Thanks for the header @Garethofthevale and you've encapsulated the whole Labour issue. It's difficult to get rid of a Labour leader no matter how poorly they perform. However there seems to be a change in Starmer in that he's noticed he has a large majority which can be used to push through left leaning or far left leaning policies. On the books so far
* Renters' Right Act 2025 (bash the Landlords) * Employment Rights Act 2025 (bash the Employers) * Two Child Limit on UC (Make Love not War) * Hug a European (changes to the relations with the EU) * Replacing Trump as the hub-and-spoke on Ukraine and Hormuz.
This pushing himself into places that Trump doesn't want to go while taking abuse from Trump is quite a feat. Shows he has much thicker skin than the presumed. He's not for turning to coin a phrase.
I think those things have happened despite Starmer rather than because of him.
Most of these have been watered down just enough to annoy both the opponents and proponents.
And this is Starmer’s problem. Upsets the left, the right and much of the middle.
Rudakubana's parents knew their son was stockpiling weapons and planning an attack. They chose silence. Three little girls paid with their lives.
As I said yesterday morning, they should face the consequences of their actions, or indeed their inaction. If they escape criminal charges on a technicality, the Government should deport them.
And if the ECHR stands in the way?
That tells you everything you need to know about why we must leave.
Rudakubana's parents knew their son was stockpiling weapons and planning an attack. They chose silence. Three little girls paid with their lives.
As I said yesterday morning, they should face the consequences of their actions, or indeed their inaction. If they escape criminal charges on a technicality, the Government should deport them.
And if the ECHR stands in the way?
That tells you everything you need to know about why we must leave.
The number that matters most in this piece isn’t the margin on Sunday.
In 2014, Orban’s vote share fell from 52.7% to 44.9% - and he kept his supermajority anyway. Because the constitutional machinery he built between 2010 and 2014 was designed to convert a plurality into unchecked power. Majoritarian multipliers. Gerrymandered maps. Courts with loyalists on 12-year terms. A Budget Council that can dissolve parliament if a budget lapses.
He said it plainly to an Austrian reporter: “I make no secret of the fact that in this respect I tie the hands of the next government. Not just the next one, but the next ten.”
Magyar won the election. He did not yet win the system. Those are two different things and the distance between them is where democracies get lost.
JVL’s point - and it lands hard - is that the American illiberal project is watching Hungary right now not as a cautionary tale but as a how-to guide for what comes after a defeat. The rehabilitation of Orban is already underway in certain op-ed pages. The argument: if he left without bloodshed, he was never really a threat.
It would, though there is a distasteful argument made by many across the spectrum in favour of tying the hands of future governments. We see it regularly with advocates for "international law" where commitments are made then signed as "international law" with an expectation that it will bind all future governments . . . and that today's should be bound by commitments made in the past.
No Parliament should bind its successor. That is profoundly undemocratic. It is no better when "we" do it, than when the likes of Orban does it.
Rudakubana's parents knew their son was stockpiling weapons and planning an attack. They chose silence. Three little girls paid with their lives.
As I said yesterday morning, they should face the consequences of their actions, or indeed their inaction. If they escape criminal charges on a technicality, the Government should deport them.
And if the ECHR stands in the way?
That tells you everything you need to know about why we must leave.
Rudakubana's parents knew their son was stockpiling weapons and planning an attack. They chose silence. Three little girls paid with their lives.
As I said yesterday morning, they should face the consequences of their actions, or indeed their inaction. If they escape criminal charges on a technicality, the Government should deport them.
And if the ECHR stands in the way?
That tells you everything you need to know about why we must leave.
As with the Shamima Begum case, there’s a lot of people who will be worried about stuff like this.
Where did she oppose the rule of law?
Politicians have the ability to change the law. Hiding behind the "rule of law" is not a politicians job.
If the law is right, argue that. If the law is wrong, argue to change it. She made an argument to change the law, not break the law.
In America parents in that situation have been found guilty of manslaughter. We had an interesting case in Dundee recently where there was an abusive relationship which caused severe depression in the wife. She went onto a bridge over a dual carriageway. Her husband pursued her, whether to protect her or threaten her was unclear but she jumped and died. He was found guilty of culpable homicide, the equivalent of manslaughter in Scots law. The Crown case was that his behaviour had materially contributed to her death and the jury accepted it.
I think that there is a good argument that Rudakubana's parents should be held responsible in this way. Their failure to act materially contributed to the death of those 3 girls. I can see a strong public interest in making it clear to any other parents in that situation that they have legal accountability for their actions and non actions.
There comes a point where the parents have to take some accountability although there is a risk of the system simply blaming parents for its own inadequacies. We saw with the Axel R report some institutions were more concerned at the thought of him possibly being stereotyped, as in the discussion with some of the teachers, than what he was doing.
Rudakubana's parents knew their son was stockpiling weapons and planning an attack. They chose silence. Three little girls paid with their lives.
As I said yesterday morning, they should face the consequences of their actions, or indeed their inaction. If they escape criminal charges on a technicality, the Government should deport them.
And if the ECHR stands in the way?
That tells you everything you need to know about why we must leave.
It's very rare for there to be a right-wing bandwagon that Badenoch doesn't jump on if she thinks there's political mileage to make out of it. The latest, deporting Rudakubana's parents regardless of whether they have committed an offence, is simply pandering to the base instincts of many of the British people. Politicians should rise above such knee-jerk sentiments, but Badenoch just can't resist it. She's really rather shallow.
Her worst moments are reactive, instinctively wants to do out-do Farage et al. Her better moments are reflective.
The number that matters most in this piece isn’t the margin on Sunday.
In 2014, Orban’s vote share fell from 52.7% to 44.9% - and he kept his supermajority anyway. Because the constitutional machinery he built between 2010 and 2014 was designed to convert a plurality into unchecked power. Majoritarian multipliers. Gerrymandered maps. Courts with loyalists on 12-year terms. A Budget Council that can dissolve parliament if a budget lapses.
He said it plainly to an Austrian reporter: “I make no secret of the fact that in this respect I tie the hands of the next government. Not just the next one, but the next ten.”
Magyar won the election. He did not yet win the system. Those are two different things and the distance between them is where democracies get lost.
JVL’s point - and it lands hard - is that the American illiberal project is watching Hungary right now not as a cautionary tale but as a how-to guide for what comes after a defeat. The rehabilitation of Orban is already underway in certain op-ed pages. The argument: if he left without bloodshed, he was never really a threat.
The number that matters most in this piece isn’t the margin on Sunday.
