,000-pound fuel load. The Yo-Yo procedure had the crew chief completely refuel the plane to full tanks of 80,000 pounds of fuel. Then, with the nitrogen pressurization system working, they de-fueled 15,000 pounds of JP-7, ending up with a 65,000-pound fuel load and a plane that was capable of going immediately to Mach 3+.” ~Linda Sheffield https://x.com/Habubrats71/status/2001813329036333475
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 happy to pump Sunak's reputation. He was massively, massively better than the two previous rapscallions the Conservative Party chose to be our prime minister.
Also Starmer is continuity Sunak, so he's not really gone away. Rather he's re-generated Dr Who style.
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.
It’s going to be fun to watch the government’s supporters praise the changes to the lobby system in the UK, white condemning similar changes in the US.
The media landscape has charged a lot in the past couple of decades, and the old clique of the Lobby seems ever more anachronistic with each passing year. It will be good to see different faces asking questions, and more new media being invited to attend.
There will still be a daily lobby briefing in the UK and they're not kicking media agencies out on ideological grounds. It's nothing like what the Trump administration is doing.
Nor has Starmer put plaques slagging off former PMs under their pictures in No. 10!
You can take even the tackiest politician here and they'd be crucified for doing something like that in Downing St. It shows how far Donald Trump has debauched politics in the US. Some of it is bound to bleed across the pond, America being such a global influence, but it really is worth fighting against it.
The dispiriting thing is people like the cringey style. Heck, I know otherwise sensible people who got irate about MPs in leader debates sharing a non-confrontational discussion before/afterwards, claiming it shows the opposition to each other is just confected, as if getting along with an opponent (or even just civility) is a weird, even negative thing.
It's like how Speakers sometimes bemoan MPs heckling or party leaders just insulting each other, when the truth is people like that, even if they say they don't - otherwise they'd stop doing it.
Which is not to say being polite or chummy with each other is the be all and end all in politics, certainly you want a degree of conflict and disagreement (indeed, I'd say the idea people shoudl not 'play politics' and seek 'unity' in all things is misplaced), and a blunt, even rude style, has it's place. But the idea it is desirable as a general approach is unfortunate.
It ties into one of my most disliked and political sayings, about how it is the job of oppositions to oppose, which is one of those lazy statements which is true as a general purpose, but never meant to be literal, since there are any number of things all (or nearly all) will agree on, without it being some 'uniparty' conspiracy or terrible establishment move. A party in opposition wouldn't be bound to oppose a government if they did something unambiguously good (or indeed something the opposition had initially proposed) for example.
Yes that's a stupid saying. The job of opposition is twofold: hold the government to account, win the next election and become the government.
And I commend your attitude. More like you would benefit us. Although to channel your own 'otoh' judiciousness we do also need a bit of the other (as it were).
Politics free of the passionate intensity that comes from party partisanship and/or ideological commitment would struggle to engage people.
But politics as it is now also struggles to engage people.
True. There's probably a sweet spot where people are engaged but at the same time neither angry nor delusional. Like you, Cookie. And like me.
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 happy to pump Sunak's reputation. He was massively, massively better than the two previous rapscallions the Conservative Party chose to be our prime minister.
Also Starmer is continuity Sunak, so he's not really gone away. Rather he's re-generated Dr Who style.
That’s unfair
Sunak had charm and aplomb
Doctor Who incarnations vary in that respect, too.
Former politician finds another way to grift off their career, example 249. Former chancellor George Osborne is joining artificial intelligence (AI) giant OpenAI.
He will lead its "OpenAI for Countries" programme, which is aimed at helping governments increase their AI capacity.
Former politician finds another way to grift off their career, example 249. Former chancellor George Osborne is joining artificial intelligence (AI) giant OpenAI.
He will lead its "OpenAI for Countries" programme, which is aimed at helping governments increase their AI capacity.
Regarding Tempest, this is all becoming relevant again (except the very high temperatures) as control of heat signature in fighter aircraft, which will of necessity generate a lot of power*, and therefore heat, for their electronics, is the new stealth challenge.
(*over a MW for Tempest.)
Which is the other reason for Tempest's very large internal fuel capacity.
How can you fly an airplane three times the speed of sound safely? Here is a quote from SR 71 pilot Rich Graham. He explains it best . The JP-7 fuel reaches temperatures well over 300 degrees F. during Mach 3 cruise. , making the fumes in each of the six fuel tanks very volatile and potentially explosive. The aircraft's metal skin approaches 400 degrees F., further increasing the volatility of the fuel in the tanks. One of our aircraft's limitations was a maximum speed of Mach 2.6 without an inert atmosphere inside the fuel tanks.
“The aircraft had three liquid nitrogen Dewar flasks containing 260 liters of liquid nitrogen located in the nose wheel well. The only way to ensure a 100 percent inert atmosphere in each fuel tank was to refuel the plane in flight completely full of JP-7, allowing ambient air in each fuel tank to vent overboard. Once full of fuel, gaseous nitrogen would now dominate each fuel tank’s empty space above as it burned off JP-7. The nitrogen gas pressurized each fuel tank to 1.5 psi above ambient pressure and inerts the space above the heated fuel to prevent autogenous ignition. This is why we refueled after takeoff.” “Then we could safely accelerate beyond Mach 2.6.” “There was another way of achieving tank inerting, called a Yo-Yo. But this was a maintenance nightmare. A few of our missions required the SR-71 to accelerate to Mach 3+ right after takeoff with a 65,000-pound fuel load. The Yo-Yo procedure had the crew chief completely refuel the plane to full tanks of 80,000 pounds of fuel. Then, with the nitrogen pressurization system working, they de-fueled 15,000 pounds of JP-7, ending up with a 65,000-pound fuel load and a plane that was capable of going immediately to Mach 3+.” ~Linda Sheffield https://x.com/Habubrats71/status/2001813329036333475
The inability to cool the electronics and radar in the Nimrod AWACS was one of the more entertaining aspects of the design.
Essentially, it could use the radar (and computers) until the fuel temperature (used to cool stuff) exceeded the safe limits.
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.
It’s going to be fun to watch the government’s supporters praise the changes to the lobby system in the UK, white condemning similar changes in the US.
The media landscape has charged a lot in the past couple of decades, and the old clique of the Lobby seems ever more anachronistic with each passing year. It will be good to see different faces asking questions, and more new media being invited to attend.
There will still be a daily lobby briefing in the UK and they're not kicking media agencies out on ideological grounds. It's nothing like what the Trump administration is doing.
Nor has Starmer put plaques slagging off former PMs under their pictures in No. 10!
You can take even the tackiest politician here and they'd be crucified for doing something like that in Downing St. It shows how far Donald Trump has debauched politics in the US. Some of it is bound to bleed across the pond, America being such a global influence, but it really is worth fighting against it.
I think it's actually quite a good innovation that should be copied. Forcing each new Prime Minister to write a couple of paragraphs to sum up how they see each of their predecessors would be very instructive and help contextualise their long-term decision making.
Which works fine until, as seen in the US, end up with someone with no filter whatsoever, who makes a fool of himself by thinking it’s supposed to be for Twitter-level humour.
Post of the day, Sandpit. I sense you've just about had it with him.
Don’t worry, I’ve always been happy to criticise him when he’s being an idiot. He already made one joke with the wall of Presidents, two is one too many.
Regarding Tempest, this is all becoming relevant again (except the very high temperatures) as control of heat signature in fighter aircraft, which will of necessity generate a lot of power*, and therefore heat, for their electronics, is the new stealth challenge.
