Ref 29% + 1 Lab 21% + 3 Con 16% - 2 Green 14% + 1 LD 10% -2
Fieldwork 4th to 6th March
Badenoch working her magic touch.
She's been too gungho, especially given Trump's latest nonsense. Why send an aircraft carrier with all the cost and risk involved? Let him fight his own war.
Nonsense. We should have sent in our carrier right from the start.
Why?
We weren't part of the planning, such as objectives, rules of engagement or endgame.
No matter how vile the Iranian regime is, it isn't our war nor in our strategic interrst.
It is in our strategic interest to defeat the Iranian regime - one that has been targetting us and our interests for decades. Pathetically hiding behind others, like Ireland does, is weak, makes us a total irrelevance and undermines our credibility worldwide.
We are about to find out the geopolitical consequences of taking a back seat and putting our fingers in our ears, and it won't be pretty.
We won't be taken seriously again.
Remind me how America viewed us after we didn’t support them in the Vietnam war?
Yes, the idea even close allies get involved in every issue together or it means nothing is silly.
Would the relationship take a hit? Clearly so, but to put in slightly childish terms, they started that. That means we don't act beyond necessity or our direct interests to show them the value of treating allies like allies.
Ref 29% + 1 Lab 21% + 3 Con 16% - 2 Green 14% + 1 LD 10% -2
Fieldwork 4th to 6th March
Badenoch working her magic touch.
She's been too gungho, especially given Trump's latest nonsense. Why send an aircraft carrier with all the cost and risk involved? Let him fight his own war.
Nonsense. We should have sent in our carrier right from the start.
Why?
We weren't part of the planning, such as objectives, rules of engagement or endgame.
No matter how vile the Iranian regime is, it isn't our war nor in our strategic interrst.
It is in our strategic interest to defeat the Iranian regime - one that has been targetting us and our interests for decades. Pathetically hiding behind others, like Ireland does, is weak, makes us a total irrelevance and undermines our credibility worldwide.
We are about to find out the geopolitical consequences of taking a back seat and putting our fingers in our ears, and it won't be pretty.
We won't be taken seriously again.
Ukraine should be the Western priority right now, and the war of choice that the US has launched on Iran has led to more Patriot interceptors being used in a week than have been supplied to Ukraine over four years. At the same time Russian oil sales to India and China have soared with a massively boosted oil price.
This war on Iran is a massive gift to Russia. It harms British interests.
If Ukraine had been helped to win against Russia already then the calculus would be different, but as it is this war is massively self-harming.
And if China identifies US weakness as a result of this war and moves to take Taiwan then this war will be seen as an even more catastrophic unforced error.
I don't agree. I think both are.
We've been trying to contain Iran for 47 years. It's been a major exporter of terror and instability right across the region.
It needs defeating once and for all and, now it's started, I think we must be influencing those decisions.
I'm not saying Iran is unimportant or ignorable, but Britain and the US decided in WWII that they had to prioritise, and didn't add the USSR to their list of adversaries.
The war on Iran has already helped Russia in its war against Ukraine. It will make the US weaker and less able to defend Taiwan against China.
My fear is it will be seen in the future as a major turning-point in the decline of US power. And the truth is that Britain made itself irrelevant to the decision to go to war due to decades of penny-pinching on defence. Britain is irrelevant due to its weakness, not because it hasn't joined in.
‘but Britain and the US decided in WWII that they had to prioritise, and didn't add the USSR to their list of adversaries’
Would have been a bit awks as Britain and the USSR were already officially allied before perennial latecomers USA joined the party.
In early1940 we were planning to send aid to Finland to fight off Stalin, indeed that was part of the reason for the Narvik campaign. At that point it really did look as if we would be fighting both Hitler and Stalin at the same time, as a result of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact.
Hitler was supporting the Finns wasn't he? One of the reasons Finland had to hand over so much territory IIRC.
I think Hitlers support of the Finns came later, at the time Stalin was given a free hand in Finland and the Baltic States.
Meek is cowardly hiding behind inaction and inactivity until it's all over.
It's far better to be inside the tent and influencing decisions. And, yes, the US and Israel can be influenced.
The only people who have any influence over Trump are fellow autocrats who he admires, and people willing to give him huge bribes. I see absolutely no evidence that Trump is influenced by the opionions of western democractic governments making reasoned arguments. In fact he seems to take any opposition from such parties as an offence against him personally.
We just need to face facts. The special relationship is over. We can't trust Trump and the US. The US is no longer an ally by any meaningful defenition of the word.
The underlying institutions and relationships remain strong. But until Trump and his ilk are chased from office we should follow St Dunstan’s strategy
Isreal wants a failed state and couldn’t care less if there’s a civil war in Iran .
Yes I've seen that suggestions a few times. Israel does not want a secular democratic-ish Iran emerging, and becoming in time the dominant power in the region. Imagine a stronger Turkey. It would almost certainly threaten Israel by merely existing as a counterbalance.
The latest Conservative Home Affairs mailshot arrives from Mr Philp. I remain not a fan.
Some of these are PR, kneejerks or issues upon Conservative Governments made decisions to do nothing over a period of years, despite lobbying, including when Chris Philp was Minister of State for Crime, Policing and Justice from 2022 to 2024. In some cases suitable laws were in place, in others they had passed bad laws in the past.
I'm struck by the implied contradiction of the third and last items on the power of AI-assisted cameras. They will catch 24,000 criminals but their ANPR cousins can't cope with small variations from the standard number plate. Maybe they should perfect using AI to read number plates first.
I'm not terribly impressed by Luke Tryl's political analysis in general and this effort is misleading.
He makes big play of the Lab/Con split now but that's just polling - if he included polling and not just actual elections he would likely find other periods when the Lab/Con vote was depressed. In 1981-82, there were polls putting the Allance well in front and with Lab/Con combined barely at 50%. In the mid-80s, it was a little higher but we had plenty of polls in that period when Labour, Conservative and Alliance were all around 30% - I think famously there was one three way tie at 31%.
As recently as June 2019, there were polls showing Lab/Con in the high 30s in the period just before Theresa May resigned so this is nothing new.
The key is whether this depressed value will remain the case up to and including the 2029 GE - history shows it won't and it remains to be seen whether Reform and Green are simply feeding on midterm and general disillusionment rather than marking a seismic re-alignment.
We sometimes disagree. On this, we do not. There is too much assignment of permanancy to a fluctuating landscape and too much ignoring previously well established patterns. People, generally, still think its 2 or 3 years till they go to the polls again
Ref 29% + 1 Lab 21% + 3 Con 16% - 2 Green 14% + 1 LD 10% -2
Fieldwork 4th to 6th March
Badenoch working her magic touch.
She's been too gungho, especially given Trump's latest nonsense. Why send an aircraft carrier with all the cost and risk involved? Let him fight his own war.
Nonsense. We should have sent in our carrier right from the start.
Why?
We weren't part of the planning, such as objectives, rules of engagement or endgame.
No matter how vile the Iranian regime is, it isn't our war nor in our strategic interrst.
It is in our strategic interest to defeat the Iranian regime - one that has been targetting us and our interests for decades. Pathetically hiding behind others, like Ireland does, is weak, makes us a total irrelevance and undermines our credibility worldwide.
We are about to find out the geopolitical consequences of taking a back seat and putting our fingers in our ears, and it won't be pretty.
We won't be taken seriously again.
Ukraine should be the Western priority right now, and the war of choice that the US has launched on Iran has led to more Patriot interceptors being used in a week than have been supplied to Ukraine over four years. At the same time Russian oil sales to India and China have soared with a massively boosted oil price.
This war on Iran is a massive gift to Russia. It harms British interests.
If Ukraine had been helped to win against Russia already then the calculus would be different, but as it is this war is massively self-harming.
And if China identifies US weakness as a result of this war and moves to take Taiwan then this war will be seen as an even more catastrophic unforced error.
I don't agree. I think both are.
We've been trying to contain Iran for 47 years. It's been a major exporter of terror and instability right across the region.
It needs defeating once and for all and, now it's started, I think we must be influencing those decisions.
I'm not saying Iran is unimportant or ignorable, but Britain and the US decided in WWII that they had to prioritise, and didn't add the USSR to their list of adversaries.
The war on Iran has already helped Russia in its war against Ukraine. It will make the US weaker and less able to defend Taiwan against China.
My fear is it will be seen in the future as a major turning-point in the decline of US power. And the truth is that Britain made itself irrelevant to the decision to go to war due to decades of penny-pinching on defence. Britain is irrelevant due to its weakness, not because it hasn't joined in.
‘but Britain and the US decided in WWII that they had to prioritise, and didn't add the USSR to their list of adversaries’
Would have been a bit awks as Britain and the USSR were already officially allied before perennial latecomers USA joined the party.
In early1940 we were planning to send aid to Finland to fight off Stalin, indeed that was part of the reason for the Narvik campaign. At that point it really did look as if we would be fighting both Hitler and Stalin at the same time, as a result of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact.
And yet 18 months later thanks to AH and fulsome propagandising by HMG, we were snuggling up to Uncle Joe and breathlessly following the battles of our brave, noble allies, the Red Army. A year and a half is an eternity in geopolitics.
Yes, that switch was a great inspiration to Orwell when writing 1984. The BBC was the model for the Ministry of Truth. Also the British Communists who switched seamlessly from "Peace Now!" to "Second Front Now!" overnight.
"Israel's military has issued a warning to Iran that it will continue pursuing every successor of the country's deceased supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei."
Trump wants to appoint him, then Israel will try to kill him.
Wonder who is in charge then? J D Vance in the background? Behind the sofa?
Vance is staying away from this, as far as he possibly can, so that he still has a platform for 2028 when the Middle East ends up more pear-shaped than it is already.
The difference between UK and US is that in the UK it's the centre and left opposing intervention; in the US a good slice of the right is, as well.
A chunk of the right in the UK opposes it as well. Starmer has, characteristically, ended up in a reasonable place in the most cack-handed way possible.
I don't usually go in for conspiracy theories but if Blair's intervention wasn't intended as a boost for Starmer what was it? My guess is it'll put at least a couple of points on Starmer's rastings and possibly hold off a leadership challenge which I'd heard was coming in May. Even announcing it was made at a private meeting makes it stronger
If It wasn't a set up it makes no sense. Blair must be the least trusted person on when to go to war and who with in the whole of the UK.
The simplest explanation is twofold:
1 Like many other residents of Dunruling, Blair craves the attention and importance. See Maggie after 1990 for the template.
2 An American war in the Middle East destroyed his premiership, but he's never acknowledged his screwup there. And now he sees his successor (and in most ways, inferior) ignore him and take a different path... That can't be easy.
I don't know if this is the right link but Yvette Cooper thinks Tony Blair is a wanker (join the club). My words not hers. AlJazeerah'is thew only station worth looking at for Iran watchers. the BBC is completely hopeless
I don't usually go in for conspiracy theories but if Blair's intervention wasn't intended as a boost for Starmer what was it? My guess is it'll put at least a couple of points on Starmer's rastings and possibly hold off a leadership challenge which I'd heard was coming in May. Even announcing it was made at a private meeting makes it stronger
If It wasn't a set up it makes no sense. Blair must be the least trusted person on when to go to war and who with in the whole of the UK.
The simplest explanation is twofold:
1 Like many other residents of Dunruling, Blair craves the attention and importance. See Maggie after 1990 for the template.
2 An American war in the Middle East destroyed his premiership, but he's never acknowledged his screwup there. And now he sees his successor (and in most ways, inferior) ignore him and take a different path... That can't be easy.
Compared to Blair, Maggie went into seclusion.
But that was partly down to her slide into dementia.
I'm not terribly impressed by Luke Tryl's political analysis in general and this effort is misleading.
He makes big play of the Lab/Con split now but that's just polling - if he included polling and not just actual elections he would likely find other periods when the Lab/Con vote was depressed. In 1981-82, there were polls putting the Allance well in front and with Lab/Con combined barely at 50%. In the mid-80s, it was a little higher but we had plenty of polls in that period when Labour, Conservative and Alliance were all around 30% - I think famously there was one three way tie at 31%.
As recently as June 2019, there were polls showing Lab/Con in the high 30s in the period just before Theresa May resigned so this is nothing new.
The key is whether this depressed value will remain the case up to and including the 2029 GE - history shows it won't and it remains to be seen whether Reform and Green are simply feeding on midterm and general disillusionment rather than marking a seismic re-alignment.
We sometimes disagree. On this, we do not. There is too much assignment of permanancy to a fluctuating landscape and too much ignoring previously well established patterns. People, generally, still think its 2 or 3 years till they go to the polls again
It could well be the 2029 UK General Election will be analogous to the 1973 Danish election (there have been others in Europe) where well-established parties have been swept aside by insurgents and even with FPTP (arguably especially if the numbers are right) that could happen.
Imagine a Conservative Party with 50 MPs, imagine Labour with less than 100 - it's barely conceivable.
The other part to this is the extent of local organisation - yes, you can run local Council by-election campaigns with a small group of activists (I did it myself in the dim and distant) but a GE is several orders of magnitude different.
How many seats will each of the five main parties fight in England next time - I don't mean, put up candidates, but seriously contest. Finger in the air but I suspect the LDs will fight 100-125 to some degree, the Conservatives 150-200 perhaps but what of Reform, Green and especially Labour?
IMHO, you'd have to be borderline certifiable to have a strong view on the next GE - the predictions for this May are incoherent in extremis - the latest nonsense in the Guardian fails even basic analysis (the seat count is wrong to start with) and is more about expectations mismanagement - let's talk up the Greens so when they win 250 London seats rather than 500 we can call Polanski a failure - seriously?
Ref 29% + 1 Lab 21% + 3 Con 16% - 2 Green 14% + 1 LD 10% -2
Fieldwork 4th to 6th March
Badenoch working her magic touch.
She's been too gungho, especially given Trump's latest nonsense. Why send an aircraft carrier with all the cost and risk involved? Let him fight his own war.
Nonsense. We should have sent in our carrier right from the start.
We'd have a sunker Carrier and Body Bags returning home now if we had and who would YOU have been blaming.
NOT OUR WAR!
Stay Out!
Our ex pats in the region are exactly that ex-pats , many of them there to slag off our Country , how great they are and how crap the UK is, they made their bed, tough shit. The genuine majority should be helped and supported and it;s up to Gulf States to protect them. We should offer support no more. NON aggressive support.