In 2014, Orban’s vote share fell from 52.7% to 44.9% - and he kept his supermajority anyway. Because the constitutional machinery he built between 2010 and 2014 was designed to convert a plurality into unchecked power. Majoritarian multipliers. Gerrymandered maps. Courts with loyalists on 12-year terms. A Budget Council that can dissolve parliament if a budget lapses.
He said it plainly to an Austrian reporter: “I make no secret of the fact that in this respect I tie the hands of the next government. Not just the next one, but the next ten.”
Magyar won the election. He did not yet win the system. Those are two different things and the distance between them is where democracies get lost.
JVL’s point - and it lands hard - is that the American illiberal project is watching Hungary right now not as a cautionary tale but as a how-to guide for what comes after a defeat. The rehabilitation of Orban is already underway in certain op-ed pages. The argument: if he left without bloodshed, he was never really a threat.
I'm seeing far too many people ordering and drinking fizzy cat's piss in pubs these days.
Cask ale never really successfully sold itself to millennials and younger. Keg ales, driven by formerly craft beer, or Guinness remain the beer of choice for those who move away from lager.
There are of course exceptions but there's a reason traditional ales have been declining for years. I suspect you'll be one of the younger CAMRA members!
Agreed. The "old man's" drink thing keeps coming up but that's nothing the right branding/marketing and endorsements can't fix.
Gin was seen as an old lady's drink 15 years ago.
I’m fed up resorting to Guinness. You can count me among your supporters, though I’m less dogmatic about it.
Rudakubana's parents knew their son was stockpiling weapons and planning an attack. They chose silence. Three little girls paid with their lives.
As I said yesterday morning, they should face the consequences of their actions, or indeed their inaction. If they escape criminal charges on a technicality, the Government should deport them.
And if the ECHR stands in the way?
That tells you everything you need to know about why we must leave.
The number that matters most in this piece isn’t the margin on Sunday.
In 2014, Orban’s vote share fell from 52.7% to 44.9% - and he kept his supermajority anyway. Because the constitutional machinery he built between 2010 and 2014 was designed to convert a plurality into unchecked power. Majoritarian multipliers. Gerrymandered maps. Courts with loyalists on 12-year terms. A Budget Council that can dissolve parliament if a budget lapses.
He said it plainly to an Austrian reporter: “I make no secret of the fact that in this respect I tie the hands of the next government. Not just the next one, but the next ten.”
Magyar won the election. He did not yet win the system. Those are two different things and the distance between them is where democracies get lost.
JVL’s point - and it lands hard - is that the American illiberal project is watching Hungary right now not as a cautionary tale but as a how-to guide for what comes after a defeat. The rehabilitation of Orban is already underway in certain op-ed pages. The argument: if he left without bloodshed, he was never really a threat.
It would, though there is a distasteful argument made by many across the spectrum in favour of tying the hands of future governments. We see it regularly with advocates for "international law" where commitments are made then signed as "international law" with an expectation that it will bind all future governments . . . and that today's should be bound by commitments made in the past.
No Parliament should bind its successor. That is profoundly undemocratic. It is no better when "we" do it, than when the likes of Orban does it.
You're basically making the argument that there should be no international treaties, which is crackers.
Governments have always routinely done things which, by their nature, are meant to stick and are likely to be hard to unpick in practice, and frankly not worth the time and investment of political capital. That isn't the meaning of "binding your successor" and the alternative is not doing anything with a time horizon going beyond your current term of office.
The number that matters most in this piece isn’t the margin on Sunday.
In 2014, Orban’s vote share fell from 52.7% to 44.9% - and he kept his supermajority anyway. Because the constitutional machinery he built between 2010 and 2014 was designed to convert a plurality into unchecked power. Majoritarian multipliers. Gerrymandered maps. Courts with loyalists on 12-year terms. A Budget Council that can dissolve parliament if a budget lapses.
He said it plainly to an Austrian reporter: “I make no secret of the fact that in this respect I tie the hands of the next government. Not just the next one, but the next ten.”
Magyar won the election. He did not yet win the system. Those are two different things and the distance between them is where democracies get lost.
JVL’s point - and it lands hard - is that the American illiberal project is watching Hungary right now not as a cautionary tale but as a how-to guide for what comes after a defeat. The rehabilitation of Orban is already underway in certain op-ed pages. The argument: if he left without bloodshed, he was never really a threat.
It would, though there is a distasteful argument made by many across the spectrum in favour of tying the hands of future governments. We see it regularly with advocates for "international law" where commitments are made then signed as "international law" with an expectation that it will bind all future governments . . . and that today's should be bound by commitments made in the past.
No Parliament should bind its successor. That is profoundly undemocratic. It is no better when "we" do it, than when the likes of Orban does it.
You're basically making the argument that there should be no international treaties, which is crackers.
Governments have always routinely done things which, by their nature, are meant to stick and are likely to be hard to unpick in practice, and frankly not worth the time and investment of political capital. That isn't the meaning of "binding your successor" and the alternative is not doing anything with a time horizon going beyond your current term of office.
International treaties should solely deal with international relations, not domestic laws.
And they should all be able to be exited if that is how we vote.
Green leader Zack Polanski will call for policies to end the "affordability crisis" tomorrow
- The introduction of a 10:1 pay ratio, whereby the highest-paid employee earns no more than ten times the lowest-paid
- Free school meals for all primary and secondary pupils
- Universal energy bill support for households and stronger rent controls
- A customs union with the EU to cut business costs
Not sure this is the right moves Zack
I've suggested the pay ratio before for public sector organisations.
Applying it to football clubs might be difficult.
Surely it would just lead to outsourcing where it wasn't already happening.
Great news for catering, cleaning, logistics companies.
No-one will want cooks, cleaners, or drivers on their payroll.
Probably a few startups doing contract unskilled office work as well, no-one will want a £20k receptionist or security guy on the books if that means they can only pay the directors £200k.
You could probably AI a lot of semi-skilled office jobs too, exacerbating the unemployment problem.
Rudakubana's parents knew their son was stockpiling weapons and planning an attack. They chose silence. Three little girls paid with their lives.
As I said yesterday morning, they should face the consequences of their actions, or indeed their inaction. If they escape criminal charges on a technicality, the Government should deport them.
And if the ECHR stands in the way?
That tells you everything you need to know about why we must leave.
Rudakubana's parents knew their son was stockpiling weapons and planning an attack. They chose silence. Three little girls paid with their lives.
As I said yesterday morning, they should face the consequences of their actions, or indeed their inaction. If they escape criminal charges on a technicality, the Government should deport them.
And if the ECHR stands in the way?
That tells you everything you need to know about why we must leave.