(*over a MW for Tempest.)
Which is the other reason for Tempest's very large internal fuel capacity.
How can you fly an airplane three times the speed of sound safely? Here is a quote from SR 71 pilot Rich Graham. He explains it best . The JP-7 fuel reaches temperatures well over 300 degrees F. during Mach 3 cruise. , making the fumes in each of the six fuel tanks very volatile and potentially explosive. The aircraft's metal skin approaches 400 degrees F., further increasing the volatility of the fuel in the tanks. One of our aircraft's limitations was a maximum speed of Mach 2.6 without an inert atmosphere inside the fuel tanks.
“The aircraft had three liquid nitrogen Dewar flasks containing 260 liters of liquid nitrogen located in the nose wheel well. The only way to ensure a 100 percent inert atmosphere in each fuel tank was to refuel the plane in flight completely full of JP-7, allowing ambient air in each fuel tank to vent overboard. Once full of fuel, gaseous nitrogen would now dominate each fuel tank’s empty space above as it burned off JP-7. The nitrogen gas pressurized each fuel tank to 1.5 psi above ambient pressure and inerts the space above the heated fuel to prevent autogenous ignition. This is why we refueled after takeoff.” “Then we could safely accelerate beyond Mach 2.6.” “There was another way of achieving tank inerting, called a Yo-Yo. But this was a maintenance nightmare. A few of our missions required the SR-71 to accelerate to Mach 3+ right after takeoff with a 65,000-pound fuel load. The Yo-Yo procedure had the crew chief completely refuel the plane to full tanks of 80,000 pounds of fuel. Then, with the nitrogen pressurization system working, they de-fueled 15,000 pounds of JP-7, ending up with a 65,000-pound fuel load and a plane that was capable of going immediately to Mach 3+.” ~Linda Sheffield https://x.com/Habubrats71/status/2001813329036333475
The inability to cool the electronics and radar in the Nimrod AWACS was one of the more entertaining aspects of the design.
Essentially, it could use the radar (and computers) until the fuel temperature (used to cool stuff) exceeded the safe limits.
I also liked the story that F-15s couldn't detect the SR-71 on their radar, as their systems were programmed to ignore signal returns from objects with speeds over 1500 mph.
Former politician finds another way to grift off their career, example 249. Former chancellor George Osborne is joining artificial intelligence (AI) giant OpenAI.
He will lead its "OpenAI for Countries" programme, which is aimed at helping governments increase their AI capacity.
You think former politicians should perhaps sit in rags and lament their egregious errors to the end of their days? Osborne is an extremely competent and capable guy. He made millions, possibly tens of millions, from his time in Robey Warshaw and has now got another high flying position. Good for him. Hopefully he will be paying lots of tax.
Former politician finds another way to grift off their career, example 249. Former chancellor George Osborne is joining artificial intelligence (AI) giant OpenAI.
He will lead its "OpenAI for Countries" programme, which is aimed at helping governments increase their AI capacity.
You think former politicians should perhaps sit in rags and lament their egregious errors to the end of their days? Osborne is an extremely competent and capable guy. He made millions, possibly tens of millions, from his time in Robey Warshaw and has now got another high flying position. Good for him. Hopefully he will be paying lots of tax.
Yes, guy gets high paying job isn't really a story. And it's a decade since he left government.
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 happy to pump Sunak's reputation. He was massively, massively better than the two previous rapscallions the Conservative Party chose to be our prime minister.
Also Starmer is continuity Sunak, so he's not really gone away. Rather he's re-generated Dr Who style.
That’s unfair
Sunak had charm and aplomb
He did have charm, I agree with that. He was the epitome of a charming young man. Still is, based on what little I've seen of him since he left office. But I don't know about aplomb. I'd rate him average at best on that. By the standards of big ticket politicians, I mean. Certainly he had more aplomb than a normal random person.
Exclusive: Top lawyer for military joint chiefs told chairman that officers should retire if faced with an unlawful order. That advice is raising serious concerns among current and former officials.
Regarding Tempest, this is all becoming relevant again (except the very high temperatures) as control of heat signature in fighter aircraft, which will of necessity generate a lot of power*, and therefore heat, for their electronics, is the new stealth challenge.
(*over a MW for Tempest.)
Which is the other reason for Tempest's very large internal fuel capacity.
How can you fly an airplane three times the speed of sound safely? Here is a quote from SR 71 pilot Rich Graham. He explains it best . The JP-7 fuel reaches temperatures well over 300 degrees F. during Mach 3 cruise. , making the fumes in each of the six fuel tanks very volatile and potentially explosive. The aircraft's metal skin approaches 400 degrees F., further increasing the volatility of the fuel in the tanks. One of our aircraft's limitations was a maximum speed of Mach 2.6 without an inert atmosphere inside the fuel tanks.
“The aircraft had three liquid nitrogen Dewar flasks containing 260 liters of liquid nitrogen located in the nose wheel well. The only way to ensure a 100 percent inert atmosphere in each fuel tank was to refuel the plane in flight completely full of JP-7, allowing ambient air in each fuel tank to vent overboard. Once full of fuel, gaseous nitrogen would now dominate each fuel tank’s empty space above as it burned off JP-7. The nitrogen gas pressurized each fuel tank to 1.5 psi above ambient pressure and inerts the space above the heated fuel to prevent autogenous ignition. This is why we refueled after takeoff.” “Then we could safely accelerate beyond Mach 2.6.” “There was another way of achieving tank inerting, called a Yo-Yo. But this was a maintenance nightmare. A few of our missions required the SR-71 to accelerate to Mach 3+ right after takeoff with a 65,000-pound fuel load. The Yo-Yo procedure had the crew chief completely refuel the plane to full tanks of 80,000 pounds of fuel. Then, with the nitrogen pressurization system working, they de-fueled 15,000 pounds of JP-7, ending up with a 65,000-pound fuel load and a plane that was capable of going immediately to Mach 3+.” ~Linda Sheffield https://x.com/Habubrats71/status/2001813329036333475
The inability to cool the electronics and radar in the Nimrod AWACS was one of the more entertaining aspects of the design.
Essentially, it could use the radar (and computers) until the fuel temperature (used to cool stuff) exceeded the safe limits.
I also liked the story that F-15s couldn't detect the SR-71 on their radar, as their systems were programmed to ignore signal returns from objects with speeds over 1500 mph.
There are quite a few speed gates on various radar systems.
Back when the American AEGIS system was first being bought into operation, they did a tour for Congress critters.
Who asked about some tracks on the screens - and were horrified when told that they were satellites in orbit. The Democrats in Congress, at that point were massively anti-ABM - anything that smacked of being able to track/shoot down missiles or satellite was Bad For Detente in their view.
So the US Navy put a line of code in to ignore anything travelling at more than (IIRC) 10,000mph.
Post Cold War, it was simple to remove it and enable AEGIS to guide anti-ballistic-missile missiles
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 happy to pump Sunak's reputation. He was massively, massively better than the two previous rapscallions the Conservative Party chose to be our prime minister.
Also Starmer is continuity Sunak, so he's not really gone away. Rather he's re-generated Dr Who style.
That’s unfair
Sunak had charm and aplomb
Sunak is somewhat personable unlike Starmer, agreed. Aplomb, not so much. Excessive peevishness I think, possibly due to a life where he previously had no challenges at all and never had to struggle.
I see that the BBC has lost the Commonwealth Games now. Have they any sport left?
Who is signing up for TNT to watch the Commonwealth Games? No-one.