Holidaymakers should and are being helped and slowly getting out!
Lets remind everyone of one FACT!
One drone has fallen on a soverign UK air base. The most accurate reports suggest it was Russian made, fired by Hezbollah probably from remote Labanon area!
RAF and others are now intercepting drone, you CANNOT stop every drone and Badenoch and Farage cannot be allowed to ghoulishly cheer any drone that falls as some sort of sick excuse for their desperation to go to war!
I saw your name. And then instantly skipped over your shite and didn't read it.
As usual.
I out your shite for the shite it is.
You’re a dullard, a party hack, and an anti semite. Worse, you’re boring
Ref 29% + 1 Lab 21% + 3 Con 16% - 2 Green 14% + 1 LD 10% -2
Fieldwork 4th to 6th March
Badenoch working her magic touch.
She's been too gungho, especially given Trump's latest nonsense. Why send an aircraft carrier with all the cost and risk involved? Let him fight his own war.
Nonsense. We should have sent in our carrier right from the start.
Why?
We weren't part of the planning, such as objectives, rules of engagement or endgame.
No matter how vile the Iranian regime is, it isn't our war nor in our strategic interrst.
It is in our strategic interest to defeat the Iranian regime - one that has been targetting us and our interests for decades. Pathetically hiding behind others, like Ireland does, is weak, makes us a total irrelevance and undermines our credibility worldwide.
We are about to find out the geopolitical consequences of taking a back seat and putting our fingers in our ears, and it won't be pretty.
We won't be taken seriously again.
Ukraine should be the Western priority right now, and the war of choice that the US has launched on Iran has led to more Patriot interceptors being used in a week than have been supplied to Ukraine over four years. At the same time Russian oil sales to India and China have soared with a massively boosted oil price.
This war on Iran is a massive gift to Russia. It harms British interests.
If Ukraine had been helped to win against Russia already then the calculus would be different, but as it is this war is massively self-harming.
And if China identifies US weakness as a result of this war and moves to take Taiwan then this war will be seen as an even more catastrophic unforced error.
I don't agree. I think both are.
We've been trying to contain Iran for 47 years. It's been a major exporter of terror and instability right across the region.
It needs defeating once and for all and, now it's started, I think we must be influencing those decisions.
I'm not saying Iran is unimportant or ignorable, but Britain and the US decided in WWII that they had to prioritise, and didn't add the USSR to their list of adversaries.
The war on Iran has already helped Russia in its war against Ukraine. It will make the US weaker and less able to defend Taiwan against China.
My fear is it will be seen in the future as a major turning-point in the decline of US power. And the truth is that Britain made itself irrelevant to the decision to go to war due to decades of penny-pinching on defence. Britain is irrelevant due to its weakness, not because it hasn't joined in.
‘but Britain and the US decided in WWII that they had to prioritise, and didn't add the USSR to their list of adversaries’
Would have been a bit awks as Britain and the USSR were already officially allied before perennial latecomers USA joined the party.
In early1940 we were planning to send aid to Finland to fight off Stalin, indeed that was part of the reason for the Narvik campaign. At that point it really did look as if we would be fighting both Hitler and Stalin at the same time, as a result of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact.
And yet 18 months later thanks to AH and fulsome propagandising by HMG, we were snuggling up to Uncle Joe and breathlessly following the battles of our brave, noble allies, the Red Army. A year and a half is an eternity in geopolitics.
Yes, that switch was a great inspiration to Orwell when writing 1984. The BBC was the model for the Ministry of Truth. Also the British Communists who switched seamlessly from "Peace Now!" to "Second Front Now!" overnight.
Also his schooldays at a detested prep school in Sussex and his time in the Indian Imperial Police. And of course the real life contemporaneous nightmares of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia that he fought against and Stalinist Spain that he fought in.
All these influences come together remarkably in one of the greatest books of all time.
The latest Conservative Home Affairs mailshot arrives from Mr Philp. I remain not a fan.
Some of these are PR, kneejerks or issues upon Conservative Governments made decisions to do nothing over a period of years, despite lobbying, including when Chris Philp was Minister of State for Crime, Policing and Justice from 2022 to 2024. In some cases suitable laws were in place, in others they had passed bad laws in the past.
I'm struck by the implied contradiction of the third and last items on the power of AI-assisted cameras. They will catch 24,000 criminals but their ANPR cousins can't cope with small variations from the standard number plate. Maybe they should perfect using AI to read number plates first.
I love how a full on surveillance state is added as a minor item in that for a relatively small gain.
And again - what exactly stopped the Tories from doing all that is 2022/3/4.
The first tranche of nonce pal docs are (over)due. Labour will probably try and sneak them out this week whilst everyone is distracted by the Special Relationship being 'special'
If Starmer had the bottle this would be the perfect time for him to declare this war illegal. Hr could make the case that if the invasion of Ukraine is illegal so is this one. He could call a meeting of the UN and make a name for himself. All significant countries in Europe are against it.
Except that is complete and utter bullshit.
Ukraine never attacked or threatened Russia. Iran has repeatedly attacked and threatened Israel.
Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons. Iran is developing nuclear weapons.
I get you hate Israel and would not care if a mushroom cloud appeared above Tel Aviv, but the two situations are not remotely comparable.
Ref 29% + 1 Lab 21% + 3 Con 16% - 2 Green 14% + 1 LD 10% -2
Fieldwork 4th to 6th March
Badenoch working her magic touch.
She's been too gungho, especially given Trump's latest nonsense. Why send an aircraft carrier with all the cost and risk involved? Let him fight his own war.
Nonsense. We should have sent in our carrier right from the start.
We'd have a sunker Carrier and Body Bags returning home now if we had and who would YOU have been blaming.
NOT OUR WAR!
Stay Out!
Our ex pats in the region are exactly that ex-pats , many of them there to slag off our Country , how great they are and how crap the UK is, they made their bed, tough shit. The genuine majority should be helped and supported and it;s up to Gulf States to protect them. We should offer support no more. NON aggressive support.
Holidaymakers should and are being helped and slowly getting out!
Lets remind everyone of one FACT!
One drone has fallen on a soverign UK air base. The most accurate reports suggest it was Russian made, fired by Hezbollah probably from remote Labanon area!
RAF and others are now intercepting drone, you CANNOT stop every drone and Badenoch and Farage cannot be allowed to ghoulishly cheer any drone that falls as some sort of sick excuse for their desperation to go to war!
Every drone that stops another Kuwait City tower from burning is a win - that will be appreciated in the region.
We didn't start the war. But we shouldn't sit on our hands either if we can help prevent damage.
Personally, I'd extend that to hunting down the launch sites within Iran too. But I appreciate that is further than some would go. Happy for that subject to be debated in Parliament.
If Kuwait wants to stop drones being launched at Kuwait, then Kuwait can bomb the launch sites. Likewise UAE, Qatar and Bahrain. We can sell them the hardware.
So, you'd let the shaheed drones slam into civilian infrastructure? Even though we could help stop that?
Noted.
Russian drones are slamming into civilian infrastructure in Ukraine and we’re not attacking Russia. Israeli and US missiles are slamming into civilian infrastructure in Iran and we’re not attacking them. Life is somewhat more complicated than you’re painting it.
We have done what we can to assist Ukraine. We have sent them the DragonFire laser system to shoot down drones. Unlike the US, the UK isn't giving Russia an easy ride for giving up on democracy and committing war crimes on an industrial scale - 300,000 logged incidents and counting.
Great. So we can do the same for the Gulf states. We don’t have to start bombing Iran.
We have provided Ukraine with StormShadow cruise missiles. That thy use to bomb Russian command and control centres and weapons caches. Within Russia.
Would you not use our StormShadow cruise missiles to bomb known Iranian shaheed drone caches in Iran? Do you not see how inconsistent you appear?
I would very much like to disagree with this, but I am struggling.
Look folks, reality can sometimes be hard to accept.
We all want freedom for Iran. The regime was a horrible, nasty pack of religious zealots for whom terrorism & murder was always the first option. Their revolution started by killing 400 people in a theater with arson & chained exit doors. They sent thousand of kids to their deaths with toy keys around their necks promising entry to heaven if they just walk in to Iraqi minefields.
I’ve tracked IRGC terrorism across Iraq, Lebanon, Syria & Yemen and even fought them in the PG, They almost killed me in 1988. The Islamic regime needed/still needs to be destroyed … that said:
People are getting upset with why I assess this war will likely fail to topple the regime.
Because it is a fantasy based in Trump’s head using lethal tools we prepared for 47 years for the right moment. That moment likely has passed.
Trump has no idea what he’s doing. Because he has contempt for the people who know what they’re doing & the history of what came before him.
If Afghanistan is the graveyard of empires then Iran is the funeral home of empires. It dresses you up and lays you into the coffin neatly. Then closes the lid.
Trump cannot understand why Iran hasn’t surrendered … “Lookit all them bombs,” he shouts “They should all love Trump!”
That’s it. That’s the Iran-War strategy. He does not care about the people of Iran. It a score settling grudge match egged on by Netanyahu’s 40 years of promises that war will change the regime if we just drop enough bombs & assassinate its leaders.
So If you want to live in a fantasy world where we are suddenly being greeted as liberators by the 93 million Iranians … feel free.
You are now set up for earth shattering disappointment.
You have to account for the fact that Trump could have attacked in support of the protesters in January. He didn’t & he let them be killed. He was completely indifferent. The 30k dead were a one-day talking point.
Right now, none of these attacks will liberate Iran without a populist uprising or invading ground forces. Worse case is a sectarian Civil war. If that happens the only outcome is that it will kill a lot of people, splinter the country & take down the global economy. Trump will sleep soundly & demand he be made Ayatollah.
This is literally his mental illness masked as foreign policy
This war may give some Iranians hope but it’s a false one. Gird for a horrible chain of dramatic events but rest assured Trump doesn’t care about the people of Iran.
He only want its oil. He said so.
I’m sorry folks, but my job is to deliver reality based assessments, not promise you sunshine in a swirling hurricane of flying bullets, bombs, excrement & razor wire. https://x.com/MalcolmNance/status/2030572269898998102
Isreal wants a failed state and couldn’t care less if there’s a civil war in Iran .
And if there’s a refugee crisis which spills into Europe the same right wing Trump lapdogs like Farage who supported the war will then use the refugee crisis to hammer the government.
And use the adverse economic and financial impact to hammer the government. Similar to how Putin's invasion of Ukraine stoked inflation and helped his pal Trump win the 2024 US presidential election.
Ref 29% + 1 Lab 21% + 3 Con 16% - 2 Green 14% + 1 LD 10% -2
Fieldwork 4th to 6th March
Badenoch working her magic touch.
She's been too gungho, especially given Trump's latest nonsense. Why send an aircraft carrier with all the cost and risk involved? Let him fight his own war.
Nonsense. We should have sent in our carrier right from the start.
We'd have a sunker Carrier and Body Bags returning home now if we had and who would YOU have been blaming.
NOT OUR WAR!
Stay Out!
Our ex pats in the region are exactly that ex-pats , many of them there to slag off our Country , how great they are and how crap the UK is, they made their bed, tough shit. The genuine majority should be helped and supported and it;s up to Gulf States to protect them. We should offer support no more. NON aggressive support.
Holidaymakers should and are being helped and slowly getting out!
Lets remind everyone of one FACT!
One drone has fallen on a soverign UK air base. The most accurate reports suggest it was Russian made, fired by Hezbollah probably from remote Labanon area!
RAF and others are now intercepting drone, you CANNOT stop every drone and Badenoch and Farage cannot be allowed to ghoulishly cheer any drone that falls as some sort of sick excuse for their desperation to go to war!
Every drone that stops another Kuwait City tower from burning is a win - that will be appreciated in the region.
We didn't start the war. But we shouldn't sit on our hands either if we can help prevent damage.
Personally, I'd extend that to hunting down the launch sites within Iran too. But I appreciate that is further than some would go. Happy for that subject to be debated in Parliament.
How much value can we really add to the efforts though, realistically? Our contributions often seem tokenistic at best, so the crashout by the White House seems, in typical fashion, excessive.
We aren't adding anything to the efforts of the Americans and the Israelis though. We are adding to the efforts to protect our friends (and commercial partners) in the Gulf Cooperation Council. It is in our long-term interests for them to see we stand with them, to do what we can to help them reduce the damage to their countries.
We clearly have very little control over the US and Israeli war aims. We can - admittedly in a limited way - provide some cover to assist the destruction being inflicted upon the GCC by a veangeful and frankly demented Iranian "regime" - to the extent that still functions as such. Our efforts will be appreciated in Dubai and Muscat and Dohar, even though we get no thanks (or worse, actively ridiculed) in Washington and Tel Aviv.
You can still think "Fuck Israel. Fuck the USA." whilst doing what we can to help the consequences on the tens of thousands of Brits in the region under threat as ex-pats or as holidaymakers.
I'm not terribly impressed by Luke Tryl's political analysis in general and this effort is misleading.
He makes big play of the Lab/Con split now but that's just polling - if he included polling and not just actual elections he would likely find other periods when the Lab/Con vote was depressed. In 1981-82, there were polls putting the Allance well in front and with Lab/Con combined barely at 50%. In the mid-80s, it was a little higher but we had plenty of polls in that period when Labour, Conservative and Alliance were all around 30% - I think famously there was one three way tie at 31%.
As recently as June 2019, there were polls showing Lab/Con in the high 30s in the period just before Theresa May resigned so this is nothing new.
The key is whether this depressed value will remain the case up to and including the 2029 GE - history shows it won't and it remains to be seen whether Reform and Green are simply feeding on midterm and general disillusionment rather than marking a seismic re-alignment.
We sometimes disagree. On this, we do not. There is too much assignment of permanancy to a fluctuating landscape and too much ignoring previously well established patterns. People, generally, still think its 2 or 3 years till they go to the polls again
It could well be the 2029 UK General Election will be analogous to the 1973 Danish election (there have been others in Europe) where well-established parties have been swept aside by insurgents and even with FPTP (arguably especially if the numbers are right) that could happen.
Imagine a Conservative Party with 50 MPs, imagine Labour with less than 100 - it's barely conceivable.
The other part to this is the extent of local organisation - yes, you can run local Council by-election campaigns with a small group of activists (I did it myself in the dim and distant) but a GE is several orders of magnitude different.