It's very rare for there to be a right-wing bandwagon that Badenoch doesn't jump on if she thinks there's political mileage to make out of it. The latest, deporting Rudakubana's parents regardless of whether they have committed an offence, is simply pandering to the base instincts of many of the British people. Politicians should rise above such knee-jerk sentiments, but Badenoch just can't resist it. She's really rather shallow.
If they have committed an offence then yes deport them but if they haven't in criminal law as it stands, even if arguably a breach of civil duty of care to others affected by their son, then no
Green leader Zack Polanski will call for policies to end the "affordability crisis" tomorrow
- The introduction of a 10:1 pay ratio, whereby the highest-paid employee earns no more than ten times the lowest-paid
- Free school meals for all primary and secondary pupils
- Universal energy bill support for households and stronger rent controls
- A customs union with the EU to cut business costs
Not sure this is the right moves Zack
I've suggested the pay ratio before for public sector organisations.
Applying it to football clubs might be difficult.
Surely it would just lead to outsourcing where it wasn't already happening.
Great news for catering, cleaning, logistics companies.
No-one will want cooks, cleaners, or drivers on their payroll.
Probably a few startups doing contract unskilled office work as well, no-one will want a £20k receptionist or security guy on the books if that means they can only pay the directors £200k.
You could probably AI a lot of semi-skilled office jobs too, exacerbating the unemployment problem.
I like the direction of travel they are suggesting but not the implementation. More interesting and workable would be a lower corporation tax rate for companies that did meet the 10:1 threshold offset by a higher one where companies have a 50:1 or bigger ratio.
Rudakubana's parents knew their son was stockpiling weapons and planning an attack. They chose silence. Three little girls paid with their lives.
As I said yesterday morning, they should face the consequences of their actions, or indeed their inaction. If they escape criminal charges on a technicality, the Government should deport them.
And if the ECHR stands in the way?
That tells you everything you need to know about why we must leave.
As with the Shamima Begum case, there’s a lot of people who will be worried about stuff like this.
Where did she oppose the rule of law?
Politicians have the ability to change the law. Hiding behind the "rule of law" is not a politicians job.
If the law is right, argue that. If the law is wrong, argue to change it. She made an argument to change the law, not break the law.
In America parents in that situation have been found guilty of manslaughter. We had an interesting case in Dundee recently where there was an abusive relationship which caused severe depression in the wife. She went onto a bridge over a dual carriageway. Her husband pursued her, whether to protect her or threaten her was unclear but she jumped and died. He was found guilty of culpable homicide, the equivalent of manslaughter in Scots law. The Crown case was that his behaviour had materially contributed to her death and the jury accepted it.
I think that there is a good argument that Rudakubana's parents should be held responsible in this way. Their failure to act materially contributed to the death of those 3 girls. I can see a strong public interest in making it clear to any other parents in that situation that they have legal accountability for their actions and non actions.
There comes a point where the parents have to take some accountability although there is a risk of the system simply blaming parents for its own inadequacies. We saw with the Axel R report some institutions were more concerned at the thought of him possibly being stereotyped, as in the discussion with some of the teachers, than what he was doing.
If anyone should be held to account it is them,
Is it clear that the present case is quite as clearcut ?
..James and Jennifer Crumbley have become the first US parents to receive prison sentences for a shooting rampage committed by their child. They were each sentenced to 10-15 years in prison on involuntary manslaughter charges. Here's what happened: Judge Cheryl Matthews said the Crumbleys' dual convictions were not a result of their poor parenting, but because of "repeated acts or lack of acts that could have halted an oncoming runaway train"..
Morning all, Freshwater Strategy's monthly poll is out in City AM and shows a large Reform drop like MiC, this time to Labour mainly. Reform are currently under 30 with every pollster that has reported in 2026 (Deltapoll had them at 30 in December and havent reported since). So at least for now the 'decline' narrative for Reform seems accurate. Could all change if they have a good set of LEs of course.
Caveat - Freshwaters numbers tend to fluctuate quite a bit
What Freshwater and MiC both show is Reform in the lead but declining but with differences on whether Labour or the Conservatives second.
Labour second with the former and the Conservatives second with the latter, which is right will decide whether it is SKS or Kemi facing their leadership under threat after the May elections
Rudakubana's parents knew their son was stockpiling weapons and planning an attack. They chose silence. Three little girls paid with their lives.
As I said yesterday morning, they should face the consequences of their actions, or indeed their inaction. If they escape criminal charges on a technicality, the Government should deport them.
And if the ECHR stands in the way?
That tells you everything you need to know about why we must leave.
So they should be deported even if found not guilty? An interesting approach to the law!
I note AR had been found in possession of a knife by the school 10 times, was known to Prevent, to social workers, CAMHS and Police. If none of these were willing to act, what could the parents be realistically expected to do?
Right, so why did the inquiry chair bring the parents into it?
My hunch is that the authorities didn't have sight of what he was doing at home and, had they known, he could have been locked up for a long time on terrorism charges.
But... the powers that be don't like the t word being mentioned in relation to Southport.
The strong implication is that the parents were lying about how bad things were to avoid AR being taken from them by the authorities. They do have some blame here. Firstly for raising a murderer (most of manage NOT to do that) and secondly for covering for him. Is that to the level prosecution and punishment? One hopes at least that the knowledge of what he did is some punishment.
I was reading about Ian Huntly, no longer a guest of the King, and the role of Maxine Carr in helping him to try to cover up his crimes. She served threes for perverting the course of justice. Ultimately justice was done. In this case by failing to be candid his parents have played a role in the death of three children, the wounding of many more children and adults (both physically and psychologically) and there needs to be come back.
We have, for many years, been reluctant to blame parents for their off-springs misdeeds. Yet there is no bigger influence on a child than their parents.
Time to change that attitude.
I agree with that (although I'd note that Maxine Carr was done for what happened after the murders). But Foxy is right to ask what more could his parents have done? I reckon if you went to the authorities and said your child is a proper wrong'un/mentally unstable and the powers that be ought to do something, I'm not sure they'd believe you.
That's why I come back to the terrorism stuff. That's what they could have got him on, but, of course, we can't say that Southport was terrorism.
Yes - I perhaps wasn't very clear - Maxine Carr played no role in the murders and in some ways was a victim herself.
On Terrorism, the lack of ideology seems to be the sticking point. I'd argue that his ideology of extreme violence would fit, but if not then the definition of terrorism needs to be looked at, as was I think suggested at the time.
Rudakubana's parents knew their son was stockpiling weapons and planning an attack. They chose silence. Three little girls paid with their lives.
As I said yesterday morning, they should face the consequences of their actions, or indeed their inaction. If they escape criminal charges on a technicality, the Government should deport them.
And if the ECHR stands in the way?