Who cares about the Commonwealth Games ? They struggle to get a city to host it. The Beeb has dodged a bullet here.
They could at least be on C4 and still freeview. They are called the friendly games and still have top athletes and should be viewable by anyone in the UK
I see the UN says the 'famine' in Gaza is over. I wonder how many died due to the famine. And I wonder if all the Hamas food stocks have been found yet, such as the baby food one.
I find it amusing when people delight in the imperfection of AI; what kind of natural intelligence is perfect? Were they expecting humans to have invented godlike intelligence immediately?
Thank god that it still requires human surveillance!
I’ve just been discussing my upcoming walk in France with free Google AI. I started by asking it to tell me about it with a link to Google maps of roughly my route. It replied with the distance and a recommendation to look at Mappy for more details
I asked more specific questions, and gave it some more details of me and my holidays, including my holiday motto (Je marche partout, et Je bois comme un trou. Which it loved and told me was original)
The answers became better and better, and more tailored to my previous requests. It gave me the same advice as @kjh has about Arachon Bay
It occasionally tells me obvious nonsense, but politely apologises and gives me seemingly better information when I point out the mistakes
I asked it about possible future extensions to my walk (which it, on its own, calls the Grand Loop) into Spain or Portugal. It gave me interesting beer/wine/food/history/walking information on its three proposed routes
And, unprompted, it came up with possible Spanish and Portuguese idiomatic boozy walking holiday mottos
Former politician finds another way to grift off their career, example 249. Former chancellor George Osborne is joining artificial intelligence (AI) giant OpenAI.
He will lead its "OpenAI for Countries" programme, which is aimed at helping governments increase their AI capacity.
You think former politicians should perhaps sit in rags and lament their egregious errors to the end of their days? Osborne is an extremely competent and capable guy. He made millions, possibly tens of millions, from his time in Robey Warshaw and has now got another high flying position. Good for him. Hopefully he will be paying lots of tax.
Yes, guy gets high paying job isn't really a story. And it's a decade since he left government.
To be fair to Osborne it's not like he's went off to earn £millions doing the corporate whitewash for Meta
It was going to happen regardless, Xi is certainly a Chinese nationalist and Japan has to secure its defence. Taiwan should do the same
Japan has long had a peculiar type of nuclear deterrent.
They have large quantities of reprocessed plutonium and a stockpile of highly enriched uranium. All monitored and inspected by the international arms control people - the Japanese get high marks for punctiliously obeying the treaties and being open to inspection.
That stockpile, however is good for hundreds, maybe thousands of nuclear weapons.
In their very, very civilian space program, they have continuously produced and launched a series of all-solid rockets. Solid fueled rockets of this size are terrible for space launch. They are, however excellent, militarily. This is because a solid fuelled rocket can be launched at a few seconds notice.
The latest Japanese solid fuelled launcher looks strangely like the American MX heavy ICBM.
So they have the fissile material and the (potential) launchers. Contrary to popular belief, fabrication of nuclear weapons is not especially exotic engineering. Only going for high efficiency, high yield, light weapons might be considered so.
The Japanese rocket could carry a payload of tons to anywhere on Earth. Which would allow for a basic design for the nuke.
So the Japanese deterrent has been, for decades, “if you push us, we will have nuclear weapons in days”.
The exact amount of time it would take depends on how much preliminary work has been done. If they have built an implosion system - which can be tested on non nuclear material - it might be as simple as casting the plutonium. So it could even be measured in *hours*.
I find it amusing when people delight in the imperfection of AI; what kind of natural intelligence is perfect? Were they expecting humans to have invented godlike intelligence immediately?
Thank god that it still requires human surveillance!
I’ve just been discussing my upcoming walk in France with free Google AI. I started by asking it to tell me about it with a link to Google maps of roughly my route. It replied with the distance and a recommendation to look at Mappy for more details
I asked more specific questions, and gave it some more details of me and my holidays, including my holiday motto (Je marche partout, et Je bois comme un trou. Which it loved and told me was original)
The answers became better and better, and more tailored to my previous requests. It gave me the same advice as @kjh has about Arachon Bay
It occasionally tells me obvious nonsense, but politely apologises and gives me seemingly better information when I point out the mistakes
I asked it about possible future extensions to my walk (which it, on its own, calls the Grand Loop) into Spain or Portugal. It gave me interesting beer/wine/food/history/walking information on its three proposed routes
And, unprompted, it came up with possible Spanish and Portuguese idiomatic boozy walking holiday mottos
AI is so useful if one remembers its limitations
I'm not sure whether I should be flattered or insulted that AI gave the same advice as me, but I thank you @BlancheLivermore for the acknowledgement in your post. It is appreciated and gives me a warm feeling that occasionally I might actually be useful.
I wish you well on your walk. It is just more fun on a bike for me.
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 happy to pump Sunak's reputation. He was massively, massively better than the two previous rapscallions the Conservative Party chose to be our prime minister.
Also Starmer is continuity Sunak, so he's not really gone away. Rather he's re-generated Dr Who style.
That’s unfair
Sunak had charm and aplomb
Sunak is somewhat personable unlike Starmer, agreed. Aplomb, not so much. Excessive peevishness I think, possibly due to a life where he previously had no challenges at all and never had to struggle.
Yes, with you on this. I think Starmer has less charm than Sunak but more aplomb. And very true on the gilded path (Sunak). He'd have been a better PM with more political time and struggle to get there, I think.
Send the darkies home is acceptable political debate according to Reform.
Nigel Farage’s party has so far refused to condemn Chris Parry, a retired naval rear admiral who has been picked to contest the now-postponed Hampshire and the Solent mayoral election for the party, over his comment about Lammy, the deputy prime minister.
In a post in February, referring to a news story about the UK government supposedly considering talks about reparations for slavery – which ministers have in fact rejected – Parry is said to have written: “Lammy must go home to the Caribbean where his loyalty lies.”
He made similar comments on X about Humza Yousaf, Sadiq Khan, Shabana Mahmoud, Dawn Butler and Naz Shah.
According to the deputy Leader of Reform,
he had seen this post and seemed to indicate that such sentiments could be viewed as an acceptable part of political debate. He said: “At the end of the day, David Lammy is a cabinet minister. Whether we think he’s doing a good or bad job is just part of politics. That’s day-to-day life. He will, I’m sure, continue to claim he’s doing a great job. We challenge him.”
Former politician finds another way to grift off their career, example 249. Former chancellor George Osborne is joining artificial intelligence (AI) giant OpenAI.
He will lead its "OpenAI for Countries" programme, which is aimed at helping governments increase their AI capacity.
You think former politicians should perhaps sit in rags and lament their egregious errors to the end of their days? Osborne is an extremely competent and capable guy. He made millions, possibly tens of millions, from his time in Robey Warshaw and has now got another high flying position. Good for him. Hopefully he will be paying lots of tax.
No i dont think that, (not least as i think hes alright) i think he got the position because hes smart but mostly because he has connections and AI is the hot new thing. Its better than connected people joining Theranos, but what does he know about AI capacity? Id bet jack shit. And they get to say a former chancellor is involved.
Will he spend more than a day a week on it? Wouldnt bet on it.
It was going to happen regardless, Xi is certainly a Chinese nationalist and Japan has to secure its defence. Taiwan should do the same
It really wasn't. Their constitution forbids it, so it's a massive move for the PM's office to say this out loud. Until now they were comfortable in relying on the US deterrent.
There's now likely to be a wave of nuclear proliferation, which, while completely understandable from the POV of Japan, of S Korea, of Taiwan, or of half a dozen other countries, is in itself dangerous and destabilising.