How many seats will each of the five main parties fight in England next time - I don't mean, put up candidates, but seriously contest. Finger in the air but I suspect the LDs will fight 100-125 to some degree, the Conservatives 150-200 perhaps but what of Reform, Green and especially Labour?
IMHO, you'd have to be borderline certifiable to have a strong view on the next GE - the predictions for this May are incoherent in extremis - the latest nonsense in the Guardian fails even basic analysis (the seat count is wrong to start with) and is more about expectations mismanagement - let's talk up the Greens so when they win 250 London seats rather than 500 we can call Polanski a failure - seriously?
Labour have the biggest problem - the Sunak problem of trying to mass defend a landslide (large maj in Rishus case) whilst (possibly) deeply unpopular I agree the Tories maybe have 200 on radar and the LDs low 100 Reform? Who knows.... i imagine theyll just try and do broad areas of strength? Greens should be working on 50 to 75 or theyll risk doing a Reform 24 and getting a handful only
The LE projections are bizarre. Some of the predicted vote shares in Norfolk wards ive looked at are childishly bad
I don't usually go in for conspiracy theories but if Blair's intervention wasn't intended as a boost for Starmer what was it? My guess is it'll put at least a couple of points on Starmer's rastings and possibly hold off a leadership challenge which I'd heard was coming in May. Even announcing it was made at a private meeting makes it stronger
If It wasn't a set up it makes no sense. Blair must be the least trusted person on when to go to war and who with in the whole of the UK.
The simplest explanation is twofold:
1 Like many other residents of Dunruling, Blair craves the attention and importance. See Maggie after 1990 for the template.
2 An American war in the Middle East destroyed his premiership, but he's never acknowledged his screwup there. And now he sees his successor (and in most ways, inferior) ignore him and take a different path... That can't be easy.
Compared to Blair, Maggie went into seclusion.
But that was partly down to her slide into dementia.
It's such a crime what the Israelis are doing to Lebanon.It is one of the nicest places in the world with a really beautiful gentle population They deserve so much better than their grotesque belligerent neighbours and their American allies. It makes me so angry. Just watch some of the interviews with the young population. They use three languages often in a single conversation. They go from English to french to Arabic. The f***ing Israelis have just bombed the Ramada Hotel which is in the Christian area. They are gung-ho morons.
I would very much like to disagree with this, but I am struggling.
Look folks, reality can sometimes be hard to accept.
We all want freedom for Iran. The regime was a horrible, nasty pack of religious zealots for whom terrorism & murder was always the first option. Their revolution started by killing 400 people in a theater with arson & chained exit doors. They sent thousand of kids to their deaths with toy keys around their necks promising entry to heaven if they just walk in to Iraqi minefields.
I’ve tracked IRGC terrorism across Iraq, Lebanon, Syria & Yemen and even fought them in the PG, They almost killed me in 1988. The Islamic regime needed/still needs to be destroyed … that said:
People are getting upset with why I assess this war will likely fail to topple the regime.
Because it is a fantasy based in Trump’s head using lethal tools we prepared for 47 years for the right moment. That moment likely has passed.
Trump has no idea what he’s doing. Because he has contempt for the people who know what they’re doing & the history of what came before him.
If Afghanistan is the graveyard of empires then Iran is the funeral home of empires. It dresses you up and lays you into the coffin neatly. Then closes the lid.
Trump cannot understand why Iran hasn’t surrendered … “Lookit all them bombs,” he shouts “They should all love Trump!”
That’s it. That’s the Iran-War strategy. He does not care about the people of Iran. It a score settling grudge match egged on by Netanyahu’s 40 years of promises that war will change the regime if we just drop enough bombs & assassinate its leaders.
So If you want to live in a fantasy world where we are suddenly being greeted as liberators by the 93 million Iranians … feel free.
You are now set up for earth shattering disappointment.
You have to account for the fact that Trump could have attacked in support of the protesters in January. He didn’t & he let them be killed. He was completely indifferent. The 30k dead were a one-day talking point.
Right now, none of these attacks will liberate Iran without a populist uprising or invading ground forces. Worse case is a sectarian Civil war. If that happens the only outcome is that it will kill a lot of people, splinter the country & take down the global economy. Trump will sleep soundly & demand he be made Ayatollah.
This is literally his mental illness masked as foreign policy
This war may give some Iranians hope but it’s a false one. Gird for a horrible chain of dramatic events but rest assured Trump doesn’t care about the people of Iran.
He only want its oil. He said so.
I’m sorry folks, but my job is to deliver reality based assessments, not promise you sunshine in a swirling hurricane of flying bullets, bombs, excrement & razor wire. https://x.com/MalcolmNance/status/2030572269898998102
The latest Conservative Home Affairs mailshot arrives from Mr Philp. I remain not a fan.
Some of these are PR, kneejerks or issues upon Conservative Governments made decisions to do nothing over a period of years, despite lobbying, including when Chris Philp was Minister of State for Crime, Policing and Justice from 2022 to 2024. In some cases suitable laws were in place, in others they had passed bad laws in the past.
I'm struck by the implied contradiction of the third and last items on the power of AI-assisted cameras. They will catch 24,000 criminals but their ANPR cousins can't cope with small variations from the standard number plate. Maybe they should perfect using AI to read number plates first.
I love how a full on surveillance state is added as a minor item in that for a relatively small gain.
And again - what exactly stopped the Tories from doing all that is 2022/3/4.
Then, they were constrained by the reality of government. (Even Boris couldn't outflannel that.) Now, they can say any old nonsense to shore up their support, safe in the knowledge that they won't win next time and so won't have to implement it.
Nothing wrong with that- it's a key compensation for being irrelevant. As long as they realise that it's what they're doing, and the electorate aren't forced into giving them a big win faute de mieux.
Isreal wants a failed state and couldn’t care less if there’s a civil war in Iran .
And if there’s a refugee crisis which spills into Europe the same right wing Trump lapdogs like Farage who supported the war will then use the refugee crisis to hammer the government.
Seems reasonable.
Why should we care if there is a civil war in Iran?
A failed state and civil war would be a huge improvement on the IRGC.
Hopefully liberal Iranians can win the civil war, but it needs to be in Iranian hands.
If Blair's intervention helps keep Starmer in place I'm all for it .
Blair was right about standing shoulder to shoulder with the US. And, quite frankly, Bush was right about the Axis of Evil too.
We are about to find out the consequences of not doing that, which will play out over years - not just months.
Standing shoulder to shoulder with Bush destroyed Blair, you can only imagine what standing shoulder to shoulder with Trump would do to anyone. The majority of UK voters loathe the moron
The way Trump has behaved to the UK - tariffs, insults, bullying, belittling our past help etc - makes him undeserving of our unconditional support. You cannot behave has he has and then expect everyone to come running when it suits him.
Ref 29% + 1 Lab 21% + 3 Con 16% - 2 Green 14% + 1 LD 10% -2
Fieldwork 4th to 6th March
Badenoch working her magic touch.
She's been too gungho, especially given Trump's latest nonsense. Why send an aircraft carrier with all the cost and risk involved? Let him fight his own war.
Nonsense. We should have sent in our carrier right from the start.
We'd have a sunker Carrier and Body Bags returning home now if we had and who would YOU have been blaming.
NOT OUR WAR!
Stay Out!
Our ex pats in the region are exactly that ex-pats , many of them there to slag off our Country , how great they are and how crap the UK is, they made their bed, tough shit. The genuine majority should be helped and supported and it;s up to Gulf States to protect them. We should offer support no more. NON aggressive support.
Holidaymakers should and are being helped and slowly getting out!
Lets remind everyone of one FACT!
One drone has fallen on a soverign UK air base. The most accurate reports suggest it was Russian made, fired by Hezbollah probably from remote Labanon area!
RAF and others are now intercepting drone, you CANNOT stop every drone and Badenoch and Farage cannot be allowed to ghoulishly cheer any drone that falls as some sort of sick excuse for their desperation to go to war!
Every drone that stops another Kuwait City tower from burning is a win - that will be appreciated in the region.
We didn't start the war. But we shouldn't sit on our hands either if we can help prevent damage.
Personally, I'd extend that to hunting down the launch sites within Iran too. But I appreciate that is further than some would go. Happy for that subject to be debated in Parliament.
If Kuwait wants to stop drones being launched at Kuwait, then Kuwait can bomb the launch sites. Likewise UAE, Qatar and Bahrain. We can sell them the hardware.
So, you'd let the shaheed drones slam into civilian infrastructure? Even though we could help stop that?
Noted.
Russian drones are slamming into civilian infrastructure in Ukraine and we’re not attacking Russia. Israeli and US missiles are slamming into civilian infrastructure in Iran and we’re not attacking them. Life is somewhat more complicated than you’re painting it.
We have done what we can to assist Ukraine. We have sent them the DragonFire laser system to shoot down drones. Unlike the US, the UK isn't giving Russia an easy ride for giving up on democracy and committing war crimes on an industrial scale - 300,000 logged incidents and counting.
Great. So we can do the same for the Gulf states. We don’t have to start bombing Iran.
We have provided Ukraine with StormShadow cruise missiles. That thy use to bomb Russian command and control centres and weapons caches. Within Russia.
Would you not use our StormShadow cruise missiles to bomb known Iranian shaheed drone caches in Iran? Do you not see how inconsistent you appear?
We can sell Storm Shadow to UAE.
Will that make you feel morally superior? Putting a different badge on them?
Ref 29% + 1 Lab 21% + 3 Con 16% - 2 Green 14% + 1 LD 10% -2
Fieldwork 4th to 6th March
Badenoch working her magic touch.
She's been too gungho, especially given Trump's latest nonsense. Why send an aircraft carrier with all the cost and risk involved? Let him fight his own war.
Nonsense. We should have sent in our carrier right from the start.
Why?
We weren't part of the planning, such as objectives, rules of engagement or endgame.
No matter how vile the Iranian regime is, it isn't our war nor in our strategic interrst.
It is in our strategic interest to defeat the Iranian regime - one that has been targetting us and our interests for decades. Pathetically hiding behind others, like Ireland does, is weak, makes us a total irrelevance and undermines our credibility worldwide.
We are about to find out the geopolitical consequences of taking a back seat and putting our fingers in our ears, and it won't be pretty.
We won't be taken seriously again.
Ukraine should be the Western priority right now, and the war of choice that the US has launched on Iran has led to more Patriot interceptors being used in a week than have been supplied to Ukraine over four years. At the same time Russian oil sales to India and China have soared with a massively boosted oil price.
This war on Iran is a massive gift to Russia. It harms British interests.
If Ukraine had been helped to win against Russia already then the calculus would be different, but as it is this war is massively self-harming.
And if China identifies US weakness as a result of this war and moves to take Taiwan then this war will be seen as an even more catastrophic unforced error.
I don't agree. I think both are.
We've been trying to contain Iran for 47 years. It's been a major exporter of terror and instability right across the region.
It needs defeating once and for all and, now it's started, I think we must be influencing those decisions.
I'm not saying Iran is unimportant or ignorable, but Britain and the US decided in WWII that they had to prioritise, and didn't add the USSR to their list of adversaries.
The war on Iran has already helped Russia in its war against Ukraine. It will make the US weaker and less able to defend Taiwan against China.
My fear is it will be seen in the future as a major turning-point in the decline of US power. And the truth is that Britain made itself irrelevant to the decision to go to war due to decades of penny-pinching on defence. Britain is irrelevant due to its weakness, not because it hasn't joined in.
‘but Britain and the US decided in WWII that they had to prioritise, and didn't add the USSR to their list of adversaries’
Would have been a bit awks as Britain and the USSR were already officially allied before perennial latecomers USA joined the party.
In early1940 we were planning to send aid to Finland to fight off Stalin, indeed that was part of the reason for the Narvik campaign. At that point it really did look as if we would be fighting both Hitler and Stalin at the same time, as a result of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact.
Hitler was supporting the Finns wasn't he? One of the reasons Finland had to hand over so much territory IIRC.
The Finns were in a desperate position and sought help where they could. Despite being hugely outnumbered, they fought heroically, the Russians having been foolish enough to invade a country where there's nothing much to do other than ski about the place and shoot at stuff (and take a sauna after). Luring the Russians into forest clearings and then ambushing them was a special tactic. Russian losses were something like five times the Finns'.
The loss of territory has been demanded by the USSR before they declared war, so was pretty much inevitable either way - today it's a wasteland of appalling poverty and crushing social issues, whereas the parts adjacent Karelia that Finland kept are relatively prosperous. But the real Soviet objective was to conquer Finland and set up a puppet communist government - which completely failed. The additional land they were forced to give up, in addition to parts of Karelia and the buffer zone beyond Leningrad (now StP), was adjacent Lake Ladoga.
In Finland, what we see as the War was actually three wars; the first "Winter War", when the Soviets invaded, were fought to a standstill, and ended with the peace settlement and loss of territory in 1940. The second, "Continuation War", which broke out when Germany invaded the USSR in 1941, with Finland taking the opportunity to try and regain its lost territory, and after the German advance broadly refusing to fight on beyond its historic borders, which ended with a peace settlement in 1944 that required the Finns to remove all German forces from its territory. That led to the third, "Lapland War", in which the Germans burned down every settlement in the north of the country (hence there are few old buildings there nowadays), drove off most of the inhabitants, and laid lots of landmines (the removal of which took thirty years afterwards), before retreating to defensive positions in the north of Norway, where they mostly held out until the war ended. Officially Finland and Germany stayed at war into the 1950s.
Isreal wants a failed state and couldn’t care less if there’s a civil war in Iran .
And if there’s a refugee crisis which spills into Europe the same right wing Trump lapdogs like Farage who supported the war will then use the refugee crisis to hammer the government.
Seems reasonable.
Why should we care if there is a civil war in Iran?
A failed state and civil war would be a huge improvement on the IRGC.
Hopefully liberal Iranians can win the civil war, but it needs to be in Iranian hands.
We could bomb Israel to rubble, killing 1000s of women and children, and hope that the liberal Israelis come to power in the aftermath. Are you on board with that?
If Starmer had the bottle this would be the perfect time for him to declare this war illegal. Hr could make the case that if the invasion of Ukraine is illegal so is this one. He could call a meeting of the UN and make a name for himself. All significant countries in Europe are against it.
Except that is complete and utter bullshit.
Ukraine never attacked or threatened Russia. Iran has repeatedly attacked and threatened Israel.
Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons. Iran is developing nuclear weapons.