That tells you everything you need to know about why we must leave.
It's not directly analogous in that Bullen definitely has Russian citizenship - Russia has been clear he is welcome and indeed he's been there for a decade.
For Begum, I think the courts have accepted she is entitled to Bangladeshi citizenship by birth. But Bangladesh dispute this and have suggested she'd face the death penalty if she entered the country.
So whereas Bullen is living high on the hog courtesy of Uncle Vlad, Begum is in a seemingly permanent limbo in a Syrian detention camp.
You can say she brought it upon herself, and I actually have a bit of sympathy for that. But she really isn't in a comparable situation to Bullen.
The number that matters most in this piece isn’t the margin on Sunday.
In 2014, Orban’s vote share fell from 52.7% to 44.9% - and he kept his supermajority anyway. Because the constitutional machinery he built between 2010 and 2014 was designed to convert a plurality into unchecked power. Majoritarian multipliers. Gerrymandered maps. Courts with loyalists on 12-year terms. A Budget Council that can dissolve parliament if a budget lapses.
He said it plainly to an Austrian reporter: “I make no secret of the fact that in this respect I tie the hands of the next government. Not just the next one, but the next ten.”
Magyar won the election. He did not yet win the system. Those are two different things and the distance between them is where democracies get lost.
JVL’s point - and it lands hard - is that the American illiberal project is watching Hungary right now not as a cautionary tale but as a how-to guide for what comes after a defeat. The rehabilitation of Orban is already underway in certain op-ed pages. The argument: if he left without bloodshed, he was never really a threat.
It would, though there is a distasteful argument made by many across the spectrum in favour of tying the hands of future governments. We see it regularly with advocates for "international law" where commitments are made then signed as "international law" with an expectation that it will bind all future governments . . . and that today's should be bound by commitments made in the past.
No Parliament should bind its successor. That is profoundly undemocratic. It is no better when "we" do it, than when the likes of Orban does it.
You're basically making the argument that there should be no international treaties, which is crackers.
Governments have always routinely done things which, by their nature, are meant to stick and are likely to be hard to unpick in practice, and frankly not worth the time and investment of political capital. That isn't the meaning of "binding your successor" and the alternative is not doing anything with a time horizon going beyond your current term of office.
How long before someone tries creating an international treaty that says the rights of citizens have primacy over the rights of non-citizens.
So an human rights ruling on Right to Family life, in a deportation case, is automatically countered by a higher human right?
And since it is an obligation, and an international treaty, there’s no changing it.
Remember, in the 90s my American relatives (liberals all) were telling me that the right can rage all it likes. But America is a land of law. And the law was progressive.
Rudakubana's parents knew their son was stockpiling weapons and planning an attack. They chose silence. Three little girls paid with their lives.
As I said yesterday morning, they should face the consequences of their actions, or indeed their inaction. If they escape criminal charges on a technicality, the Government should deport them.
And if the ECHR stands in the way?
That tells you everything you need to know about why we must leave.
Starmer goes when there's a replacement available who isn't an obvious downgrade.
That is to say, not yet.
May is going to be a slaughter, with Labour getting mullered in Wales, Scotland, Red Wall and Birmingham by 4 different parties.
After that, anyone will look like an upgrade to Labour MPs.
OK then- who?
Rayner is still sin binned, Burnham is still trapped in Manchester. And whilst they're better at politics, I suspect they'd be worse at government. Though that might be my inner old Tory wet speaking.
The traditional shortlist is still Reeves, Cooper, Mahmood, Lammy.
Starmer got the job faute de mieux. Mieux are still pretty fauteing.
Ed Miliband!
This suggestion has nothing to do with the fact I tipped Ed Miliband at 100/1 to succeed Starmer.
Labour members still would vote for Starmer over Ed Miliband 44% to 41%
The number that matters most in this piece isn’t the margin on Sunday.
In 2014, Orban’s vote share fell from 52.7% to 44.9% - and he kept his supermajority anyway. Because the constitutional machinery he built between 2010 and 2014 was designed to convert a plurality into unchecked power. Majoritarian multipliers. Gerrymandered maps. Courts with loyalists on 12-year terms. A Budget Council that can dissolve parliament if a budget lapses.
He said it plainly to an Austrian reporter: “I make no secret of the fact that in this respect I tie the hands of the next government. Not just the next one, but the next ten.”
Magyar won the election. He did not yet win the system. Those are two different things and the distance between them is where democracies get lost.
JVL’s point - and it lands hard - is that the American illiberal project is watching Hungary right now not as a cautionary tale but as a how-to guide for what comes after a defeat. The rehabilitation of Orban is already underway in certain op-ed pages. The argument: if he left without bloodshed, he was never really a threat.
Really ? ..Majoritarian multipliers. Gerrymandered maps. Courts with loyalists on 12-year terms. A Budget Council that can dissolve parliament if a budget lapses...
I also missed our banning opposition leaders from appearing on state TV.
Our system has many faults, certainly. But they accumulated by happenstance over many, many decades rather than being engineered in by a single party and its leader to keep themselves in power.
This pretence that Hungary was somehow not greatly different from any other European democracy is foolish or mendacious.
Rudakubana's parents knew their son was stockpiling weapons and planning an attack. They chose silence. Three little girls paid with their lives.
As I said yesterday morning, they should face the consequences of their actions, or indeed their inaction. If they escape criminal charges on a technicality, the Government should deport them.
And if the ECHR stands in the way?
That tells you everything you need to know about why we must leave.
As with the Shamima Begum case, there’s a lot of people who will be worried about stuff like this.
Where did she oppose the rule of law?
Politicians have the ability to change the law. Hiding behind the "rule of law" is not a politicians job.
If the law is right, argue that. If the law is wrong, argue to change it. She made an argument to change the law, not break the law.
If they escape criminal charges on a technicality, the Government should deport them.
So deporting people without a conviction let alone a charging decision is not a world I want to live in.
I'd argue Scott Mills has lost his job without a charging decisions or conviction, but I know the legal eagles will explain again about the contract.
The comparison is valid for me - there is a contract of sorts to the country that gives you asylum. Step away from this precise case and you see others where crimes are committed yet the person is still allowed to stay.
Rudakubana's parents knew their son was stockpiling weapons and planning an attack. They chose silence. Three little girls paid with their lives.
As I said yesterday morning, they should face the consequences of their actions, or indeed their inaction. If they escape criminal charges on a technicality, the Government should deport them.
And if the ECHR stands in the way?
That tells you everything you need to know about why we must leave.
So they should be deported even if found not guilty? An interesting approach to the law!