ROSEN: Will you commit to opening an investigation into Fox News for deceptively editing a Trump interview to make him look good during a presidential campaign?
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 happy to pump Sunak's reputation. He was massively, massively better than the two previous rapscallions the Conservative Party chose to be our prime minister.
Also Starmer is continuity Sunak, so he's not really gone away. Rather he's re-generated Dr Who style.
That’s unfair
Sunak had charm and aplomb
He did have charm, I agree with that. He was the epitome of a charming young man. Still is, based on what little I've seen of him since he left office. But I don't know about aplomb. I'd rate him average at best on that. By the standards of big ticket politicians, I mean. Certainly he had more aplomb than a normal random person.
Former politician finds another way to grift off their career, example 249. Former chancellor George Osborne is joining artificial intelligence (AI) giant OpenAI.
He will lead its "OpenAI for Countries" programme, which is aimed at helping governments increase their AI capacity.
You think former politicians should perhaps sit in rags and lament their egregious errors to the end of their days? Osborne is an extremely competent and capable guy. He made millions, possibly tens of millions, from his time in Robey Warshaw and has now got another high flying position. Good for him. Hopefully he will be paying lots of tax.
Yes, guy gets high paying job isn't really a story. And it's a decade since he left government.
The question being why OpenAI might want a oleaginous ex politico in their stable of guardians?
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 happy to pump Sunak's reputation. He was massively, massively better than the two previous rapscallions the Conservative Party chose to be our prime minister.
Also Starmer is continuity Sunak, so he's not really gone away. Rather he's re-generated Dr Who style.
That’s unfair
Sunak had charm and aplomb
Surely a man with aplomb is never without an umbrella?
So I’ve been signed up to a VPN now for six months, and the number of spam emails I get into my junk folder has dropped to, on most days, zero. Whereas before I was getting a whole batch, daily, despite not dishing out my email address while surfing. How does that work, then?
Hopefully you’re all out enjoying a rare sunny day, during this wet and windy winter
Migrant invasion, dog for scale?
We will wag our tails on the beaches, we will wag our tails on the landing grounds...
Maybe it's winter but the pooch is lucky to be allowed there, at least by Invasion Coast standards. From outings with my friend and his mutt, I've come to realise that the local councils in e.g. Dorset and Devon are much more worried about something different from (but anatomically adjacent to) tail-wagging.
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 happy to pump Sunak's reputation. He was massively, massively better than the two previous rapscallions the Conservative Party chose to be our prime minister.
Also Starmer is continuity Sunak, so he's not really gone away. Rather he's re-generated Dr Who style.
That’s unfair
Sunak had charm and aplomb
He did have charm, I agree with that. He was the epitome of a charming young man. Still is, based on what little I've seen of him since he left office. But I don't know about aplomb. I'd rate him average at best on that. By the standards of big ticket politicians, I mean. Certainly he had more aplomb than a normal random person.
One person's charm is another person's smarm.
Yes we're in the realms of pure personal opinion here. Eg I was immune to the fabled charm of Boris Johnson.
So I’ve been signed up to a VPN now for six months, and the number of spam emails I get into my junk folder has dropped to, on most days, zero. Whereas before I was getting a whole batch, daily, despite not dishing out my email address while surfing. How does that work, then?
Your IP address(es) (unless you have a fixed IP, it will change over time) are matched to your email address when you *do* sign up for stuff. This info is then sold to everyone else. Along with a vast array of information.
So many websites can detect when @IanB2 hits them. And then they sell that information on as well. And they can lookup your email address from the IP.
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 happy to pump Sunak's reputation. He was massively, massively better than the two previous rapscallions the Conservative Party chose to be our prime minister.
Also Starmer is continuity Sunak, so he's not really gone away. Rather he's re-generated Dr Who style.
That’s unfair
Sunak had charm and aplomb
He did have charm, I agree with that. He was the epitome of a charming young man. Still is, based on what little I've seen of him since he left office. But I don't know about aplomb. I'd rate him average at best on that. By the standards of big ticket politicians, I mean. Certainly he had more aplomb than a normal random person.
One person's charm is another person's smarm.
Yes we're in the realms of pure personal opinion here. Eg I was immune to the fabled charm of Boris Johnson.
Thinking philosophically for a moment, is it an Opposition's role to oppose? Sometimes you think it's like a Monty Python sketch where argument becomes contradiction - there's another school of support called "constructive opposition" which basically says if the Government does something you like or support, then like or support it.
I'm not as convinced by this as I once was.
Sometimes, it's just useful to hear another argument, not necessarily a directly contrary view but a well-argued response pointing out any inherent flaws in the Government's argument and even if it's not what you and your Party would necessarily do, believe or support, doesn't the Opposition have a responsibility to present the alternate viewpoint(s) so as to better inform the public debate or the debate among the public.
The point of plural democracy is to hear a plurality of opinions and viewpoints and the view of His Majesty's Opposition is part of this (as well as those of other parties). It may well be the Government is doing the "right thing" but that doesn't mean it's doing it in the right way and that needs to be called out.
Me - When I walked to Lourdes from St Jean PdP, I stayed in a town just to the southwest of Pau. The next morning, I'm pretty sure, I crossed the river Neez. Not long after, I walked past an apiary. I saw the Neez bees
AI - It sounds like you stayed in the town of Gan, which is located approximately 8 km southwest of Pau. The Néez is a small river that flows through the heart of Gan. If you crossed the river and headed toward the hills on your way to Lourdes, you were likely on the Coteau de Bastarrous walking route. This trail specifically passes beehives (ruches) shortly after crossing the Néez and passing the Brougnat lake. Your sighting of the "Neez bees" is a perfect (and pun-filled) landmark for that specific stage of your journey toward the sanctuary at Lourdes.
Me - That was all true, but I told you about it just to see if you'd notice the pun. Bravo!
AI - That was indeed the "bee’s knees" of puns! The linguistic journey you set up—matching the Néez river with the bees you spotted shortly after—cleverly echoes the 1920s slang for something exceptionally good. For your upcoming 2025 walk from Vannes to Biarritz, here is a quick "bee-line" summary of the "refreshment" highlights you can look forward to: Vannes to Nantes (Late April): After leaving Vannes, you might find yourself in the "bees-ness" of sampling local Breton beers like La Dilettante to keep you buzzing along the Vilaine. La Rochelle (Early May): Be sure to visit Captain Houblon or La Hutte Enchantée near the Old Port; their craft selections are truly the "bee's knees" for a thirsty walker. Biarritz (The Finish): Ending with a Bob’s Beer or an Akerbeltz is the perfect way to "bee happy" after nearly 700km. It is clear that for your 40km-a-day pace, beer isn't just a luxury—it’s the high-octane "nectar" that keeps your motor running!
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 happy to pump Sunak's reputation. He was massively, massively better than the two previous rapscallions the Conservative Party chose to be our prime minister.
Also Starmer is continuity Sunak, so he's not really gone away. Rather he's re-generated Dr Who style.
That’s unfair
Sunak had charm and aplomb
He did have charm, I agree with that. He was the epitome of a charming young man. Still is, based on what little I've seen of him since he left office. But I don't know about aplomb. I'd rate him average at best on that. By the standards of big ticket politicians, I mean. Certainly he had more aplomb than a normal random person.
One person's charm is another person's smarm.
Yes we're in the realms of pure personal opinion here. Eg I was immune to the fabled charm of Boris Johnson.
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 happy to pump Sunak's reputation. He was massively, massively better than the two previous rapscallions the Conservative Party chose to be our prime minister.