I get you hate Israel and would not care if a mushroom cloud appeared above Tel Aviv, but the two situations are not remotely comparable.
I agree it isn't comparable. But it's not for someone who makes the even more risible comparison of the US attack on Iran to our WW2 battle against Hitler’s 3rd Reich to point this out.
Re the Russian parts in the drone that ended up in Cyprus.
It was fairly obvious, when Iran made their deal, that it would be a two way thing. Entirely unsurprising to find Russian parts in an Iranian drone.
That it was launched from Lebanon was fairly obvious. Hezbollah is a wholly owned subsidiary of IRGC, after all.
The reaction of the Lebanese government to the strikes by Hezbollah has been interesting - talking about actually clamping down on the Hezy’s. All talk at the moment - but if their funding gets cut…
I don't know if this is the right link but Yvette Cooper thinks Tony Blair is a wanker (join the club). My words not hers. AlJazeerah'is thew only station worth looking at for Iran watchers. the BBC is completely hopeless
The latest Conservative Home Affairs mailshot arrives from Mr Philp. I remain not a fan.
Some of these are PR, kneejerks or issues upon Conservative Governments made decisions to do nothing over a period of years, despite lobbying, including when Chris Philp was Minister of State for Crime, Policing and Justice from 2022 to 2024. In some cases suitable laws were in place, in others they had passed bad laws in the past.
I'm struck by the implied contradiction of the third and last items on the power of AI-assisted cameras. They will catch 24,000 criminals but their ANPR cousins can't cope with small variations from the standard number plate. Maybe they should perfect using AI to read number plates first.
Reading further down the Conservative leaflet linked by @MattW finds Chris Philp's thoughts on the mental healthcare system:-
Putting public safety first when dealing with mentally ill people.
We will overhaul Labour’s Mental Health Act and stamp out the ideology that has seen a fixation on racial targets, putting these ahead of public safety - with tragic consequences.
Labour’s Mental Health Act has an obsessive focus on reducing the use of sectioning on racial grounds, allowing seriously mentally ill individuals to remain in communities, when they should be detained for the safety of themselves and the public. Labour voted down our plans to mandate an assessment of the levels of risk to public safety posed by patients in the community.
Firstly, did no-one read this before publication? Presumably Philp does not really advocate ‘sectioning on racial grounds’ as might be inferred at first glance.
Second, presumably this is prompted by revelations from the current inquiry into the Nottingham killings of students Barnaby Webber and Grace O'Malley-Kumar, and caretaker Ian Coates by the paranoid schizophrenic Valdo Calocane. But they were killed in 2023, when Chris Philp himself was Minister for Crime and Policing, and obviously before the new Mental Health Act was passed in December 2025.
I would very much like to disagree with this, but I am struggling.
Look folks, reality can sometimes be hard to accept.
We all want freedom for Iran. The regime was a horrible, nasty pack of religious zealots for whom terrorism & murder was always the first option. Their revolution started by killing 400 people in a theater with arson & chained exit doors. They sent thousand of kids to their deaths with toy keys around their necks promising entry to heaven if they just walk in to Iraqi minefields.
I’ve tracked IRGC terrorism across Iraq, Lebanon, Syria & Yemen and even fought them in the PG, They almost killed me in 1988. The Islamic regime needed/still needs to be destroyed … that said:
People are getting upset with why I assess this war will likely fail to topple the regime.
Because it is a fantasy based in Trump’s head using lethal tools we prepared for 47 years for the right moment. That moment likely has passed.
Trump has no idea what he’s doing. Because he has contempt for the people who know what they’re doing & the history of what came before him.
If Afghanistan is the graveyard of empires then Iran is the funeral home of empires. It dresses you up and lays you into the coffin neatly. Then closes the lid.
Trump cannot understand why Iran hasn’t surrendered … “Lookit all them bombs,” he shouts “They should all love Trump!”
That’s it. That’s the Iran-War strategy. He does not care about the people of Iran. It a score settling grudge match egged on by Netanyahu’s 40 years of promises that war will change the regime if we just drop enough bombs & assassinate its leaders.
So If you want to live in a fantasy world where we are suddenly being greeted as liberators by the 93 million Iranians … feel free.
You are now set up for earth shattering disappointment.
You have to account for the fact that Trump could have attacked in support of the protesters in January. He didn’t & he let them be killed. He was completely indifferent. The 30k dead were a one-day talking point.
Right now, none of these attacks will liberate Iran without a populist uprising or invading ground forces. Worse case is a sectarian Civil war. If that happens the only outcome is that it will kill a lot of people, splinter the country & take down the global economy. Trump will sleep soundly & demand he be made Ayatollah.
This is literally his mental illness masked as foreign policy
This war may give some Iranians hope but it’s a false one. Gird for a horrible chain of dramatic events but rest assured Trump doesn’t care about the people of Iran.
He only want its oil. He said so.
I’m sorry folks, but my job is to deliver reality based assessments, not promise you sunshine in a swirling hurricane of flying bullets, bombs, excrement & razor wire. https://x.com/MalcolmNance/status/2030572269898998102
Yup - a very accurate summing up I think. Trump's sole chance of success is persuading Iran to surrender. Then he'd get to pose in front of a banner stating, 'Mission Accomplished'. Of course even then it would all fall apart in weeks if not days. Ten or twenty equivalents of the houthis all lined up along the Persian Gulf.
Now - removing the current bunch in Iran is a very attractive idea but it will achieve nothing if there is no real and realistic plan for what comes next. You can't imagine something worse than the Islamic Republic - well keep watching my friends.
I don't know if this is the right link but Yvette Cooper thinks Tony Blair is a wanker (join the club). My words not hers. AlJazeerah'is thew only station worth looking at for Iran watchers. the BBC is completely hopeless
If Starmer had the bottle this would be the perfect time for him to declare this war illegal. Hr could make the case that if the invasion of Ukraine is illegal so is this one. He could call a meeting of the UN and make a name for himself. All significant countries in Europe are against it.
Except that is complete and utter bullshit.
Ukraine never attacked or threatened Russia. Iran has repeatedly attacked and threatened Israel.
Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons. Iran is developing nuclear weapons.
I get you hate Israel and would not care if a mushroom cloud appeared above Tel Aviv, but the two situations are not remotely comparable.
Dozens killed as Israeli special forces raid Lebanese village in search of 40-year-old remains - BBC
If Starmer had the bottle this would be the perfect time for him to declare this war illegal. Hr could make the case that if the invasion of Ukraine is illegal so is this one. He could call a meeting of the UN and make a name for himself. All significant countries in Europe are against it.
Except that is complete and utter bullshit.
Ukraine never attacked or threatened Russia. Iran has repeatedly attacked and threatened Israel.
Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons. Iran is developing nuclear weapons.
I get you hate Israel and would not care if a mushroom cloud appeared above Tel Aviv, but the two situations are not remotely comparable.
Dozens killed as Israeli special forces raid Lebanese village in search of 40-year-old remains - BBC
If Starmer had the bottle this would be the perfect time for him to declare this war illegal. Hr could make the case that if the invasion of Ukraine is illegal so is this one. He could call a meeting of the UN and make a name for himself. All significant countries in Europe are against it.
Except that is complete and utter bullshit.
Ukraine never attacked or threatened Russia. Iran has repeatedly attacked and threatened Israel.
Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons. Iran is developing nuclear weapons.
I get you hate Israel and would not care if a mushroom cloud appeared above Tel Aviv, but the two situations are not remotely comparable.
Dozens killed as Israeli special forces raid Lebanese village in search of 40-year-old remains - BBC
Indeed
IDF grave robbing grave digging mission in to sacred area to try to allegedly find 40 year old remains.
Family of the dead person have publicly said they don't want anything to do with it.
How anyone can defend that sick murdering ass hole any more is beyond belief
He's on A par with Pol Pot now, worse than Hitler or Stalin
If Starmer had the bottle this would be the perfect time for him to declare this war illegal. Hr could make the case that if the invasion of Ukraine is illegal so is this one. He could call a meeting of the UN and make a name for himself. All significant countries in Europe are against it.
Except that is complete and utter bullshit.
Ukraine never attacked or threatened Russia. Iran has repeatedly attacked and threatened Israel.
Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons. Iran is developing nuclear weapons.
I get you hate Israel and would not care if a mushroom cloud appeared above Tel Aviv, but the two situations are not remotely comparable.
Dozens killed as Israeli special forces raid Lebanese village in search of 40-year-old remains - BBC
You're wasting your time arguing with Barty here. Israel can do no wrong in his eyes. It's obvious now that Bibi bounced the US into this war because he saw it as a way of keeping out of Jail himself. So much for negotiations.
I would very much like to disagree with this, but I am struggling.
Look folks, reality can sometimes be hard to accept.
We all want freedom for Iran. The regime was a horrible, nasty pack of religious zealots for whom terrorism & murder was always the first option. Their revolution started by killing 400 people in a theater with arson & chained exit doors. They sent thousand of kids to their deaths with toy keys around their necks promising entry to heaven if they just walk in to Iraqi minefields.
I’ve tracked IRGC terrorism across Iraq, Lebanon, Syria & Yemen and even fought them in the PG, They almost killed me in 1988. The Islamic regime needed/still needs to be destroyed … that said:
People are getting upset with why I assess this war will likely fail to topple the regime.
Because it is a fantasy based in Trump’s head using lethal tools we prepared for 47 years for the right moment. That moment likely has passed.
Trump has no idea what he’s doing. Because he has contempt for the people who know what they’re doing & the history of what came before him.
If Afghanistan is the graveyard of empires then Iran is the funeral home of empires. It dresses you up and lays you into the coffin neatly. Then closes the lid.
Trump cannot understand why Iran hasn’t surrendered … “Lookit all them bombs,” he shouts “They should all love Trump!”
That’s it. That’s the Iran-War strategy. He does not care about the people of Iran. It a score settling grudge match egged on by Netanyahu’s 40 years of promises that war will change the regime if we just drop enough bombs & assassinate its leaders.
So If you want to live in a fantasy world where we are suddenly being greeted as liberators by the 93 million Iranians … feel free.
You are now set up for earth shattering disappointment.
You have to account for the fact that Trump could have attacked in support of the protesters in January. He didn’t & he let them be killed. He was completely indifferent. The 30k dead were a one-day talking point.
Right now, none of these attacks will liberate Iran without a populist uprising or invading ground forces. Worse case is a sectarian Civil war. If that happens the only outcome is that it will kill a lot of people, splinter the country & take down the global economy. Trump will sleep soundly & demand he be made Ayatollah.
This is literally his mental illness masked as foreign policy
This war may give some Iranians hope but it’s a false one. Gird for a horrible chain of dramatic events but rest assured Trump doesn’t care about the people of Iran.
He only want its oil. He said so.
I’m sorry folks, but my job is to deliver reality based assessments, not promise you sunshine in a swirling hurricane of flying bullets, bombs, excrement & razor wire. https://x.com/MalcolmNance/status/2030572269898998102
He's not even Iranian. just a semi literate American. Unless you live in a country you don't know the people or even have a sense of them.It feels like that with this man. He could be right but when you start with dramatic openings like that you seldom are. Iran is one of the few places I haven't worked in in that region so my only knowledge is from Iranians abroad and they're not homogenous. I know ones I like and ones I don't. By contrast I know lots of Israelis nearly all English ex pats. I would be interested to know how they would fare if faced with the treatment their government meet out to their enemies? The answer I suspect is they would be back to their motherland before you could say Shabbat shalom
"The police commander honoured by the King for overseeing security at the coronation is facing potential corruption charges after claims of a cover-up at Scotland Yard over driving offences.
Prosecutors have been asked to consider charging Karen Findlay with a series of possible crimes, including perverting the course of justice, misconduct in public office, forgery, fraud and corrupt or improper use of police powers. .......
Three other current or former Metropolitan Police officers or staff may also face criminal charges over the alleged scam after the IOPC sent files of evidence to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) last week."
Negligence, mistakes, delays, denials, lies and a cover up. No wonder the widower says: “Every single one of the authorities has failed us, and they continue to fail us. None of them are fit for purpose.”
He went on - “At every step of the process we have been met with lies, deceit, obfuscation and individuals within organisations that all seem to have one thing in common, self-preservation. What is the point of law and justice if nobody is accountable and people can act with utter impunity? It doesn’t bear thinking about.”
Reading this stuff is not good for my blood pressure. It enrages me.
I have challenged my fury into my book proposal. And if anyone would like to read and comment on my first draft of that, let me know.
Isreal wants a failed state and couldn’t care less if there’s a civil war in Iran .
And if there’s a refugee crisis which spills into Europe the same right wing Trump lapdogs like Farage who supported the war will then use the refugee crisis to hammer the government.
Seems reasonable.
Why should we care if there is a civil war in Iran?
A failed state and civil war would be a huge improvement on the IRGC.
Hopefully liberal Iranians can win the civil war, but it needs to be in Iranian hands.
We could bomb Israel to rubble, killing 1000s of women and children, and hope that the liberal Israelis come to power in the aftermath. Are you on board with that?
No.
Israel is a democratic ally that is neither attacking us nor any of our allies.
Not a totalitarian, theocratic dictatorshil that is repeatedly attacking allies and calls us Little Satan.
Apologies if I am raising an issue that is verboten.
Looking for a cross comparison between Wards and Constituencies to see how the 8000+ wards matches to the 650 constituencies. Before I embark on this (for betting purposes), does anyone know where I might get this information from the public domain. If not, I'll do it myself.
Apologies again for interrupting the current trashing / praising Trump.
If Starmer had the bottle this would be the perfect time for him to declare this war illegal. Hr could make the case that if the invasion of Ukraine is illegal so is this one. He could call a meeting of the UN and make a name for himself. All significant countries in Europe are against it.
Except that is complete and utter bullshit.
Ukraine never attacked or threatened Russia. Iran has repeatedly attacked and threatened Israel.
Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons. Iran is developing nuclear weapons.
I get you hate Israel and would not care if a mushroom cloud appeared above Tel Aviv, but the two situations are not remotely comparable.
Dozens killed as Israeli special forces raid Lebanese village in search of 40-year-old remains - BBC
Indeed
IDF grave robbing grave digging mission in to sacred area to try to allegedly find 40 year old remains.
Family of the dead person have publicly said they don't want anything to do with it.