I note AR had been found in possession of a knife by the school 10 times, was known to Prevent, to social workers, CAMHS and Police. If none of these were willing to act, what could the parents be realistically expected to do?
Right, so why did the inquiry chair bring the parents into it?
My hunch is that the authorities didn't have sight of what he was doing at home and, had they known, he could have been locked up for a long time on terrorism charges.
But... the powers that be don't like the t word being mentioned in relation to Southport.
The strong implication is that the parents were lying about how bad things were to avoid AR being taken from them by the authorities. They do have some blame here. Firstly for raising a murderer (most of manage NOT to do that) and secondly for covering for him. Is that to the level prosecution and punishment? One hopes at least that the knowledge of what he did is some punishment.
I was reading about Ian Huntly, no longer a guest of the King, and the role of Maxine Carr in helping him to try to cover up his crimes. She served threes for perverting the course of justice. Ultimately justice was done. In this case by failing to be candid his parents have played a role in the death of three children, the wounding of many more children and adults (both physically and psychologically) and there needs to be come back.
We have, for many years, been reluctant to blame parents for their off-springs misdeeds. Yet there is no bigger influence on a child than their parents.
Time to change that attitude.
I agree with that (although I'd note that Maxine Carr was done for what happened after the murders). But Foxy is right to ask what more could his parents have done? I reckon if you went to the authorities and said your child is a proper wrong'un/mentally unstable and the powers that be ought to do something, I'm not sure they'd believe you.
That's why I come back to the terrorism stuff. That's what they could have got him on, but, of course, we can't say that Southport was terrorism.
Yes - I perhaps wasn't very clear - Maxine Carr played no role in the murders and in some ways was a victim herself.
On Terrorism, the lack of ideology seems to be the sticking point. I'd argue that his ideology of extreme violence would fit, but if not then the definition of terrorism needs to be looked at, as was I think suggested at the time.
My point about Carr is more that she was done for covering for Huntley after he committed the crimes. The question with AR's parents is about what they were doing before he committed the crimes. I'm not arguing about which is worse, more that what she did was a slamdunk for the CPS (I agree that she was in some ways a victim and cannot begin to imagine what such a situation is like).
Green leader Zack Polanski will call for policies to end the "affordability crisis" tomorrow
- The introduction of a 10:1 pay ratio, whereby the highest-paid employee earns no more than ten times the lowest-paid
- Free school meals for all primary and secondary pupils
- Universal energy bill support for households and stronger rent controls
- A customs union with the EU to cut business costs
Not sure this is the right moves Zack
I've suggested the pay ratio before for public sector organisations.
Applying it to football clubs might be difficult.
Surely it would just lead to outsourcing where it wasn't already happening.
Great news for catering, cleaning, logistics companies.
No-one will want cooks, cleaners, or drivers on their payroll.
Probably a few startups doing contract unskilled office work as well, no-one will want a £20k receptionist or security guy on the books if that means they can only pay the directors £200k.
You could probably AI a lot of semi-skilled office jobs too, exacerbating the unemployment problem.
That's a loophole which would be rapidly closed by any government prepared to impose the absurd policy.
I think Reform are heading for quite a lot of disappointment in local elections and Scotland/Wales elections 2026
Only if anti Reform tactical voting, otherwise under FPTP Reform will comfortably win most councillors and councils up in England in May and be the main opposition in Wales in the Senedd for the first time and possibly even in Holyrood too
Green leader Zack Polanski will call for policies to end the "affordability crisis" tomorrow
- The introduction of a 10:1 pay ratio, whereby the highest-paid employee earns no more than ten times the lowest-paid
- Free school meals for all primary and secondary pupils
- Universal energy bill support for households and stronger rent controls
- A customs union with the EU to cut business costs
Not sure this is the right moves Zack
I've suggested the pay ratio before for public sector organisations.
Applying it to football clubs might be difficult.
Surely it would just lead to outsourcing where it wasn't already happening.
Great news for catering, cleaning, logistics companies.
No-one will want cooks, cleaners, or drivers on their payroll.
Probably a few startups doing contract unskilled office work as well, no-one will want a £20k receptionist or security guy on the books if that means they can only pay the directors £200k.
You could probably AI a lot of semi-skilled office jobs too, exacerbating the unemployment problem.
I like the direction of travel they are suggesting but not the implementation. More interesting and workable would be a lower corporation tax rate for companies that did meet the 10:1 threshold offset by a higher one where companies have a 50:1 or bigger ratio.
Incentives are always preferable to state dirigism, I think ?
Gareth of the Vale (@GarethoftheVale2 / @Garethofthevale or whatever moniker) has been doing some good articles recently, and I'm sure the Vale is lucky to have him. Here are some of them
Green leader Zack Polanski will call for policies to end the "affordability crisis" tomorrow
- The introduction of a 10:1 pay ratio, whereby the highest-paid employee earns no more than ten times the lowest-paid
- Free school meals for all primary and secondary pupils
- Universal energy bill support for households and stronger rent controls
- A customs union with the EU to cut business costs
Not sure this is the right moves Zack
I've suggested the pay ratio before for public sector organisations.
Applying it to football clubs might be difficult.
Surely it would just lead to outsourcing where it wasn't already happening.
Great news for catering, cleaning, logistics companies.
No-one will want cooks, cleaners, or drivers on their payroll.
Probably a few startups doing contract unskilled office work as well, no-one will want a £20k receptionist or security guy on the books if that means they can only pay the directors £200k.
You could probably AI a lot of semi-skilled office jobs too, exacerbating the unemployment problem.
I like the direction of travel they are suggesting but not the implementation. More interesting and workable would be a lower corporation tax rate for companies that did meet the 10:1 threshold offset by a higher one where companies have a 50:1 or bigger ratio.
Incentives are always preferable to state dirigism, I think ?
The number that matters most in this piece isn’t the margin on Sunday.
In 2014, Orban’s vote share fell from 52.7% to 44.9% - and he kept his supermajority anyway. Because the constitutional machinery he built between 2010 and 2014 was designed to convert a plurality into unchecked power. Majoritarian multipliers. Gerrymandered maps. Courts with loyalists on 12-year terms. A Budget Council that can dissolve parliament if a budget lapses.
He said it plainly to an Austrian reporter: “I make no secret of the fact that in this respect I tie the hands of the next government. Not just the next one, but the next ten.”
Magyar won the election. He did not yet win the system. Those are two different things and the distance between them is where democracies get lost.
JVL’s point - and it lands hard - is that the American illiberal project is watching Hungary right now not as a cautionary tale but as a how-to guide for what comes after a defeat. The rehabilitation of Orban is already underway in certain op-ed pages. The argument: if he left without bloodshed, he was never really a threat.