Also Starmer is continuity Sunak, so he's not really gone away. Rather he's re-generated Dr Who style.
That’s unfair
Sunak had charm and aplomb
Sunak is somewhat personable unlike Starmer, agreed. Aplomb, not so much. Excessive peevishness I think, possibly due to a life where he previously had no challenges at all and never had to struggle.
Even 18 months on, I don't know what to make of Sunak. I said at the time it seemed he had rarely known setbacks and defeats - in politics, you often have to fight a hopeless seat before you get a winnable seat but he walked straight into one of the safest seats (when they still existed) in England.
I thought and believed defeat in July 2024 would be the making of him - he was supremely dignified on election night and the following morning made the nearest thing to a mea culpa I've heard from any Tory which moved him up several notches in my view.
It could be, rather like John Major after 1997, he's happy to be out of it and after a decade or more in the political spotlight, being a backbench MP might be just what he wants and perhaps needs. Under other circumstances, he might have been an above average PM but we remain living with the economic consequences of his COVID response which seemed necessary at the time but about which questions have been asked since - for me, the level of fraud has been staggering but not surprising.
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.
It’s going to be fun to watch the government’s supporters praise the changes to the lobby system in the UK, white condemning similar changes in the US.
The media landscape has charged a lot in the past couple of decades, and the old clique of the Lobby seems ever more anachronistic with each passing year. It will be good to see different faces asking questions, and more new media being invited to attend.
There will still be a daily lobby briefing in the UK and they're not kicking media agencies out on ideological grounds. It's nothing like what the Trump administration is doing.
Nor has Starmer put plaques slagging off former PMs under their pictures in No. 10!
You can take even the tackiest politician here and they'd be crucified for doing something like that in Downing St. It shows how far Donald Trump has debauched politics in the US. Some of it is bound to bleed across the pond, America being such a global influence, but it really is worth fighting against it.
I think it's actually quite a good innovation that should be copied. Forcing each new Prime Minister to write a couple of paragraphs to sum up how they see each of their predecessors would be very instructive and help contextualise their long-term decision making.
Which works fine until, as seen in the US, end up with someone with no filter whatsoever, who makes a fool of himself by thinking it’s supposed to be for Twitter-level humour.
Post of the day, Sandpit. I sense you've just about had it with him.
Don’t worry, I’ve always been happy to criticise him when he’s being an idiot. He already made one joke with the wall of Presidents, two is one too many.
But you still think he was the right choice for the American electorate in 2024?
Talking about Trump, the Epstein Files are due for release so the media will be full of stories and rumour over the weekend. As a distraction what are the odds that
a) There will be an incident/invasion of Venezuela who are being supported by China or b) Ukraine will be cut off completely and Russia welcome back into US spheres of influence c) Greenland will move up the agenda as US/Canada start their trade discussions or d) Others like Iran / Palestine /Somali will be the subject of some petty vindictiveness
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 happy to pump Sunak's reputation. He was massively, massively better than the two previous rapscallions the Conservative Party chose to be our prime minister.
Also Starmer is continuity Sunak, so he's not really gone away. Rather he's re-generated Dr Who style.
That’s unfair
Sunak had charm and aplomb
He did have charm, I agree with that. He was the epitome of a charming young man. Still is, based on what little I've seen of him since he left office. But I don't know about aplomb. I'd rate him average at best on that. By the standards of big ticket politicians, I mean. Certainly he had more aplomb than a normal random person.
One person's charm is another person's smarm.
Yes we're in the realms of pure personal opinion here. Eg I was immune to the fabled charm of Boris Johnson.
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
I recently caused a small fire trying to fry some Tofu. Managed to put it out with a pair of wet oven gloves, but the flat still ended up full of smoke and dinner was ruined.
For some reason my partner doesn't consider my heroics mitigation of my rank stupidity and incompetence. I shall put her in touch with you.
I'm glad that you dodged the bullet.
No fire blanket? They are, TBH, an excellent investment for perhaps £15.
Just don't store it at the back of the stove where the fire will occur, especially if you have a hairy pelt.
There's been a strand of Japanese political opinion that has thought it ought to have nuclear weapons for some time (i.e. going beyond the tacit latent capability Malmesbury outlines). It's just controversial among the Japanese public, not unthinkable.
Trump already raised the suggestion Japan should have its own nukes in his first term, for that matter.
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 happy to pump Sunak's reputation. He was massively, massively better than the two previous rapscallions the Conservative Party chose to be our prime minister.
Also Starmer is continuity Sunak, so he's not really gone away. Rather he's re-generated Dr Who style.
That’s unfair
Sunak had charm and aplomb
He did have charm, I agree with that. He was the epitome of a charming young man. Still is, based on what little I've seen of him since he left office. But I don't know about aplomb. I'd rate him average at best on that. By the standards of big ticket politicians, I mean. Certainly he had more aplomb than a normal random person.
One person's charm is another person's smarm.
Yes we're in the realms of pure personal opinion here. Eg I was immune to the fabled charm of Boris Johnson.
Do you think Kamaltoe Harris has charm ?
Oh dear Taz. Not great.
No, true, but she tried. Old Mommala.
I'm curious. Why the contempt? You'd only expect to find that with Maga types.
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.
It’s going to be fun to watch the government’s supporters praise the changes to the lobby system in the UK, white condemning similar changes in the US.
The media landscape has charged a lot in the past couple of decades, and the old clique of the Lobby seems ever more anachronistic with each passing year. It will be good to see different faces asking questions, and more new media being invited to attend.
There will still be a daily lobby briefing in the UK and they're not kicking media agencies out on ideological grounds. It's nothing like what the Trump administration is doing.
Nor has Starmer put plaques slagging off former PMs under their pictures in No. 10!
You can take even the tackiest politician here and they'd be crucified for doing something like that in Downing St. It shows how far Donald Trump has debauched politics in the US. Some of it is bound to bleed across the pond, America being such a global influence, but it really is worth fighting against it.
I think it's actually quite a good innovation that should be copied. Forcing each new Prime Minister to write a couple of paragraphs to sum up how they see each of their predecessors would be very instructive and help contextualise their long-term decision making.
Which works fine until, as seen in the US, end up with someone with no filter whatsoever, who makes a fool of himself by thinking it’s supposed to be for Twitter-level humour.
Post of the day, Sandpit. I sense you've just about had it with him.
Don’t worry, I’ve always been happy to criticise him when he’s being an idiot. He already made one joke with the wall of Presidents, two is one too many.
Thinking philosophically for a moment, is it an Opposition's role to oppose? Sometimes you think it's like a Monty Python sketch where argument becomes contradiction - there's another school of support called "constructive opposition" which basically says if the Government does something you like or support, then like or support it.
I'm not as convinced by this as I once was.
Sometimes, it's just useful to hear another argument, not necessarily a directly contrary view but a well-argued response pointing out any inherent flaws in the Government's argument and even if it's not what you and your Party would necessarily do, believe or support, doesn't the Opposition have a responsibility to present the alternate viewpoint(s) so as to better inform the public debate or the debate among the public.
The point of plural democracy is to hear a plurality of opinions and viewpoints and the view of His Majesty's Opposition is part of this (as well as those of other parties). It may well be the Government is doing the "right thing" but that doesn't mean it's doing it in the right way and that needs to be called out.
There's an opportunity cost, though. If you oppose everything the government does your significant critiques will get lost among your nitpicking. Focused fire probably works better than undirected.