How anyone can defend that sick murdering ass hole any more is beyond belief
He's on A par with Pol Pot now, worse than Hitler or Stalin
Signs of quick post Gorton bounce for Labour due to Starmer's attitude to Trump and war
Jenrick rowing back on LauraK this morning from Farage’s rabidly pro Trump/pro War rhetoric and continually epmahsising Reform is a party for working people who should be helped.
If Starmer had the bottle this would be the perfect time for him to declare this war illegal. Hr could make the case that if the invasion of Ukraine is illegal so is this one. He could call a meeting of the UN and make a name for himself. All significant countries in Europe are against it.
Except that is complete and utter bullshit.
Ukraine never attacked or threatened Russia. Iran has repeatedly attacked and threatened Israel.
Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons. Iran is developing nuclear weapons.
I get you hate Israel and would not care if a mushroom cloud appeared above Tel Aviv, but the two situations are not remotely comparable.
I agree it isn't comparable. But it's not for someone who makes the even more risible comparison of the US attack on Iran to our WW2 battle against Hitler’s 3rd Reich to point this out.
It's such a crime what the Israelis are doing to Lebanon.It is one of the nicest places in the world with a really beautiful gentle population They deserve so much better than their grotesque belligerent neighbours and their American allies. It makes me so angry. Just watch some of the interviews with the young population. They use three languages often in a single conversation. They go from English to french to Arabic. The f***ing Israelis have just bombed the Ramada Hotel which is in the Christian area. They are gung-ho morons.
I suspect Lebanon is going the way of Gaza. Why shouldn't Bibi raze it to the ground? He got away with it in Gaza.
Trump has been a fantastic opportunity for Bibi to engage his wildest racist and murderous fantasies.
I asked earlier in the week what is Bibi's body count since first taking office,? It mut be solidly six figures.
Ref 29% + 1 Lab 21% + 3 Con 16% - 2 Green 14% + 1 LD 10% -2
Fieldwork 4th to 6th March
Badenoch working her magic touch.
She's been too gungho, especially given Trump's latest nonsense. Why send an aircraft carrier with all the cost and risk involved? Let him fight his own war.
Nonsense. We should have sent in our carrier right from the start.
We'd have a sunker Carrier and Body Bags returning home now if we had and who would YOU have been blaming.
NOT OUR WAR!
Stay Out!
Our ex pats in the region are exactly that ex-pats , many of them there to slag off our Country , how great they are and how crap the UK is, they made their bed, tough shit. The genuine majority should be helped and supported and it;s up to Gulf States to protect them. We should offer support no more. NON aggressive support.
Holidaymakers should and are being helped and slowly getting out!
Lets remind everyone of one FACT!
One drone has fallen on a soverign UK air base. The most accurate reports suggest it was Russian made, fired by Hezbollah probably from remote Labanon area!
RAF and others are now intercepting drone, you CANNOT stop every drone and Badenoch and Farage cannot be allowed to ghoulishly cheer any drone that falls as some sort of sick excuse for their desperation to go to war!
Every drone that stops another Kuwait City tower from burning is a win - that will be appreciated in the region.
We didn't start the war. But we shouldn't sit on our hands either if we can help prevent damage.
Personally, I'd extend that to hunting down the launch sites within Iran too. But I appreciate that is further than some would go. Happy for that subject to be debated in Parliament.
How much value can we really add to the efforts though, realistically? Our contributions often seem tokenistic at best, so the crashout by the White House seems, in typical fashion, excessive.
We aren't adding anything to the efforts of the Americans and the Israelis though. We are adding to the efforts to protect our friends (and commercial partners) in the Gulf Cooperation Council. It is in our long-term interests for them to see we stand with them, to do what we can to help them reduce the damage to their countries.
We clearly have very little control over the US and Israeli war aims. We can - admittedly in a limited way - provide some cover to assist the destruction being inflicted upon the GCC by a veangeful and frankly demented Iranian "regime" - to the extent that still functions as such. Our efforts will be appreciated in Dubai and Muscat and Dohar, even though we get no thanks (or worse, actively ridiculed) in Washington and Tel Aviv.
You can still think "Fuck Israel. Fuck the USA." whilst doing what we can to help the consequences on the tens of thousands of Brits in the region under threat as ex-pats or as holidaymakers.
They aren't ex pats, they are economic migrants
Tsk. These migrants!
Difference is, they are actively invited in for their skills.
It's such a crime what the Israelis are doing to Lebanon.It is one of the nicest places in the world with a really beautiful gentle population They deserve so much better than their grotesque belligerent neighbours and their American allies. It makes me so angry. Just watch some of the interviews with the young population. They use three languages often in a single conversation. They go from English to french to Arabic. The f***ing Israelis have just bombed the Ramada Hotel which is in the Christian area. They are gung-ho morons.
It is not a crime to fight Hezbollah.
If you want peace for Lebanon then regime change in Iran, so that Lebanon can finally rid itself of Hezbollah, is the best way of achieving that.
If Starmer had the bottle this would be the perfect time for him to declare this war illegal. Hr could make the case that if the invasion of Ukraine is illegal so is this one. He could call a meeting of the UN and make a name for himself. All significant countries in Europe are against it.
Except that is complete and utter bullshit.
Ukraine never attacked or threatened Russia. Iran has repeatedly attacked and threatened Israel.
Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons. Iran is developing nuclear weapons.
I get you hate Israel and would not care if a mushroom cloud appeared above Tel Aviv, but the two situations are not remotely comparable.
Dozens killed as Israeli special forces raid Lebanese village in search of 40-year-old remains - BBC
Indeed
IDF grave robbing grave digging mission in to sacred area to try to allegedly find 40 year old remains.
Family of the dead person have publicly said they don't want anything to do with it.
How anyone can defend that sick murdering ass hole any more is beyond belief
He's on A par with Pol Pot now, worse than Hitler or Stalin
When referencing Hitler, Stalin and PolPot I believe it to be an error to claim anyone else is "worse". Bibi is heading in their direction though. The body count would appear to be smaller but the intent is exactly the same, but with the cover of defending Israel.
Ref 29% + 1 Lab 21% + 3 Con 16% - 2 Green 14% + 1 LD 10% -2
Fieldwork 4th to 6th March
Badenoch working her magic touch.
She's been too gungho, especially given Trump's latest nonsense. Why send an aircraft carrier with all the cost and risk involved? Let him fight his own war.
Nonsense. We should have sent in our carrier right from the start.
We'd have a sunker Carrier and Body Bags returning home now if we had and who would YOU have been blaming.
NOT OUR WAR!
Stay Out!
Our ex pats in the region are exactly that ex-pats , many of them there to slag off our Country , how great they are and how crap the UK is, they made their bed, tough shit. The genuine majority should be helped and supported and it;s up to Gulf States to protect them. We should offer support no more. NON aggressive support.
Holidaymakers should and are being helped and slowly getting out!
Lets remind everyone of one FACT!
One drone has fallen on a soverign UK air base. The most accurate reports suggest it was Russian made, fired by Hezbollah probably from remote Labanon area!
RAF and others are now intercepting drone, you CANNOT stop every drone and Badenoch and Farage cannot be allowed to ghoulishly cheer any drone that falls as some sort of sick excuse for their desperation to go to war!
Every drone that stops another Kuwait City tower from burning is a win - that will be appreciated in the region.
We didn't start the war. But we shouldn't sit on our hands either if we can help prevent damage.
Personally, I'd extend that to hunting down the launch sites within Iran too. But I appreciate that is further than some would go. Happy for that subject to be debated in Parliament.
How much value can we really add to the efforts though, realistically? Our contributions often seem tokenistic at best, so the crashout by the White House seems, in typical fashion, excessive.
We aren't adding anything to the efforts of the Americans and the Israelis though. We are adding to the efforts to protect our friends (and commercial partners) in the Gulf Cooperation Council. It is in our long-term interests for them to see we stand with them, to do what we can to help them reduce the damage to their countries.
We clearly have very little control over the US and Israeli war aims. We can - admittedly in a limited way - provide some cover to assist the destruction being inflicted upon the GCC by a veangeful and frankly demented Iranian "regime" - to the extent that still functions as such. Our efforts will be appreciated in Dubai and Muscat and Dohar, even though we get no thanks (or worse, actively ridiculed) in Washington and Tel Aviv.
You can still think "Fuck Israel. Fuck the USA." whilst doing what we can to help the consequences on the tens of thousands of Brits in the region under threat as ex-pats or as holidaymakers.
They aren't ex pats, they are economic migrants
Tsk. These migrants!
Difference is, they are actively invited in for their skills.
How could the Arabs cope before trout-faced instagram influencers arrived? Oh, and drug money launderers?
I would very much like to disagree with this, but I am struggling.
Look folks, reality can sometimes be hard to accept.
We all want freedom for Iran. The regime was a horrible, nasty pack of religious zealots for whom terrorism & murder was always the first option. Their revolution started by killing 400 people in a theater with arson & chained exit doors. They sent thousand of kids to their deaths with toy keys around their necks promising entry to heaven if they just walk in to Iraqi minefields.
I’ve tracked IRGC terrorism across Iraq, Lebanon, Syria & Yemen and even fought them in the PG, They almost killed me in 1988. The Islamic regime needed/still needs to be destroyed … that said:
People are getting upset with why I assess this war will likely fail to topple the regime.
Because it is a fantasy based in Trump’s head using lethal tools we prepared for 47 years for the right moment. That moment likely has passed.
Trump has no idea what he’s doing. Because he has contempt for the people who know what they’re doing & the history of what came before him.
If Afghanistan is the graveyard of empires then Iran is the funeral home of empires. It dresses you up and lays you into the coffin neatly. Then closes the lid.
Trump cannot understand why Iran hasn’t surrendered … “Lookit all them bombs,” he shouts “They should all love Trump!”
That’s it. That’s the Iran-War strategy. He does not care about the people of Iran. It a score settling grudge match egged on by Netanyahu’s 40 years of promises that war will change the regime if we just drop enough bombs & assassinate its leaders.
So If you want to live in a fantasy world where we are suddenly being greeted as liberators by the 93 million Iranians … feel free.
You are now set up for earth shattering disappointment.
You have to account for the fact that Trump could have attacked in support of the protesters in January. He didn’t & he let them be killed. He was completely indifferent. The 30k dead were a one-day talking point.
Right now, none of these attacks will liberate Iran without a populist uprising or invading ground forces. Worse case is a sectarian Civil war. If that happens the only outcome is that it will kill a lot of people, splinter the country & take down the global economy. Trump will sleep soundly & demand he be made Ayatollah.
This is literally his mental illness masked as foreign policy
This war may give some Iranians hope but it’s a false one. Gird for a horrible chain of dramatic events but rest assured Trump doesn’t care about the people of Iran.
He only want its oil. He said so.
I’m sorry folks, but my job is to deliver reality based assessments, not promise you sunshine in a swirling hurricane of flying bullets, bombs, excrement & razor wire. https://x.com/MalcolmNance/status/2030572269898998102
That’s pretty much it. The only bit I'd dispute is it's about the oil. As far as Donald Trump goes this overstates the thinking behind it. The objective of the attack is the attack itself. The thrill and spectacle of it. The buzz of being able to order something like this. A perk of the presidency which he isn't about to deny himself. He's about the abuse of power and this - treating the awesome capabilities of the US military as a personal toy - is the ultimate in that. He's doing it because he can. And the same lack of rationale will apply to the exit. He'll stop not based on any particular criteria but simply when he feels like it. Same applies to all his foreign policy 'initiatives'. Ridiculous, absurd, scary, but true.
Definitely signs of a government bounce. Could be greater if he went further and actually condemned the US/Israeli action. Maybe saving that for closer to an election. No question it's a vote winner. The polling is so obvious as are the vox pops and programs such as Any Questions.
Right wing in slight retreat in polling Reform now sub 30 with all but 5 pollsters (JLP, Techne, Ipsos, Freshwater and Deltapoll but they havent reported since December) Tories off a point or two to just under 20 with most pollsters Labour picture is very varied, some tentative evidence of a no bases bounce but not conclusive yet Lib Dems in slight decline from last year and may see the odd single figure in the near term Greens on the march but still have not broken through 15% with any BPC pollsters except YG and Find Out Now
There is a saying that families fall out with each other, but if they come under attack from an outsider they come together
Trump is that outsider and he has given a boost to Starmer which may well see his survival, not least because there is no obvious successor
This is a fast moving and dangerous time with untold consquences and as of now we are active in the arena and have to reserve the right to respond if Iranian missiles take out any of our military, civilians or interests
Defence spending is going to become a 'hot potato' and it is true over the last 20 years the UK and Europe have relied on the peace dividend to reduce defence spending, which Trump has come along and thrown in the bin
If you are an American it is legitimate to ask why is the US paying and subsidising other nations in NATO ?
Europe and UK have a war in Europe, and now one in the middle east, and something has to give to allow us to invest tens of billions more and now in our defence
I would very much like to disagree with this, but I am struggling.
Look folks, reality can sometimes be hard to accept.
We all want freedom for Iran. The regime was a horrible, nasty pack of religious zealots for whom terrorism & murder was always the first option. Their revolution started by killing 400 people in a theater with arson & chained exit doors. They sent thousand of kids to their deaths with toy keys around their necks promising entry to heaven if they just walk in to Iraqi minefields.
I’ve tracked IRGC terrorism across Iraq, Lebanon, Syria & Yemen and even fought them in the PG, They almost killed me in 1988. The Islamic regime needed/still needs to be destroyed … that said:
People are getting upset with why I assess this war will likely fail to topple the regime.
Because it is a fantasy based in Trump’s head using lethal tools we prepared for 47 years for the right moment. That moment likely has passed.
Trump has no idea what he’s doing. Because he has contempt for the people who know what they’re doing & the history of what came before him.
If Afghanistan is the graveyard of empires then Iran is the funeral home of empires. It dresses you up and lays you into the coffin neatly. Then closes the lid.
Trump cannot understand why Iran hasn’t surrendered … “Lookit all them bombs,” he shouts “They should all love Trump!”
That’s it. That’s the Iran-War strategy. He does not care about the people of Iran. It a score settling grudge match egged on by Netanyahu’s 40 years of promises that war will change the regime if we just drop enough bombs & assassinate its leaders.
So If you want to live in a fantasy world where we are suddenly being greeted as liberators by the 93 million Iranians … feel free.
You are now set up for earth shattering disappointment.
You have to account for the fact that Trump could have attacked in support of the protesters in January. He didn’t & he let them be killed. He was completely indifferent. The 30k dead were a one-day talking point.