Really ? ..Majoritarian multipliers. Gerrymandered maps. Courts with loyalists on 12-year terms. A Budget Council that can dissolve parliament if a budget lapses...
I also missed our banning opposition leaders from appearing on state TV.
Our system has many faults, certainly. But they accumulated by happenstance over many, many decades rather than being engineered in by a single party and its leader to keep themselves in power.
This pretence that Hungary was somehow not greatly different from any other European democracy is foolish or mendacious.
The problem is a refusal to accept defeat and trying to prevent it from happening democratically.
Democracy requires accepting that sometimes you lose.
"But what if ..." is the mantra of a mindset that refuses to accept defeat, whether it be Orban or our own advocates of subverting democracy.
Yes it was worse in Hungary, subjectively. But it is not a unique problem there that is not seen here, and subverting democracy is a dangerous path to go down as while today that might suit your interests, you should always realise that someone you dislike can do the same thing.
Gareth of the Vale (@GarethoftheVale2 / @Garethofthevale or whatever moniker) has been doing some good articles recently, and I'm sure the Vale is lucky to have him. Here are some of them
The number that matters most in this piece isn’t the margin on Sunday.
In 2014, Orban’s vote share fell from 52.7% to 44.9% - and he kept his supermajority anyway. Because the constitutional machinery he built between 2010 and 2014 was designed to convert a plurality into unchecked power. Majoritarian multipliers. Gerrymandered maps. Courts with loyalists on 12-year terms. A Budget Council that can dissolve parliament if a budget lapses.
He said it plainly to an Austrian reporter: “I make no secret of the fact that in this respect I tie the hands of the next government. Not just the next one, but the next ten.”
Magyar won the election. He did not yet win the system. Those are two different things and the distance between them is where democracies get lost.
JVL’s point - and it lands hard - is that the American illiberal project is watching Hungary right now not as a cautionary tale but as a how-to guide for what comes after a defeat. The rehabilitation of Orban is already underway in certain op-ed pages. The argument: if he left without bloodshed, he was never really a threat.
It would, though there is a distasteful argument made by many across the spectrum in favour of tying the hands of future governments. We see it regularly with advocates for "international law" where commitments are made then signed as "international law" with an expectation that it will bind all future governments . . . and that today's should be bound by commitments made in the past.
No Parliament should bind its successor. That is profoundly undemocratic. It is no better when "we" do it, than when the likes of Orban does it.
You're basically making the argument that there should be no international treaties, which is crackers.
Governments have always routinely done things which, by their nature, are meant to stick and are likely to be hard to unpick in practice, and frankly not worth the time and investment of political capital. That isn't the meaning of "binding your successor" and the alternative is not doing anything with a time horizon going beyond your current term of office.
How long before someone tries creating an international treaty that says the rights of citizens have primacy over the rights of non-citizens.
So an human rights ruling on Right to Family life, in a deportation case, is automatically countered by a higher human right?
And since it is an obligation, and an international treaty, there’s no changing it.
Remember, in the 90s my American relatives (liberals all) were telling me that the right can rage all it likes. But America is a land of law. And the law was progressive.
Not sure I understand your point.
Some international treaties are good, some are bad, some are indifferent in terms of their impact. What I am arguing is that they shouldn't be banned from being made on the basis of a fundamental misunderstanding about what it means to bind a successor.
International treaties, despite their imperfections, are a useful and necessary way for sovereign governments to deal with common issues. It's cloud cuckoo land to have a situation where they automatically lapse because of a change of government in one of the signatory nations. It is possible to extricate yourself from an international treaty and people do it - but there are both reputational and other costs.
Green leader Zack Polanski will call for policies to end the "affordability crisis" tomorrow
- The introduction of a 10:1 pay ratio, whereby the highest-paid employee earns no more than ten times the lowest-paid
- Free school meals for all primary and secondary pupils
- Universal energy bill support for households and stronger rent controls
- A customs union with the EU to cut business costs
Not sure this is the right moves Zack
I've suggested the pay ratio before for public sector organisations.
Applying it to football clubs might be difficult.
Surely it would just lead to outsourcing where it wasn't already happening.
Great news for catering, cleaning, logistics companies.
No-one will want cooks, cleaners, or drivers on their payroll.
Probably a few startups doing contract unskilled office work as well, no-one will want a £20k receptionist or security guy on the books if that means they can only pay the directors £200k.
You could probably AI a lot of semi-skilled office jobs too, exacerbating the unemployment problem.
I like the direction of travel they are suggesting but not the implementation. More interesting and workable would be a lower corporation tax rate for companies that did meet the 10:1 threshold offset by a higher one where companies have a 50:1 or bigger ratio.
Incentives are always preferable to state dirigism, I think ?
I do think we should reflect as a society why executive wages have risen much faster than median wages over the last few decades, whether that is good for society, businesses and the economy. I suspect it is good for no-one bar the executives. But how we change it is not simple.
The number that matters most in this piece isn’t the margin on Sunday.
In 2014, Orban’s vote share fell from 52.7% to 44.9% - and he kept his supermajority anyway. Because the constitutional machinery he built between 2010 and 2014 was designed to convert a plurality into unchecked power. Majoritarian multipliers. Gerrymandered maps. Courts with loyalists on 12-year terms. A Budget Council that can dissolve parliament if a budget lapses.
He said it plainly to an Austrian reporter: “I make no secret of the fact that in this respect I tie the hands of the next government. Not just the next one, but the next ten.”
Magyar won the election. He did not yet win the system. Those are two different things and the distance between them is where democracies get lost.
JVL’s point - and it lands hard - is that the American illiberal project is watching Hungary right now not as a cautionary tale but as a how-to guide for what comes after a defeat. The rehabilitation of Orban is already underway in certain op-ed pages. The argument: if he left without bloodshed, he was never really a threat.
It would, though there is a distasteful argument made by many across the spectrum in favour of tying the hands of future governments. We see it regularly with advocates for "international law" where commitments are made then signed as "international law" with an expectation that it will bind all future governments . . . and that today's should be bound by commitments made in the past.
No Parliament should bind its successor. That is profoundly undemocratic. It is no better when "we" do it, than when the likes of Orban does it.
You're basically making the argument that there should be no international treaties, which is crackers.
Governments have always routinely done things which, by their nature, are meant to stick and are likely to be hard to unpick in practice, and frankly not worth the time and investment of political capital. That isn't the meaning of "binding your successor" and the alternative is not doing anything with a time horizon going beyond your current term of office.
How long before someone tries creating an international treaty that says the rights of citizens have primacy over the rights of non-citizens.
So an human rights ruling on Right to Family life, in a deportation case, is automatically countered by a higher human right?