I find it amusing when people delight in the imperfection of AI; what kind of natural intelligence is perfect? Were they expecting humans to have invented godlike intelligence immediately?
Thank god that it still requires human surveillance!
I’ve just been discussing my upcoming walk in France with free Google AI. I started by asking it to tell me about it with a link to Google maps of roughly my route. It replied with the distance and a recommendation to look at Mappy for more details
I asked more specific questions, and gave it some more details of me and my holidays, including my holiday motto (Je marche partout, et Je bois comme un trou. Which it loved and told me was original)
The answers became better and better, and more tailored to my previous requests. It gave me the same advice as @kjh has about Arachon Bay
It occasionally tells me obvious nonsense, but politely apologises and gives me seemingly better information when I point out the mistakes
I asked it about possible future extensions to my walk (which it, on its own, calls the Grand Loop) into Spain or Portugal. It gave me interesting beer/wine/food/history/walking information on its three proposed routes
And, unprompted, it came up with possible Spanish and Portuguese idiomatic boozy walking holiday mottos
AI is so useful if one remembers its limitations
I'm not sure whether I should be flattered or insulted that AI gave the same advice as me, but I thank you @BlancheLivermore for the acknowledgement in your post. It is appreciated and gives me a warm feeling that occasionally I might actually be useful.
I wish you well on your walk. It is just more fun on a bike for me.
Certainly flattered in my mind in this instance. I’m using your fine advice as a yardstick
Nigelb - I agree with you that it is better for the Loser to be messing up the White House than trying to make important decisions. (I am bipartisan on this, having wished that both Obama and the Loser would spend more time on golf courses, and less time in the Oval Office.)
Thinking philosophically for a moment, is it an Opposition's role to oppose? Sometimes you think it's like a Monty Python sketch where argument becomes contradiction - there's another school of support called "constructive opposition" which basically says if the Government does something you like or support, then like or support it.
I'm not as convinced by this as I once was.
Sometimes, it's just useful to hear another argument, not necessarily a directly contrary view but a well-argued response pointing out any inherent flaws in the Government's argument and even if it's not what you and your Party would necessarily do, believe or support, doesn't the Opposition have a responsibility to present the alternate viewpoint(s) so as to better inform the public debate or the debate among the public.
The point of plural democracy is to hear a plurality of opinions and viewpoints and the view of His Majesty's Opposition is part of this (as well as those of other parties). It may well be the Government is doing the "right thing" but that doesn't mean it's doing it in the right way and that needs to be called out.
Yes.
There is a problem with the structure of contemporary political argument. If you are searching for as close as possible to the truth you have to be mindful of the ignored but obvious fact that no case is stronger than its weakest points. Political argument has a strong tendency to shout loudly and sentimentally about the obvious strong points and look the other way about the weaknesses. This is popular, or at least populist, but of very little use for poor seekers after enlightenment.
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 happy to pump Sunak's reputation. He was massively, massively better than the two previous rapscallions the Conservative Party chose to be our prime minister.
Also Starmer is continuity Sunak, so he's not really gone away. Rather he's re-generated Dr Who style.
That’s unfair
Sunak had charm and aplomb
He did have charm, I agree with that. He was the epitome of a charming young man. Still is, based on what little I've seen of him since he left office. But I don't know about aplomb. I'd rate him average at best on that. By the standards of big ticket politicians, I mean. Certainly he had more aplomb than a normal random person.
One person's charm is another person's smarm.
Yes we're in the realms of pure personal opinion here. Eg I was immune to the fabled charm of Boris Johnson.
Do you think Kamaltoe Harris has charm ?
Oh dear Taz. Not great.
No, true, but she tried. Old Mommala.
I'm curious. Why the contempt? You'd only expect to find that with Maga types.
Contempt for Harris. Because she’s a terrible candidate.
If you think that makes me MAGA so be it even though I think Trump is a twat.
You know something, Mean Gene, thinking one politician is shit doesn’t mean you think their opponent is great !
They’d be better off developing existing platforms such as Typhoon and Gripen, which are superior to anything a conceivable enemy might be fielding within the next decade. Russia’s Su-57 and China’s J-20 and J-35 are miles away from actual serial production.
Then everyone get together to spend the R&D on an unmanned replacement next-gen fighter.
The problem with the Germans getting involved in GCAP is that they will demand a huge work share based on the claim they will buy the most aircraft. Then they will cut the buy and demand they keep the workshare - or they will collapse the project.
They’ve only done this multiple times before.
I think it's robust to that, unless the Italians resile from the 33% share they demanded despite their smaller order, and Fritz takes up the slack.
I don't see phase 1 (ie up to delivery of first units) being heavily rejigged as the tight timescales are being driven by the Japanese need quickly to have something to keep China at bay.
fitalass - I appreciate your wish for more attention to the scandal in Scotland -- and agree with you that would be desirable. But I lack enough information to make any worthwhile contribution*. If your journalists and prosecutors do not give this the attention it deserves, I am not likely to try.
*For instance: I do not even know whether the "devices" listened to phones, listened to conversations in the offices, or took videos.
fitalass - I appreciate your wish for more attention to the scandal in Scotland -- and agree with you that would be desirable. But I lack enough information to make any worthwhile contribution*. If your journalists and prosecutors do not give this the attention it deserves, I am not likely to try.
*For instance: I do not even know whether the "devices" listened to phones, listened to conversations in the offices, or took videos.
Don’t worry, TUD can mansplain it to you with added sneers and ‘women, know your place’.
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.
It’s going to be fun to watch the government’s supporters praise the changes to the lobby system in the UK, white condemning similar changes in the US.
The media landscape has charged a lot in the past couple of decades, and the old clique of the Lobby seems ever more anachronistic with each passing year. It will be good to see different faces asking questions, and more new media being invited to attend.
There will still be a daily lobby briefing in the UK and they're not kicking media agencies out on ideological grounds. It's nothing like what the Trump administration is doing.
Nor has Starmer put plaques slagging off former PMs under their pictures in No. 10!
You can take even the tackiest politician here and they'd be crucified for doing something like that in Downing St. It shows how far Donald Trump has debauched politics in the US. Some of it is bound to bleed across the pond, America being such a global influence, but it really is worth fighting against it.
The dispiriting thing is people like the cringey style. Heck, I know otherwise sensible people who got irate about MPs in leader debates sharing a non-confrontational discussion before/afterwards, claiming it shows the opposition to each other is just confected, as if getting along with an opponent (or even just civility) is a weird, even negative thing.
It's like how Speakers sometimes bemoan MPs heckling or party leaders just insulting each other, when the truth is people like that, even if they say they don't - otherwise they'd stop doing it.
Which is not to say being polite or chummy with each other is the be all and end all in politics, certainly you want a degree of conflict and disagreement (indeed, I'd say the idea people shoudl not 'play politics' and seek 'unity' in all things is misplaced), and a blunt, even rude style, has it's place. But the idea it is desirable as a general approach is unfortunate.
It ties into one of my most disliked and political sayings, about how it is the job of oppositions to oppose, which is one of those lazy statements which is true as a general purpose, but never meant to be literal, since there are any number of things all (or nearly all) will agree on, without it being some 'uniparty' conspiracy or terrible establishment move. A party in opposition wouldn't be bound to oppose a government if they did something unambiguously good (or indeed something the opposition had initially proposed) for example.