Right now, none of these attacks will liberate Iran without a populist uprising or invading ground forces. Worse case is a sectarian Civil war. If that happens the only outcome is that it will kill a lot of people, splinter the country & take down the global economy. Trump will sleep soundly & demand he be made Ayatollah.
This is literally his mental illness masked as foreign policy
This war may give some Iranians hope but it’s a false one. Gird for a horrible chain of dramatic events but rest assured Trump doesn’t care about the people of Iran.
He only want its oil. He said so.
I’m sorry folks, but my job is to deliver reality based assessments, not promise you sunshine in a swirling hurricane of flying bullets, bombs, excrement & razor wire. https://x.com/MalcolmNance/status/2030572269898998102
That’s pretty much it. The only bit I'd dispute is it's about the oil. As far as Donald Trump goes this overstates the thinking behind it. The objective of the attack is the attack itself. The thrill and spectacle of it. The buzz of being able to order something like this. A perk of the presidency which he isn't about to deny himself. He's about the abuse of power and this - treating the awesome capabilities of the US military as a personal toy - is the ultimate in that. He's doing it because he can. And the same lack of rationale will apply to the exit. He'll stop not based on any particular criteria but simply when he feels like it. Same applies to all his foreign policy 'initiatives'. Ridiculous, absurd, scary, but true.
He will stop when he gets bored. Trump is like a toddler on a sugar-rush. He trashes the place, then moves on to trash another place.
The surest way to destroy Iran would be to make him leader...
Isreal wants a failed state and couldn’t care less if there’s a civil war in Iran .
And if there’s a refugee crisis which spills into Europe the same right wing Trump lapdogs like Farage who supported the war will then use the refugee crisis to hammer the government.
Seems reasonable.
Why should we care if there is a civil war in Iran?
A failed state and civil war would be a huge improvement on the IRGC.
Hopefully liberal Iranians can win the civil war, but it needs to be in Iranian hands.
We could bomb Israel to rubble, killing 1000s of women and children, and hope that the liberal Israelis come to power in the aftermath. Are you on board with that?
No.
Israel is a democratic ally that is neither attacking us nor any of our allies.
Not a totalitarian, theocratic dictatorshil that is repeatedly attacking allies and calls us Little Satan.
So if it's a democracy are Israeli citizens more or less complicit in the actions of their Government than the citizens of a totalitarian dictatorship?
Definitely signs of a government bounce. Could be greater if he went further and actually condemned the US/Israeli action. Maybe saving that for closer to an election. No question it's a vote winner. The polling is so obvious as are the vox pops and programs such as Any Questions.
One can always assume the political clamour will become so loud Starmer will bottle it and we'll be serenading fallen troops on the streets of Royal Wootton Bassett before Trump and Bibi have finished their escapade.
Isreal wants a failed state and couldn’t care less if there’s a civil war in Iran .
And if there’s a refugee crisis which spills into Europe the same right wing Trump lapdogs like Farage who supported the war will then use the refugee crisis to hammer the government.
Seems reasonable.
Why should we care if there is a civil war in Iran?
A failed state and civil war would be a huge improvement on the IRGC.
Hopefully liberal Iranians can win the civil war, but it needs to be in Iranian hands.
We could bomb Israel to rubble, killing 1000s of women and children, and hope that the liberal Israelis come to power in the aftermath. Are you on board with that?
No.
Israel is a democratic ally that is neither attacking us nor any of our allies.
Not a totalitarian, theocratic dictatorshil that is repeatedly attacking allies and calls us Little Satan.
So if it's a democracy are Israeli citizens more or less complicit in the actions of their Government than the citizens of a totalitarian dictatorship?
More.
Which is moot since the Government's actions are completely justified and legitimate.
Apologies if I am raising an issue that is verboten.
Looking for a cross comparison between Wards and Constituencies to see how the 8000+ wards matches to the 650 constituencies. Before I embark on this (for betting purposes), does anyone know where I might get this information from the public domain. If not, I'll do it myself.
Apologies again for interrupting the current trashing / praising Trump.
The boundary commission's review website has a full map of all the relevant boundaries
Ref 29% + 1 Lab 21% + 3 Con 16% - 2 Green 14% + 1 LD 10% -2
Fieldwork 4th to 6th March
Badenoch working her magic touch.
She's been too gungho, especially given Trump's latest nonsense. Why send an aircraft carrier with all the cost and risk involved? Let him fight his own war.
Nonsense. We should have sent in our carrier right from the start.
We'd have a sunker Carrier and Body Bags returning home now if we had and who would YOU have been blaming.
NOT OUR WAR!
Stay Out!
Our ex pats in the region are exactly that ex-pats , many of them there to slag off our Country , how great they are and how crap the UK is, they made their bed, tough shit. The genuine majority should be helped and supported and it;s up to Gulf States to protect them. We should offer support no more. NON aggressive support.
Holidaymakers should and are being helped and slowly getting out!
Lets remind everyone of one FACT!
One drone has fallen on a soverign UK air base. The most accurate reports suggest it was Russian made, fired by Hezbollah probably from remote Labanon area!
RAF and others are now intercepting drone, you CANNOT stop every drone and Badenoch and Farage cannot be allowed to ghoulishly cheer any drone that falls as some sort of sick excuse for their desperation to go to war!
Every drone that stops another Kuwait City tower from burning is a win - that will be appreciated in the region.
We didn't start the war. But we shouldn't sit on our hands either if we can help prevent damage.
Personally, I'd extend that to hunting down the launch sites within Iran too. But I appreciate that is further than some would go. Happy for that subject to be debated in Parliament.
How much value can we really add to the efforts though, realistically? Our contributions often seem tokenistic at best, so the crashout by the White House seems, in typical fashion, excessive.
We aren't adding anything to the efforts of the Americans and the Israelis though. We are adding to the efforts to protect our friends (and commercial partners) in the Gulf Cooperation Council. It is in our long-term interests for them to see we stand with them, to do what we can to help them reduce the damage to their countries.
We clearly have very little control over the US and Israeli war aims. We can - admittedly in a limited way - provide some cover to assist the destruction being inflicted upon the GCC by a veangeful and frankly demented Iranian "regime" - to the extent that still functions as such. Our efforts will be appreciated in Dubai and Muscat and Dohar, even though we get no thanks (or worse, actively ridiculed) in Washington and Tel Aviv.
You can still think "Fuck Israel. Fuck the USA." whilst doing what we can to help the consequences on the tens of thousands of Brits in the region under threat as ex-pats or as holidaymakers.
They aren't ex pats, they are economic migrants
Tsk. These migrants!
Difference is, they are actively invited in for their skills.
How could the Arabs cope before trout-faced instagram influencers arrived? Oh, and drug money launderers?
There is a saying that families fall out with each other, but if they come under attack from an outsider they come together
Trump is that outsider and he has given a boost to Starmer which may well see his survival, not least because there is no obvious successor
This is a fast moving and dangerous time with untold consquences and as of now we are active in the arena and have to reserve the right to respond if Iranian missiles take out any of our military, civilians or interests
Defence spending is going to become a 'hot potato' and it is true over the last 20 years the UK and Europe have relied on the peace dividend to reduce defence spending, which Trump has come along and thrown in the bin
If you are an American it is legitimate to ask why is the US paying and subsidising other nations in NATO ?
Europe and UK have a war in Europe, and now one in the middle east, and something has to give to allow us to invest tens of billions more and now in our defence
Don't worry BigG. Starmer will blow it. He always does.
I would very much like to disagree with this, but I am struggling.
Look folks, reality can sometimes be hard to accept.
We all want freedom for Iran. The regime was a horrible, nasty pack of religious zealots for whom terrorism & murder was always the first option. Their revolution started by killing 400 people in a theater with arson & chained exit doors. They sent thousand of kids to their deaths with toy keys around their necks promising entry to heaven if they just walk in to Iraqi minefields.
I’ve tracked IRGC terrorism across Iraq, Lebanon, Syria & Yemen and even fought them in the PG, They almost killed me in 1988. The Islamic regime needed/still needs to be destroyed … that said:
People are getting upset with why I assess this war will likely fail to topple the regime.
Because it is a fantasy based in Trump’s head using lethal tools we prepared for 47 years for the right moment. That moment likely has passed.
Trump has no idea what he’s doing. Because he has contempt for the people who know what they’re doing & the history of what came before him.
If Afghanistan is the graveyard of empires then Iran is the funeral home of empires. It dresses you up and lays you into the coffin neatly. Then closes the lid.
Trump cannot understand why Iran hasn’t surrendered … “Lookit all them bombs,” he shouts “They should all love Trump!”
That’s it. That’s the Iran-War strategy. He does not care about the people of Iran. It a score settling grudge match egged on by Netanyahu’s 40 years of promises that war will change the regime if we just drop enough bombs & assassinate its leaders.
So If you want to live in a fantasy world where we are suddenly being greeted as liberators by the 93 million Iranians … feel free.
You are now set up for earth shattering disappointment.
You have to account for the fact that Trump could have attacked in support of the protesters in January. He didn’t & he let them be killed. He was completely indifferent. The 30k dead were a one-day talking point.
Right now, none of these attacks will liberate Iran without a populist uprising or invading ground forces. Worse case is a sectarian Civil war. If that happens the only outcome is that it will kill a lot of people, splinter the country & take down the global economy. Trump will sleep soundly & demand he be made Ayatollah.
This is literally his mental illness masked as foreign policy
This war may give some Iranians hope but it’s a false one. Gird for a horrible chain of dramatic events but rest assured Trump doesn’t care about the people of Iran.
He only want its oil. He said so.
I’m sorry folks, but my job is to deliver reality based assessments, not promise you sunshine in a swirling hurricane of flying bullets, bombs, excrement & razor wire. https://x.com/MalcolmNance/status/2030572269898998102
That’s pretty much it. The only bit I'd dispute is it's about the oil. As far as Donald Trump goes this overstates the thinking behind it. The objective of the attack is the attack itself. The thrill and spectacle of it. The buzz of being able to order something like this. A perk of the presidency which he isn't about to deny himself. He's about the abuse of power and this - treating the awesome capabilities of the US military as a personal toy - is the ultimate in that. He's doing it because he can. And the same lack of rationale will apply to the exit. He'll stop not based on any particular criteria but simply when he feels like it. Same applies to all his foreign policy 'initiatives'. Ridiculous, absurd, scary, but true.
He will stop when he gets bored. Trump is like a toddler on a sugar-rush. He trashes the place, then moves on to trash another place.
The surest way to destroy Iran would be to make him leader...
Signs of quick post Gorton bounce for Labour due to Starmer's attitude to Trump and war
Jenrick rowing back on LauraK this morning from Farage’s rabidly pro Trump/pro War rhetoric and continually epmahsising Reform is a party for working people who should be helped.
Post Gorton Labour bounce ?
Different pollster more like. I’m interested in your pro Labour stance and the oddment of comedy in your ‘boost’, but don’t fool yourself.
The graph sez what it sez. The trend is clear. I’ve said it before but to no avail. If Labour have policy they would like to bring to future Britain, initiate PR. Your party is over.
As it happens, I’m weirdly pro SKS, but it’s now obvious that he is in transitional phase. Tears in the rain and all that.
"The police commander honoured by the King for overseeing security at the coronation is facing potential corruption charges after claims of a cover-up at Scotland Yard over driving offences.
Prosecutors have been asked to consider charging Karen Findlay with a series of possible crimes, including perverting the course of justice, misconduct in public office, forgery, fraud and corrupt or improper use of police powers. .......
Three other current or former Metropolitan Police officers or staff may also face criminal charges over the alleged scam after the IOPC sent files of evidence to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) last week."
Negligence, mistakes, delays, denials, lies and a cover up. No wonder the widower says: “Every single one of the authorities has failed us, and they continue to fail us. None of them are fit for purpose.”
He went on - “At every step of the process we have been met with lies, deceit, obfuscation and individuals within organisations that all seem to have one thing in common, self-preservation. What is the point of law and justice if nobody is accountable and people can act with utter impunity? It doesn’t bear thinking about.”
Reading this stuff is not good for my blood pressure. It enrages me.
I have challenged my fury into my book proposal. And if anyone would like to read and comment on my first draft of that, let me know.
I would be interested in reading a first draft, though whether you'd find my comments useful I leave to your judgement.
There is a saying that families fall out with each other, but if they come under attack from an outsider they come together
Trump is that outsider and he has given a boost to Starmer which may well see his survival, not least because there is no obvious successor
This is a fast moving and dangerous time with untold consquences and as of now we are active in the arena and have to reserve the right to respond if Iranian missiles take out any of our military, civilians or interests
Defence spending is going to become a 'hot potato' and it is true over the last 20 years the UK and Europe have relied on the peace dividend to reduce defence spending, which Trump has come along and thrown in the bin
If you are an American it is legitimate to ask why is the US paying and subsidising other nations in NATO ?
Europe and UK have a war in Europe, and now one in the middle east, and something has to give to allow us to invest tens of billions more and now in our defence
Don't worry BigG. Starmer will blow it. He always does.
Philp grovelingly admitted to Trevor Phillips that Tories cut defence spending by 22% from 2010 to 2019
Apologies if I am raising an issue that is verboten.
Looking for a cross comparison between Wards and Constituencies to see how the 8000+ wards matches to the 650 constituencies. Before I embark on this (for betting purposes), does anyone know where I might get this information from the public domain. If not, I'll do it myself.
Apologies again for interrupting the current trashing / praising Trump.
The boundary commission's review website has a full map of all the relevant boundaries
Of course the master data that combines everything together is the PAF file that is owned by the post office but if all you care about is Ward to constituency that will give you everything you need.
Not really. There are house effects. But @wooliedyed has succinctly outlined the trends above.
Cheers. Id say additionally Reform and Lib Dems are testing their recent lows (and in Reforms case starting to cross under) and Greens are testing their ceiling (and starting to break through)
Signs of quick post Gorton bounce for Labour due to Starmer's attitude to Trump and war
Jenrick rowing back on LauraK this morning from Farage’s rabidly pro Trump/pro War rhetoric and continually epmahsising Reform is a party for working people who should be helped.
Post Gorton Labour bounce ?
Different pollster more like. I’m interested in your pro Labour stance and the oddment of comedy in your ‘boost’, but don’t fool yourself.