And since it is an obligation, and an international treaty, there’s no changing it.
Remember, in the 90s my American relatives (liberals all) were telling me that the right can rage all it likes. But America is a land of law. And the law was progressive.
Not sure I understand your point.
Some international treaties are good, some are bad, some are indifferent in terms of their impact. What I am arguing is that they shouldn't be banned from being made on the basis of a fundamental misunderstanding about what it means to bind a successor.
International treaties, despite their imperfections, are a useful and necessary way for sovereign governments to deal with common issues. It's cloud cuckoo land to have a situation where they automatically lapse because of a change of government in one of the signatory nations. It is possible to extricate yourself from an international treaty and people do it - but there are both reputational and other costs.
They should not be banned, but they should be used for what they are for - handling international relations.
Abusing them to pass domestic laws on an international basis, to bind a successor, is the wrong thing to do.
Rudakubana's parents knew their son was stockpiling weapons and planning an attack. They chose silence. Three little girls paid with their lives.
As I said yesterday morning, they should face the consequences of their actions, or indeed their inaction. If they escape criminal charges on a technicality, the Government should deport them.
And if the ECHR stands in the way?
That tells you everything you need to know about why we must leave.
As with the Shamima Begum case, there’s a lot of people who will be worried about stuff like this.
Where did she oppose the rule of law?
Politicians have the ability to change the law. Hiding behind the "rule of law" is not a politicians job.
If the law is right, argue that. If the law is wrong, argue to change it. She made an argument to change the law, not break the law.
If they escape criminal charges on a technicality, the Government should deport them.
So deporting people without a conviction let alone a charging decision is not a world I want to live in.
I'd argue Scott Mills has lost his job without a charging decisions or conviction, but I know the legal eagles will explain again about the contract.
The comparison is valid for me - there is a contract of sorts to the country that gives you asylum. Step away from this precise case and you see others where crimes are committed yet the person is still allowed to stay.
I’ve argued against the concept if the Home Sec have the power to strip citizenship from the start.
Imagine the following -
1) setup a fake country (South Georgia). Accidentally fail to include any right to actually live there. 2) Grant citizenship of fake country to anyone you don’t like 3) Strip them of citizenship.
Green leader Zack Polanski will call for policies to end the "affordability crisis" tomorrow
- The introduction of a 10:1 pay ratio, whereby the highest-paid employee earns no more than ten times the lowest-paid
- Free school meals for all primary and secondary pupils
- Universal energy bill support for households and stronger rent controls
- A customs union with the EU to cut business costs
Not sure this is the right moves Zack
I've suggested the pay ratio before for public sector organisations.
Applying it to football clubs might be difficult.
Surely it would just lead to outsourcing where it wasn't already happening.
Great news for catering, cleaning, logistics companies.
No-one will want cooks, cleaners, or drivers on their payroll.
Probably a few startups doing contract unskilled office work as well, no-one will want a £20k receptionist or security guy on the books if that means they can only pay the directors £200k.
You could probably AI a lot of semi-skilled office jobs too, exacerbating the unemployment problem.
That's a loophole which would be rapidly closed by any government prepared to impose the absurd policy.
How?
You have companies contracting other companies to do work.
Thanks to Gareth for another very informative header. I'm not sure I see the parallel with the US. Starmer is much more credible than Biden. The other difference is that Labour are facing a threat from the left as well as the right.
If Labour are to replace Starmer, they need to have a good idea of who they want to replace him with and for what purpose.
The number that matters most in this piece isn’t the margin on Sunday.
In 2014, Orban’s vote share fell from 52.7% to 44.9% - and he kept his supermajority anyway. Because the constitutional machinery he built between 2010 and 2014 was designed to convert a plurality into unchecked power. Majoritarian multipliers. Gerrymandered maps. Courts with loyalists on 12-year terms. A Budget Council that can dissolve parliament if a budget lapses.
He said it plainly to an Austrian reporter: “I make no secret of the fact that in this respect I tie the hands of the next government. Not just the next one, but the next ten.”
Magyar won the election. He did not yet win the system. Those are two different things and the distance between them is where democracies get lost.
JVL’s point - and it lands hard - is that the American illiberal project is watching Hungary right now not as a cautionary tale but as a how-to guide for what comes after a defeat. The rehabilitation of Orban is already underway in certain op-ed pages. The argument: if he left without bloodshed, he was never really a threat.
It would, though there is a distasteful argument made by many across the spectrum in favour of tying the hands of future governments. We see it regularly with advocates for "international law" where commitments are made then signed as "international law" with an expectation that it will bind all future governments . . . and that today's should be bound by commitments made in the past.
No Parliament should bind its successor. That is profoundly undemocratic. It is no better when "we" do it, than when the likes of Orban does it.
You're basically making the argument that there should be no international treaties, which is crackers.
Governments have always routinely done things which, by their nature, are meant to stick and are likely to be hard to unpick in practice, and frankly not worth the time and investment of political capital. That isn't the meaning of "binding your successor" and the alternative is not doing anything with a time horizon going beyond your current term of office.
How long before someone tries creating an international treaty that says the rights of citizens have primacy over the rights of non-citizens.
So an human rights ruling on Right to Family life, in a deportation case, is automatically countered by a higher human right?
And since it is an obligation, and an international treaty, there’s no changing it.
Remember, in the 90s my American relatives (liberals all) were telling me that the right can rage all it likes. But America is a land of law. And the law was progressive.
Not sure I understand your point.
Some international treaties are good, some are bad, some are indifferent in terms of their impact. What I am arguing is that they shouldn't be banned from being made on the basis of a fundamental misunderstanding about what it means to bind a successor.
International treaties, despite their imperfections, are a useful and necessary way for sovereign governments to deal with common issues. It's cloud cuckoo land to have a situation where they automatically lapse because of a change of government in one of the signatory nations. It is possible to extricate yourself from an international treaty and people do it - but there are both reputational and other costs.
They should not be banned, but they should be used for what they are for - handling international relations.
Abusing them to pass domestic laws on an international basis, to bind a successor, is the wrong thing to do.
Again, this is a misunderstanding of the line between the domestic and the international. The whole reason you want to enter a treaty is that you recognise that, without it, Germany (say) could do things or not do things that have an impact of British national interests. You reciprocally limit your discretion in return for them limiting theirs.
And you can in general withdraw from international obligations... but you're going to get a reputation as an unreliable international player if you make a habit of it.
We’ve been assured it doesn’t happen and been told it’s racist and homophobic for claiming it.
No doubt @bondegezou will be on here shortly to tell us you don't get asylum successfully approved unless it's a bona fide genuine claim and absolutely no-one is in a 4* hotel.