In many cases the best approach for an opposition is to damn with faint praise
“I’m pleased that the government has listened to the issue we have been banging on about. It’s great that they have acknowledged that they have completely ballsed things up. As you know we put forward a comprehensive solution to the issues and unfortunately the government has chosen to ignore that - their sticking plaster approach just isn’t sufficient. So of course we support them in principle and we are going to work constructively to make their proposals workable and effective in meeting the needs of hard working families throughout the United Kingdom”
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 happy to pump Sunak's reputation. He was massively, massively better than the two previous rapscallions the Conservative Party chose to be our prime minister.
Also Starmer is continuity Sunak, so he's not really gone away. Rather he's re-generated Dr Who style.
That’s unfair
Sunak had charm and aplomb
Sunak is somewhat personable unlike Starmer, agreed. Aplomb, not so much. Excessive peevishness I think, possibly due to a life where he previously had no challenges at all and never had to struggle.
Even 18 months on, I don't know what to make of Sunak. I said at the time it seemed he had rarely known setbacks and defeats - in politics, you often have to fight a hopeless seat before you get a winnable seat but he walked straight into one of the safest seats (when they still existed) in England.
I thought and believed defeat in July 2024 would be the making of him - he was supremely dignified on election night and the following morning made the nearest thing to a mea culpa I've heard from any Tory which moved him up several notches in my view.
It could be, rather like John Major after 1997, he's happy to be out of it and after a decade or more in the political spotlight, being a backbench MP might be just what he wants and perhaps needs. Under other circumstances, he might have been an above average PM but we remain living with the economic consequences of his COVID response which seemed necessary at the time but about which questions have been asked since - for me, the level of fraud has been staggering but not surprising.
His COVID response bordered on the nieve..but how nieve can you be when you help set up a hedge fund..🧐🤔
fitalass - I appreciate your wish for more attention to the scandal in Scotland -- and agree with you that would be desirable. But I lack enough information to make any worthwhile contribution*. If your journalists and prosecutors do not give this the attention it deserves, I am not likely to try.
*For instance: I do not even know whether the "devices" listened to phones, listened to conversations in the offices, or took videos.
Don’t worry, TUD can mansplain it to you with added sneers and ‘women, know your place’.
Comments
(The Letters of Last Resort, as well as a practical necessity, arguably do a bit of the same to a new PM. In a good way. What is your last instruction in a destroyed world? Now handwrite it in quadruplicate. For thou art dust, and to radioactive dust thou might return.)
And how about 19th century cathedrals such as Westminster?
Exclusive: Top lawyer for military joint chiefs told chairman that officers should retire if faced with an unlawful order. That advice is raising serious concerns among current and former officials.
https://bsky.app/profile/natashabertrand.bsky.social/post/3madtbtb4ys27
(*over a MW for Tempest.)
Which is the other reason for Tempest's very large internal fuel capacity.
How can you fly an airplane three times the speed of sound safely?
Here is a quote from SR 71 pilot Rich Graham.
He explains it best
. The JP-7 fuel reaches temperatures well over 300 degrees F. during Mach 3 cruise. , making the fumes in each of the six fuel tanks very volatile and potentially explosive. The aircraft's metal skin approaches 400 degrees F., further increasing the volatility of the fuel in the tanks.
One of our aircraft's limitations was a maximum speed of Mach 2.6 without an inert atmosphere inside the fuel tanks.
“The aircraft had three liquid nitrogen Dewar flasks containing 260 liters of liquid nitrogen located in the nose wheel well. The only way to ensure a 100 percent inert atmosphere in each fuel tank was to refuel the plane in flight completely full of JP-7, allowing ambient air in each fuel tank to vent overboard. Once full of fuel, gaseous nitrogen would now dominate each fuel tank’s empty space above as it burned off JP-7.
The nitrogen gas pressurized each fuel tank to 1.5 psi above ambient pressure and inerts the space above the heated fuel to prevent autogenous ignition. This is why we refueled after takeoff.”
“Then we could safely accelerate beyond Mach 2.6.” “There was another way of achieving tank inerting, called a Yo-Yo. But this was a maintenance nightmare. A few of our missions required the SR-71 to accelerate to Mach 3+ right after takeoff with a 65,000-pound fuel load. The Yo-Yo procedure had the crew chief completely refuel the plane to full tanks of 80,000 pounds of fuel. Then, with the nitrogen pressurization system working, they de-fueled 15,000 pounds of JP-7, ending up with a 65,000-pound fuel load and a plane that was capable of going immediately to Mach 3+.”
~Linda Sheffield
https://x.com/Habubrats71/status/2001813329036333475
Sunak had charm and aplomb
Former chancellor George Osborne is joining artificial intelligence (AI) giant OpenAI.
He will lead its "OpenAI for Countries" programme, which is aimed at helping governments increase their AI capacity.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cd6xz1jv4ezo?
Surely he got the job on merit 👍
Essentially, it could use the radar (and computers) until the fuel temperature (used to cool stuff) exceeded the safe limits.
Japan needs to possess nuclear weapons: PM office source
https://x.com/NikkeiAsia/status/2001683238176051628
Pretty well unthinkable until Trump.
Who is signing up for TNT to watch the Commonwealth Games? No-one.
Ukrainian drones have hit another Russian oil rig in the Caspian Sea.
#explodey
And it's a decade since he left government.
Back when the American AEGIS system was first being bought into operation, they did a tour for Congress critters.
Who asked about some tracks on the screens - and were horrified when told that they were satellites in orbit. The Democrats in Congress, at that point were massively anti-ABM - anything that smacked of being able to track/shoot down missiles or satellite was Bad For Detente in their view.
So the US Navy put a line of code in to ignore anything travelling at more than (IIRC) 10,000mph.
Post Cold War, it was simple to remove it and enable AEGIS to guide anti-ballistic-missile missiles
Arguably its time is over. Scrap the thing.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/19/opinion/tolkien-grief-lord-rings.html
Tolkien & the nature of grief and loss
Thank god that it still requires human surveillance!
I’ve just been discussing my upcoming walk in France with free Google AI. I started by asking it to tell me about it with a link to Google maps of roughly my route. It replied with the distance and a recommendation to look at Mappy for more details
I asked more specific questions, and gave it some more details of me and my holidays, including my holiday motto (Je marche partout, et Je bois comme un trou. Which it loved and told me was original)
The answers became better and better, and more tailored to my previous requests. It gave me the same advice as @kjh has about Arachon Bay
It occasionally tells me obvious nonsense, but politely apologises and gives me seemingly better information when I point out the mistakes
I asked it about possible future extensions to my walk (which it, on its own, calls the Grand Loop) into Spain or Portugal. It gave me interesting beer/wine/food/history/walking information on its three proposed routes
And, unprompted, it came up with possible Spanish and Portuguese idiomatic boozy walking holiday mottos
AI is so useful if one remembers its limitations
They have large quantities of reprocessed plutonium and a stockpile of highly enriched uranium. All monitored and inspected by the international arms control people - the Japanese get high marks for punctiliously obeying the treaties and being open to inspection.
That stockpile, however is good for hundreds, maybe thousands of nuclear weapons.
In their very, very civilian space program, they have continuously produced and launched a series of all-solid rockets. Solid fueled rockets of this size are terrible for space launch. They are, however excellent, militarily. This is because a solid fuelled rocket can be launched at a few seconds notice.
The latest Japanese solid fuelled launcher looks strangely like the American MX heavy ICBM.
So they have the fissile material and the (potential) launchers. Contrary to popular belief, fabrication of nuclear weapons is not especially exotic engineering. Only going for high efficiency, high yield, light weapons might be considered so.
The Japanese rocket could carry a payload of tons to anywhere on Earth. Which would allow for a basic design for the nuke.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epsilon_(rocket)
So the Japanese deterrent has been, for decades, “if you push us, we will have nuclear weapons in days”.