The graph sez what it sez. The trend is clear. I’ve said it before but to no avail. If Labour have policy they would like to bring to future Britain, initiate PR. Your party is over.
As it happens, I’m weirdly pro SKS, but it’s now obvious that he is in transitional phase. Tears in the rain and all that.
Signs of quick post Gorton bounce for Labour due to Starmer's attitude to Trump and war
Jenrick rowing back on LauraK this morning from Farage’s rabidly pro Trump/pro War rhetoric and continually epmahsising Reform is a party for working people who should be helped.
Post Gorton Labour bounce ?
Different pollster more like. I’m interested in your pro Labour stance and the oddment of comedy in your ‘boost’, but don’t fool yourself.
The graph sez what it sez. The trend is clear. I’ve said it before but to no avail. If Labour have policy they would like to bring to future Britain, initiate PR. Your party is over.
As it happens, I’m weirdly pro SKS, but it’s now obvious that he is in transitional phase. Tears in the rain and all that.
If Starmer had the bottle this would be the perfect time for him to declare this war illegal. Hr could make the case that if the invasion of Ukraine is illegal so is this one. He could call a meeting of the UN and make a name for himself. All significant countries in Europe are against it.
Except that is complete and utter bullshit.
Ukraine never attacked or threatened Russia. Iran has repeatedly attacked and threatened Israel.
Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons. Iran is developing nuclear weapons.
I get you hate Israel and would not care if a mushroom cloud appeared above Tel Aviv, but the two situations are not remotely comparable.
Dozens killed as Israeli special forces raid Lebanese village in search of 40-year-old remains - BBC
Indeed
IDF grave robbing grave digging mission in to sacred area to try to allegedly find 40 year old remains.
Family of the dead person have publicly said they don't want anything to do with it.
How anyone can defend that sick murdering ass hole any more is beyond belief
He's on A par with Pol Pot now, worse than Hitler or Stalin
On a par with Pol Pot?
Worse than Hitler or Stalin?
You are insane.
Not surprisng from someone who posted on here he wanted Tel Aviv bombed out of existence
Netanyahu, Hamas, Ayatollah Khamenei, Hezbollah are all evil and equally have the blood of innocents on their hands
And of course comparision with Hitler is just hysterical nonsense
When @Brixian59 and @Roger come on here and repeat my second line then we will be making progress
As my wife said yesterday, a plague on all their houses
Isreal wants a failed state and couldn’t care less if there’s a civil war in Iran .
And if there’s a refugee crisis which spills into Europe the same right wing Trump lapdogs like Farage who supported the war will then use the refugee crisis to hammer the government.
Seems reasonable.
Why should we care if there is a civil war in Iran?
A failed state and civil war would be a huge improvement on the IRGC.
Hopefully liberal Iranians can win the civil war, but it needs to be in Iranian hands.
We could bomb Israel to rubble, killing 1000s of women and children, and hope that the liberal Israelis come to power in the aftermath. Are you on board with that?
No.
Israel is a democratic ally that is neither attacking us nor any of our allies.
Not a totalitarian, theocratic dictatorshil that is repeatedly attacking allies and calls us Little Satan.
So if it's a democracy are Israeli citizens more or less complicit in the actions of their Government than the citizens of a totalitarian dictatorship?
More.
Which is moot since the Government's actions are completely justified and legitimate.
The Tories crime policy, I agree with most of. I particularly detest the smell of cannabis (aka dog shit) on the street. And littering - why? These are signs of a dysfunctional society.
I think the devil's in the detail though - they say 'back our police to take a zero tolerance approach' - how does that actually compell the police to have a zero tolerance approach? The Home Secretary has no operational control over the police force. So how are you going to do it? There's also nothing really here on justice, which is absolutely vital if there's a crime crackdown. How are courts going to handle the extra cases? How are prisons going to handle it?
That strikes me as a lack of a 'worked out policy' that Kemi places so much importance on.
Though tbf I've only seen the social media video, they could have answers to all this.
There is a saying that families fall out with each other, but if they come under attack from an outsider they come together
Trump is that outsider and he has given a boost to Starmer which may well see his survival, not least because there is no obvious successor
This is a fast moving and dangerous time with untold consquences and as of now we are active in the arena and have to reserve the right to respond if Iranian missiles take out any of our military, civilians or interests
Defence spending is going to become a 'hot potato' and it is true over the last 20 years the UK and Europe have relied on the peace dividend to reduce defence spending, which Trump has come along and thrown in the bin
If you are an American it is legitimate to ask why is the US paying and subsidising other nations in NATO ?
Europe and UK have a war in Europe, and now one in the middle east, and something has to give to allow us to invest tens of billions more and now in our defence
Don't worry BigG. Starmer will blow it. He always does.
Philp grovelingly admitted to Trevor Phillips that Tories cut defence spending by 22% from 2010 to 2019
What has that got to do with Starmer deciding to go even deeper with his war crimes? This time against Iran.
Right wing in slight retreat in polling Reform now sub 30 with all but 5 pollsters (JLP, Techne, Ipsos, Freshwater and Deltapoll but they havent reported since December) Tories off a point or two to just under 20 with most pollsters Labour picture is very varied, some tentative evidence of a no bases bounce but not conclusive yet Lib Dems in slight decline from last year and may see the odd single figure in the near term Greens on the march but still have not broken through 15% with any BPC pollsters except YG and Find Out Now
If Trump and Bibi win this (doubtful) don't you think Kemi and Nigel will be vindicated and Starmer will be left looking weak. This is why he will bottle it and join an Iraq style war with Iran.
Right wing in slight retreat in polling Reform now sub 30 with all but 5 pollsters (JLP, Techne, Ipsos, Freshwater and Deltapoll but they havent reported since December) Tories off a point or two to just under 20 with most pollsters Labour picture is very varied, some tentative evidence of a no bases bounce but not conclusive yet Lib Dems in slight decline from last year and may see the odd single figure in the near term Greens on the march but still have not broken through 15% with any BPC pollsters except YG and Find Out Now
I think it's a rally to the flag effect.
And I think it's hard for the opposition to take a line - especially hard for Reform, because Farage actually wants stuff from Trump - he wants Chagos killed (and so say all of us). It would be far easier and more electorally rewarding to take an anti-Trump line.
However, as someone mentions downthread, Starmer will find a way to become less popular than ever. Let's just hope there's no loss of human life involved.
Right wing in slight retreat in polling Reform now sub 30 with all but 5 pollsters (JLP, Techne, Ipsos, Freshwater and Deltapoll but they havent reported since December) Tories off a point or two to just under 20 with most pollsters Labour picture is very varied, some tentative evidence of a no bases bounce but not conclusive yet Lib Dems in slight decline from last year and may see the odd single figure in the near term Greens on the march but still have not broken through 15% with any BPC pollsters except YG and Find Out Now
If Trump and Bibi win this (doubtful) don't you think Kemi and Nigel will be vindicated and Starmer will be left looking weak. This is why he will bottle it and join an Iraq style war with Iran.
It's clear that Bibi has Trump wrapped around his little finger. It's why the USA being unable to articulate its war aims doesn't matter - they're not in charge here.
The Tories crime policy, I agree with most of. I particularly detest the smell of cannabis (aka dog shit) on the street. And littering - why? These are signs of a dysfunctional society.
I think the devil's in the detail though - they say 'back our police to take a zero tolerance approach' - how does that actually compell the police to have a zero tolerance approach? The Home Secretary has no operational control over the police force. So how are you going to do it? There's also nothing really here on justice, which is absolutely vital if there's a crime crackdown. How are courts going to handle the extra cases? How are prisons going to handle it?
That strikes me as a lack of a 'worked out policy' that Kemi places so much importance on.
Though tbf I've only seen the social media video, they could have answers to all this.
The thing is that it is pure bollocks.
Where are the increased funds for the police? The increased court space? The new prisons? The new secure mental illness places? The taxes or cuts elsewhere to fund the above?
"Israel's military has issued a warning to Iran that it will continue pursuing every successor of the country's deceased supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei."
Trump wants to appoint him, then Israel will try to kill him.
That was their strategy for Hezbollah as well
Netanyahu’s policy of bomb/invade/settle everyone (Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Iran, West Bank), I think we can ask whether it’s going better or worse at delivering security to Israel than, say, Yitzhak Rabin’s approach.
Isreal wants a failed state and couldn’t care less if there’s a civil war in Iran .
And if there’s a refugee crisis which spills into Europe the same right wing Trump lapdogs like Farage who supported the war will then use the refugee crisis to hammer the government.
Seems reasonable.
Why should we care if there is a civil war in Iran?
A failed state and civil war would be a huge improvement on the IRGC.
Hopefully liberal Iranians can win the civil war, but it needs to be in Iranian hands.
We could bomb Israel to rubble, killing 1000s of women and children, and hope that the liberal Israelis come to power in the aftermath. Are you on board with that?
No.
Israel is a democratic ally that is neither attacking us nor any of our allies.
Not a totalitarian, theocratic dictatorshil that is repeatedly attacking allies and calls us Little Satan.
Israel isn't truly democratic because of its ethnic cleansing of 700,000 Palestinians in 1948, who it then refused to readmit, despite clear obligations under conventions that it itself signed to do so, and its ownership of the Occupied Territories, that aren't by any stretch of the imagination democratic. It's as if I blocked everyone I don't agree with on social media then claimed I was tolerant. If Israel readmits the 3 million or so refugees and gives them full political rights it will be able to claim it's a democracy.
And it isn't an ally - we have no treaty of alliance with it. In 2023, we signed a partnership treaty with it, but that wasn't an alliance.
It isn't attacking us now, but did so within living memory, indeed causing I think the deadliest terrorist attack ever on Britons, an attack which it recently honoured, so it would doubtless do so again if it thought it needed to. Then it accuses others of terrorism.
As an independent It's a neutral - sometimes moderately hostile, sometimes slightly friendly but always depending on its interests at the time. And we should take a similarly hard nosed attitude towards dealing with it.
And its ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians in 1948, and its illegal and very bloody occupation of Gaza and the West Bank since 1967 have been a disaster for the Free World, never mind for the Palestinians who live there, legitimising Arab nationalism and Arab dictatorships, repeatedly causing division in Europe and America, giving the Soviet Union and then Russia a sore to work on, and diverting attention from struggles that matter much more to our vital interests, currently Ukraine, and jeopardising the flow of oil.
C'mon freedom loving Iranians, sorry, Persians, get on them streets and start dying so you can make a trillion dollars for the USA.
Mario Nawfal @MarioNawfal 🚨🇮🇷 Reza Pahlavi: In the first 10 to 15 years, Iran's economy could generate over a trillion dollars worth of revenue for the U.S.
The Tories crime policy, I agree with most of. I particularly detest the smell of cannabis (aka dog shit) on the street. And littering - why? These are signs of a dysfunctional society.
I think the devil's in the detail though - they say 'back our police to take a zero tolerance approach' - how does that actually compell the police to have a zero tolerance approach? The Home Secretary has no operational control over the police force. So how are you going to do it? There's also nothing really here on justice, which is absolutely vital if there's a crime crackdown. How are courts going to handle the extra cases? How are prisons going to handle it?
That strikes me as a lack of a 'worked out policy' that Kemi places so much importance on.
Though tbf I've only seen the social media video, they could have answers to all this.
The thing is that it is pure bollocks.
Where are the increased funds for the police? The increased court space? The new prisons? The new secure mental illness places? The taxes or cuts elsewhere to fund the above?
The Tories crime policy, I agree with most of. I particularly detest the smell of cannabis (aka dog shit) on the street. And littering - why? These are signs of a dysfunctional society.
I think the devil's in the detail though - they say 'back our police to take a zero tolerance approach' - how does that actually compell the police to have a zero tolerance approach? The Home Secretary has no operational control over the police force. So how are you going to do it? There's also nothing really here on justice, which is absolutely vital if there's a crime crackdown. How are courts going to handle the extra cases? How are prisons going to handle it?
That strikes me as a lack of a 'worked out policy' that Kemi places so much importance on.
Though tbf I've only seen the social media video, they could have answers to all this.
The thing is that it is pure bollocks.
Where are the increased funds for the police? The increased court space? The new prisons? The new secure mental illness places? The taxes or cuts elsewhere to fund the above?
It is just waffle and hot air.
2010 to 2024
What were the Tories doing, apart from destroying public services
The Tories crime policy, I agree with most of. I particularly detest the smell of cannabis (aka dog shit) on the street. And littering - why? These are signs of a dysfunctional society.
I think the devil's in the detail though - they say 'back our police to take a zero tolerance approach' - how does that actually compell the police to have a zero tolerance approach? The Home Secretary has no operational control over the police force. So how are you going to do it? There's also nothing really here on justice, which is absolutely vital if there's a crime crackdown. How are courts going to handle the extra cases? How are prisons going to handle it?
That strikes me as a lack of a 'worked out policy' that Kemi places so much importance on.
Though tbf I've only seen the social media video, they could have answers to all this.
The thing is that it is pure bollocks.
Where are the increased funds for the police? The increased court space? The new prisons? The new secure mental illness places? The taxes or cuts elsewhere to fund the above?
It is just waffle and hot air.
2010 to 2024
What were the Tories doing, apart from destroying public services
Plotting against whoever was their leader at the time?
Arguing with each other about Brexit? And then thrusting its worst possible form upon us.
Bringing politics into disrepute with their behaviour?
Comments
Would the relationship take a hit? Clearly so, but to put in slightly childish terms, they started that. That means we don't act beyond necessity or our direct interests to show them the value of treating allies like allies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franco-British_plans_for_intervention_in_the_Winter_War
There is too much assignment of permanancy to a fluctuating landscape and too much ignoring previously well established patterns.
People, generally, still think its 2 or 3 years till they go to the polls again
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2026/3/8/iran-live-israel-bombs-tehran-oil-depots-attacks-on-gulf-states-continue?update=4377177
https://x.com/GovPressOffice/status/2030438491855987139?s=20
Imagine a Conservative Party with 50 MPs, imagine Labour with less than 100 - it's barely conceivable.
The other part to this is the extent of local organisation - yes, you can run local Council by-election campaigns with a small group of activists (I did it myself in the dim and distant) but a GE is several orders of magnitude different.
How many seats will each of the five main parties fight in England next time - I don't mean, put up candidates, but seriously contest. Finger in the air but I suspect the LDs will fight 100-125 to some degree, the Conservatives 150-200 perhaps but what of Reform, Green and especially Labour?