The exact amount of time it would take depends on how much preliminary work has been done. If they have built an implosion system - which can be tested on non nuclear material - it might be as simple as casting the plutonium. So it could even be measured in *hours*.
I wish you well on your walk. It is just more fun on a bike for me.
Nigel Farage’s party has so far refused to condemn Chris Parry, a retired naval rear admiral who has been picked to contest the now-postponed Hampshire and the Solent mayoral election for the party, over his comment about Lammy, the deputy prime minister.
In a post in February, referring to a news story about the UK government supposedly considering talks about reparations for slavery – which ministers have in fact rejected – Parry is said to have written: “Lammy must go home to the Caribbean where his loyalty lies.”
He made similar comments on X about Humza Yousaf, Sadiq Khan, Shabana Mahmoud, Dawn Butler and Naz Shah.
According to the deputy Leader of Reform,
he had seen this post and seemed to indicate that such sentiments could be viewed as an acceptable part of political debate. He said: “At the end of the day, David Lammy is a cabinet minister. Whether we think he’s doing a good or bad job is just part of politics. That’s day-to-day life. He will, I’m sure, continue to claim he’s doing a great job. We challenge him.”
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/dec/19/reform-candidate-lammy-go-home-questioned-mps-loyalty-uk-chris-parry
Will he spend more than a day a week on it? Wouldnt bet on it.
https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/media-centre/electoral-commission-responds-potential-election-postponements
Their constitution forbids it, so it's a massive move for the PM's office to say this out loud.
Until now they were comfortable in relying on the US deterrent.
There's now likely to be a wave of nuclear proliferation, which, while completely understandable from the POV of Japan, of S Korea, of Taiwan, or of half a dozen other countries, is in itself dangerous and destabilising.
ROSEN: Will you commit to opening an investigation into Fox News for deceptively editing a Trump interview to make him look good during a presidential campaign?
CARR: No
https://x.com/atrupar/status/2001351724876067049
So many websites can detect when @IanB2 hits them. And then they sell that information on as well. And they can lookup your email address from the IP.
When you use a VPN, you disrupt that lookup.
https://x.com/thebowlerhatman/status/2001759030000111842?s=61
Thinking philosophically for a moment, is it an Opposition's role to oppose? Sometimes you think it's like a Monty Python sketch where argument becomes contradiction - there's another school of support called "constructive opposition" which basically says if the Government does something you like or support, then like or support it.
I'm not as convinced by this as I once was.
Sometimes, it's just useful to hear another argument, not necessarily a directly contrary view but a well-argued response pointing out any inherent flaws in the Government's argument and even if it's not what you and your Party would necessarily do, believe or support, doesn't the Opposition have a responsibility to present the alternate viewpoint(s) so as to better inform the public debate or the debate among the public.
The point of plural democracy is to hear a plurality of opinions and viewpoints and the view of His Majesty's Opposition is part of this (as well as those of other parties). It may well be the Government is doing the "right thing" but that doesn't mean it's doing it in the right way and that needs to be called out.
Me - When I walked to Lourdes from St Jean PdP, I stayed in a town just to the southwest of Pau. The next morning, I'm pretty sure, I crossed the river Neez. Not long after, I walked past an apiary. I saw the Neez bees
AI - It sounds like you stayed in the town of Gan, which is located approximately 8 km southwest of Pau.
The Néez is a small river that flows through the heart of Gan. If you crossed the river and headed toward the hills on your way to Lourdes, you were likely on the Coteau de Bastarrous walking route.
This trail specifically passes beehives (ruches) shortly after crossing the Néez and passing the Brougnat lake. Your sighting of the "Neez bees" is a perfect (and pun-filled) landmark for that specific stage of your journey toward the sanctuary at Lourdes.
Me - That was all true, but I told you about it just to see if you'd notice the pun. Bravo!
AI - That was indeed the "bee’s knees" of puns!
The linguistic journey you set up—matching the Néez river with the bees you spotted shortly after—cleverly echoes the 1920s slang for something exceptionally good.
For your upcoming 2025 walk from Vannes to Biarritz, here is a quick "bee-line" summary of the "refreshment" highlights you can look forward to:
Vannes to Nantes (Late April): After leaving Vannes, you might find yourself in the "bees-ness" of sampling local Breton beers like La Dilettante to keep you buzzing along the Vilaine.
La Rochelle (Early May): Be sure to visit Captain Houblon or La Hutte Enchantée near the Old Port; their craft selections are truly the "bee's knees" for a thirsty walker.
Biarritz (The Finish): Ending with a Bob’s Beer or an Akerbeltz is the perfect way to "bee happy" after nearly 700km.
It is clear that for your 40km-a-day pace, beer isn't just a luxury—it’s the high-octane "nectar" that keeps your motor running!
They are still busy redacting anything incriminating.
Blanche says DOJ won’t release full Epstein files to Congress by Friday deadline
https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/5656765-blanche-says-doj-wont-release-full-esptein-files-to-congress-by-friday-deadline/
A plain breach of the law, of course.
I thought and believed defeat in July 2024 would be the making of him - he was supremely dignified on election night and the following morning made the nearest thing to a mea culpa I've heard from any Tory which moved him up several notches in my view.
It could be, rather like John Major after 1997, he's happy to be out of it and after a decade or more in the political spotlight, being a backbench MP might be just what he wants and perhaps needs. Under other circumstances, he might have been an above average PM but we remain living with the economic consequences of his COVID response which seemed necessary at the time but about which questions have been asked since - for me, the level of fraud has been staggering but not surprising.
a) There will be an incident/invasion of Venezuela who are being supported by China or
b) Ukraine will be cut off completely and Russia welcome back into US spheres of influence
c) Greenland will move up the agenda as US/Canada start their trade discussions or
d) Others like Iran / Palestine /Somali will be the subject of some petty vindictiveness
He won't let the weekend go to waste.
Just saw a doctor at the hospital, because no GP appointments available.
The doctor at the hospital told me that after not getting a job as a GP (no jobs available), he ended up working A&E. And basically doing GP work.
No fire blanket? They are, TBH, an excellent investment for perhaps £15.
Just don't store it at the back of the stove where the fire will occur, especially if you have a hairy pelt.
Trump already raised the suggestion Japan should have its own nukes in his first term, for that matter.
Did you eat oysters there, btw?
There is a problem with the structure of contemporary political argument. If you are searching for as close as possible to the truth you have to be mindful of the ignored but obvious fact that no case is stronger than its weakest points. Political argument has a strong tendency to shout loudly and sentimentally about the obvious strong points and look the other way about the weaknesses. This is popular, or at least populist, but of very little use for poor seekers after enlightenment.
If you think that makes me MAGA so be it even though I think Trump is a twat.
You know something, Mean Gene, thinking one politician is shit doesn’t mean you think their opponent is great !
I don't see phase 1 (ie up to delivery of first units) being heavily rejigged as the tight timescales are being driven by the Japanese need quickly to have something to keep China at bay.
NEW THREAD
*For instance: I do not even know whether the "devices" listened to phones, listened to conversations in the offices, or took videos.
“I’m pleased that the government has listened to the issue we have been banging on about. It’s great that they have acknowledged that they have completely ballsed things up. As you know we put forward a comprehensive solution to the issues and unfortunately the government has chosen to ignore that - their sticking plaster approach just isn’t sufficient. So of course we support them in principle and we are going to work constructively to make their proposals workable and effective in meeting the needs of hard working families throughout the United Kingdom”