IMHO, you'd have to be borderline certifiable to have a strong view on the next GE - the predictions for this May are incoherent in extremis - the latest nonsense in the Guardian fails even basic analysis (the seat count is wrong to start with) and is more about expectations mismanagement - let's talk up the Greens so when they win 250 London seats rather than 500 we can call Polanski a failure - seriously?
You are not an addition to the site
All these influences come together remarkably in one of the greatest books of all time.
And again - what exactly stopped the Tories from doing all that is 2022/3/4.
Ukraine never attacked or threatened Russia.
Iran has repeatedly attacked and threatened Israel.
Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons.
Iran is developing nuclear weapons.
I get you hate Israel and would not care if a mushroom cloud appeared above Tel Aviv, but the two situations are not remotely comparable.
Look folks, reality can sometimes be hard to accept.
We all want freedom for Iran. The regime was a horrible, nasty pack of religious zealots for whom terrorism & murder was always the first option. Their revolution started by killing 400 people in a theater with arson & chained exit doors. They sent thousand of kids to their deaths with toy keys around their necks promising entry to heaven if they just walk in to Iraqi minefields.
I’ve tracked IRGC terrorism across Iraq, Lebanon, Syria & Yemen and even fought them in the PG, They almost killed me in 1988. The Islamic regime needed/still needs to be destroyed … that said:
People are getting upset with why I assess this war will likely fail to topple the regime.
Because it is a fantasy based in Trump’s head using lethal tools we prepared for 47 years for the right moment. That moment likely has passed.
Trump has no idea what he’s doing. Because he has contempt for the people who know what they’re doing & the history of what came before him.
If Afghanistan is the graveyard of empires then Iran is the funeral home of empires. It dresses you up and lays you into the coffin neatly. Then closes the lid.
Trump cannot understand why Iran hasn’t surrendered … “Lookit all them bombs,” he shouts “They should all love Trump!”
That’s it. That’s the Iran-War strategy. He does not care about the people of Iran. It a score settling grudge match egged on by Netanyahu’s 40 years of promises that war will change the regime if we just drop enough bombs & assassinate its leaders.
So If you want to live in a fantasy world where we are suddenly being greeted as liberators by the 93 million Iranians … feel free.
You are now set up for earth shattering disappointment.
You have to account for the fact that Trump could have attacked in support of the protesters in January. He didn’t & he let them be killed. He was completely indifferent. The 30k dead were a one-day talking point.
Right now, none of these attacks will liberate Iran without a populist uprising or invading ground forces. Worse case is a sectarian Civil war. If that happens the only outcome is that it will kill a lot of people, splinter the country & take down the global economy. Trump will sleep soundly & demand he be made Ayatollah.
This is literally his mental illness masked as foreign policy
This war may give some Iranians hope but it’s a false one. Gird for a horrible chain of dramatic events but rest assured Trump doesn’t care about the people of Iran.
He only want its oil. He said so.
I’m sorry folks, but my job is to deliver reality based assessments, not promise you sunshine in a swirling hurricane of flying bullets, bombs, excrement & razor wire.
https://x.com/MalcolmNance/status/2030572269898998102
I agree the Tories maybe have 200 on radar and the LDs low 100
Reform? Who knows.... i imagine theyll just try and do broad areas of strength?
Greens should be working on 50 to 75 or theyll risk doing a Reform 24 and getting a handful only
The LE projections are bizarre. Some of the predicted vote shares in Norfolk wards ive looked at are childishly bad
Nothing wrong with that- it's a key compensation for being irrelevant. As long as they realise that it's what they're doing, and the electorate aren't forced into giving them a big win faute de mieux.
Why should we care if there is a civil war in Iran?
A failed state and civil war would be a huge improvement on the IRGC.
Hopefully liberal Iranians can win the civil war, but it needs to be in Iranian hands.
The way Trump has behaved to the UK - tariffs, insults, bullying, belittling our past help etc - makes him undeserving of our unconditional support. You cannot behave has he has and then expect everyone to come running when it suits him.
The loss of territory has been demanded by the USSR before they declared war, so was pretty much inevitable either way - today it's a wasteland of appalling poverty and crushing social issues, whereas the parts adjacent Karelia that Finland kept are relatively prosperous. But the real Soviet objective was to conquer Finland and set up a puppet communist government - which completely failed. The additional land they were forced to give up, in addition to parts of Karelia and the buffer zone beyond Leningrad (now StP), was adjacent Lake Ladoga.
In Finland, what we see as the War was actually three wars; the first "Winter War", when the Soviets invaded, were fought to a standstill, and ended with the peace settlement and loss of territory in 1940. The second, "Continuation War", which broke out when Germany invaded the USSR in 1941, with Finland taking the opportunity to try and regain its lost territory, and after the German advance broadly refusing to fight on beyond its historic borders, which ended with a peace settlement in 1944 that required the Finns to remove all German forces from its territory. That led to the third, "Lapland War", in which the Germans burned down every settlement in the north of the country (hence there are few old buildings there nowadays), drove off most of the inhabitants, and laid lots of landmines (the removal of which took thirty years afterwards), before retreating to defensive positions in the north of Norway, where they mostly held out until the war ended. Officially Finland and Germany stayed at war into the 1950s.
Are you on board with that?
It was fairly obvious, when Iran made their deal, that it would be a two way thing. Entirely unsurprising to find Russian parts in an Iranian drone.
That it was launched from Lebanon was fairly obvious. Hezbollah is a wholly owned subsidiary of IRGC, after all.
The reaction of the Lebanese government to the strikes by Hezbollah has been interesting - talking about actually clamping down on the Hezy’s. All talk at the moment - but if their funding gets cut…
Putting public safety first
when dealing with mentally ill people.
We will overhaul Labour’s Mental Health Act and stamp out the ideology that has seen a fixation on racial targets, putting these ahead of public safety - with tragic consequences.
Labour’s Mental Health Act has an obsessive focus on reducing the use of sectioning on racial grounds, allowing seriously mentally ill individuals to remain in communities, when they should be detained for the safety of themselves and the public.
Labour voted down our plans to mandate an assessment of the levels of risk to public safety posed by patients in the community.
We will reform the law and overturn this culture.
https://public.conservatives.com/publicweb/Take_Back_our_Streets.pdf.pdf
Firstly, did no-one read this before publication? Presumably Philp does not really advocate ‘sectioning on racial grounds’ as might be inferred at first glance.
Second, presumably this is prompted by revelations from the current inquiry into the Nottingham killings of students Barnaby Webber and Grace O'Malley-Kumar, and caretaker Ian Coates by the paranoid schizophrenic Valdo Calocane. But they were killed in 2023, when Chris Philp himself was Minister for Crime and Policing, and obviously before the new Mental Health Act was passed in December 2025.
Now - removing the current bunch in Iran is a very attractive idea but it will achieve nothing if there is no real and realistic plan for what comes next. You can't imagine something worse than the Islamic Republic - well keep watching my friends.
NEW: Westminster Voting Intention
RFM 29% (-2)
LAB 21% (+2)
CON 18% (-2)
LD 10% (-2)
GRN 12% (-)
OTH 9% (+2)
F/w 5 March 2026. Changes vs 30/01/2026
IDF grave robbing grave digging mission in to sacred area to try to allegedly find 40 year old remains.
Family of the dead person have publicly said they don't want anything to do with it.
How anyone can defend that sick murdering ass hole any more is beyond belief
He's on A par with Pol Pot now, worse than Hitler or Stalin
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/crime/article/karen-findlay-met-police-king-coronation-rfcnbdn2m
"The police commander honoured by the King for overseeing security at the coronation is facing potential corruption charges after claims of a cover-up at Scotland Yard over driving offences.
Prosecutors have been asked to consider charging Karen Findlay with a series of possible crimes, including perverting the course of justice, misconduct in public office, forgery, fraud and corrupt or improper use of police powers. .......
Three other current or former Metropolitan Police officers or staff may also face criminal charges over the alleged scam after the IOPC sent files of evidence to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) last week."
Then we have this as well - https://www.thetimes.com/comment/the-times-view/article/another-nhs-tragedy-but-it-doesnt-have-to-be-this-way-5qc2kfqbk.
Negligence, mistakes, delays, denials, lies and a cover up. No wonder the widower says:
“Every single one of the authorities has failed us, and they continue to fail us. None of them are fit for purpose.”
He went on - “At every step of the process we have been met with lies, deceit, obfuscation and individuals within organisations that all seem to have one thing in common, self-preservation. What is the point of law and justice if nobody is accountable and people can act with utter impunity? It doesn’t bear thinking about.”
Reading this stuff is not good for my blood pressure. It enrages me.
I have challenged my fury into my book proposal. And if anyone would like to read and comment on my first draft of that, let me know.
Israel is a democratic ally that is neither attacking us nor any of our allies.
Not a totalitarian, theocratic dictatorshil that is repeatedly attacking allies and calls us Little Satan.
Looking for a cross comparison between Wards and Constituencies to see how the 8000+ wards matches to the 650 constituencies. Before I embark on this (for betting purposes), does anyone know where I might get this information from the public domain. If not, I'll do it myself.
Apologies again for interrupting the current trashing / praising Trump.
Worse than Hitler or Stalin?
You are insane.
Trump has been a fantastic opportunity for Bibi to engage his wildest racist and murderous fantasies.
I asked earlier in the week what is Bibi's body count since first taking office,? It mut be solidly six figures.
If you want peace for Lebanon then regime change in Iran, so that Lebanon can finally rid itself of Hezbollah, is the best way of achieving that.
Reform now sub 30 with all but 5 pollsters (JLP, Techne, Ipsos, Freshwater and Deltapoll but they havent reported since December)
Tories off a point or two to just under 20 with most pollsters
Labour picture is very varied, some tentative evidence of a no bases bounce but not conclusive yet
Lib Dems in slight decline from last year and may see the odd single figure in the near term
Greens on the march but still have not broken through 15% with any BPC pollsters except YG and Find Out Now
There is a saying that families fall out with each other, but if they come under attack from an outsider they come together
Trump is that outsider and he has given a boost to Starmer which may well see his survival, not least because there is no obvious successor
This is a fast moving and dangerous time with untold consquences and as of now we are active in the arena and have to reserve the right to respond if Iranian missiles take out any of our military, civilians or interests
Defence spending is going to become a 'hot potato' and it is true over the last 20 years the UK and Europe have relied on the peace dividend to reduce defence spending, which Trump has come along and thrown in the bin
If you are an American it is legitimate to ask why is the US paying and subsidising other nations in NATO ?
Europe and UK have a war in Europe, and now one in the middle east, and something has to give to allow us to invest tens of billions more and now in our defence
The surest way to destroy Iran would be to make him leader...
Although we can live in hope.
Which is moot since the Government's actions are completely justified and legitimate.
Which is why the Opposition supports it too.
The UAE has struck a desalination plant in Iran -Israeli Media
Would be the first confirmed UAE strike on Iran, and follows a pattern of escalating strikes against critical water infrastructure in the Gulf region
Different pollster more like. I’m interested in your pro Labour stance and the oddment of comedy in your ‘boost’, but don’t fool yourself.
The graph sez what it sez. The trend is clear. I’ve said it before but to no avail. If Labour have policy they would like to bring to future Britain, initiate PR. Your party is over.
As it happens, I’m weirdly pro SKS, but it’s now obvious that he is in transitional phase. Tears in the rain and all that.
Of course the master data that combines everything together is the PAF file that is owned by the post office but if all you care about is Ward to constituency that will give you everything you need.
Id say additionally Reform and Lib Dems are testing their recent lows (and in Reforms case starting to cross under) and Greens are testing their ceiling (and starting to break through)
It happens to us all from time to time.
Enjoy your day.
Netanyahu, Hamas, Ayatollah Khamenei, Hezbollah are all evil and equally have the blood of innocents on their hands
And of course comparision with Hitler is just hysterical nonsense
When @Brixian59 and @Roger come on here and repeat my second line then we will be making progress
As my wife said yesterday, a plague on all their houses
I think the devil's in the detail though - they say 'back our police to take a zero tolerance approach' - how does that actually compell the police to have a zero tolerance approach? The Home Secretary has no operational control over the police force. So how are you going to do it? There's also nothing really here on justice, which is absolutely vital if there's a crime crackdown. How are courts going to handle the extra cases? How are prisons going to handle it?
That strikes me as a lack of a 'worked out policy' that Kemi places so much importance on.
Though tbf I've only seen the social media video, they could have answers to all this.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2026/03/08/iran-war-latest-israel-targets-irgc-beirut-hotel/
And I think it's hard for the opposition to take a line - especially hard for Reform, because Farage actually wants stuff from Trump - he wants Chagos killed (and so say all of us). It would be far easier and more electorally rewarding to take an anti-Trump line.
However, as someone mentions downthread, Starmer will find a way to become less popular than ever. Let's just hope there's no loss of human life involved.
Where are the increased funds for the police? The increased court space? The new prisons? The new secure mental illness places? The taxes or cuts elsewhere to fund the above?
It is just waffle and hot air.
And it isn't an ally - we have no treaty of alliance with it. In 2023, we signed a partnership treaty with it, but that wasn't an alliance.
It isn't attacking us now, but did so within living memory, indeed causing I think the deadliest terrorist attack ever on Britons, an attack which it recently honoured, so it would doubtless do so again if it thought it needed to. Then it accuses others of terrorism.
As an independent It's a neutral - sometimes moderately hostile, sometimes slightly friendly but always depending on its interests at the time. And we should take a similarly hard nosed attitude towards dealing with it.
And its ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians in 1948, and its illegal and very bloody occupation of Gaza and the West Bank since 1967 have been a disaster for the Free World, never mind for the Palestinians who live there, legitimising Arab nationalism and Arab dictatorships, repeatedly causing division in Europe and America, giving the Soviet Union and then Russia a sore to work on, and diverting attention from struggles that matter much more to our vital interests, currently Ukraine, and jeopardising the flow of oil.
Mario Nawfal
@MarioNawfal
🚨🇮🇷 Reza Pahlavi: In the first 10 to 15 years, Iran's economy could generate over a trillion dollars worth of revenue for the U.S.
https://x.com/MarioNawfal/status/2030557632629547321?s=20
What were the Tories doing, apart from destroying public services
Arguing with each other about Brexit? And then thrusting its worst possible form upon us.
Bringing politics into disrepute with their behaviour?