The 4* hotel thing is a straight-up fiction. If somewhere was a 4* hotel, but you remove all the services, strip out the amenities and put multiple bunkbeds in one room, it's clearly a lie to call that still a 4* hotel.
I've never said the asylum system in the UK gets everything right. Indeed, I've said the opposite. The system was run down under the Conservatives, so it was inefficient with long waits. I've long said we need a better system to better make decisions, which means more promptly, but also more accurately. We should only be giving asylum to those with bona fide claims and not to those without, we should make those decisions as quickly as possible, and we should deport those who don't have valid claims. That is clearly not what currently happens. Good on the BBC for their reporting in this case, and I hope appropriate action is taken.
Is pretending to be gay a widespread and successful tactic for getting asylum? The number of cases is low. A lower proportion of asylum claimants purport to be gay than the proportion in the general population who say they are gay. Do some asylum claimants make fraudulent claims? Yes, and we should have a system that spots those as well as possible.
The BBC article identifies a particular issue with Pakistani and Bangladeshi claimants. There are more asylum applicants claiming to be gay from those two countries than all other countries put together. Asylum applicants are a diverse group. https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/migration-to-the-uk-asylum/ has a useful Table 1. This shows applications by country, top ten countries shown (2024 data on application numbers, 2021-3 data for success rates). You get some countries where there are undeniably conflicts and repression going on, and applicants from these countries have high acceptance rates (e.g., Eritrea, Syria and Sudan all on 99%, Iran on 87%). These claimants have often come into the country on a boat across the channel. But then you also have a lot of applications from countries that appear more stable and safer with, unsurprisingly, lower acceptance rates, including in South Asia: there's Pakistan (57%), Bangladesh (26%) and India (6%). These claimants have often come into the country on some sort of visa, but then claim asylum once over here, often when their visa is about to run out.
A lot of outrage is directed as those coming over on small boats, who generally are fleeing real persecution, whereas the fake asylum claimants (if we go on who gets rejected) have typically come into the country on visas and then claim. The solution to this is not to machine gun small boats in the channel. It's bilateral deals to address the issue with particular countries, as Sunak successfully* did with Albania.
Has anyone been looking at the Hormuz stats. Seems they are managing to get 30+ vessels through a day which is good news. Quite a few sanctioned Iranian vessels as well as Chinese-crewed vessels. Some of the AIS (Food for Iran etc) seem somewhat questionable. Other AIS are turned off. It's going to be a shi=*tshow when the US Navy decides it wants to board some of these vessels to check the cargos.
The number that matters most in this piece isn’t the margin on Sunday.
In 2014, Orban’s vote share fell from 52.7% to 44.9% - and he kept his supermajority anyway. Because the constitutional machinery he built between 2010 and 2014 was designed to convert a plurality into unchecked power. Majoritarian multipliers. Gerrymandered maps. Courts with loyalists on 12-year terms. A Budget Council that can dissolve parliament if a budget lapses.
He said it plainly to an Austrian reporter: “I make no secret of the fact that in this respect I tie the hands of the next government. Not just the next one, but the next ten.”
Magyar won the election. He did not yet win the system. Those are two different things and the distance between them is where democracies get lost.
JVL’s point - and it lands hard - is that the American illiberal project is watching Hungary right now not as a cautionary tale but as a how-to guide for what comes after a defeat. The rehabilitation of Orban is already underway in certain op-ed pages. The argument: if he left without bloodshed, he was never really a threat.
It would, though there is a distasteful argument made by many across the spectrum in favour of tying the hands of future governments. We see it regularly with advocates for "international law" where commitments are made then signed as "international law" with an expectation that it will bind all future governments . . . and that today's should be bound by commitments made in the past.
No Parliament should bind its successor. That is profoundly undemocratic. It is no better when "we" do it, than when the likes of Orban does it.
You're basically making the argument that there should be no international treaties, which is crackers.
Governments have always routinely done things which, by their nature, are meant to stick and are likely to be hard to unpick in practice, and frankly not worth the time and investment of political capital. That isn't the meaning of "binding your successor" and the alternative is not doing anything with a time horizon going beyond your current term of office.
How long before someone tries creating an international treaty that says the rights of citizens have primacy over the rights of non-citizens.
So an human rights ruling on Right to Family life, in a deportation case, is automatically countered by a higher human right?
And since it is an obligation, and an international treaty, there’s no changing it.
Remember, in the 90s my American relatives (liberals all) were telling me that the right can rage all it likes. But America is a land of law. And the law was progressive.
Not sure I understand your point.
Some international treaties are good, some are bad, some are indifferent in terms of their impact. What I am arguing is that they shouldn't be banned from being made on the basis of a fundamental misunderstanding about what it means to bind a successor.
International treaties, despite their imperfections, are a useful and necessary way for sovereign governments to deal with common issues. It's cloud cuckoo land to have a situation where they automatically lapse because of a change of government in one of the signatory nations. It is possible to extricate yourself from an international treaty and people do it - but there are both reputational and other costs.
The point is that, at the moment, the treaties are nice and progressive.
But what happens when the other side figures out how to use them to pick in *their* policies?
“Treaty On The Mandatory Expulsion Of Immigrants”….
In the US, the MAGA right took over chunks of the judiciary. Which means that even after Trump, they will have immense power until judges die or retire.
The two Tory examples where changing leader worked (and I'd add Sunak as a third; replacing Truss saved more than a hundred seats) were occasions when the change of leader was necessary to implement a change of policy - bin the poll tax, the oven-ready deal, reality-based budgeting.
The big problem for Labour is that no Labour MPs seem to have a clue about what Starmer has done wrong, or failed to do, that changing leader would improve. Changing the leader to do the same failed things with a different face will fail.
At the moment my expectation is that, new leader or not, Labour are going to fail to implement the changes the country requires, and so they will be fantastically unpopular.
The number that matters most in this piece isn’t the margin on Sunday.
In 2014, Orban’s vote share fell from 52.7% to 44.9% - and he kept his supermajority anyway. Because the constitutional machinery he built between 2010 and 2014 was designed to convert a plurality into unchecked power. Majoritarian multipliers. Gerrymandered maps. Courts with loyalists on 12-year terms. A Budget Council that can dissolve parliament if a budget lapses.
He said it plainly to an Austrian reporter: “I make no secret of the fact that in this respect I tie the hands of the next government. Not just the next one, but the next ten.”
Magyar won the election. He did not yet win the system. Those are two different things and the distance between them is where democracies get lost.
JVL’s point - and it lands hard - is that the American illiberal project is watching Hungary right now not as a cautionary tale but as a how-to guide for what comes after a defeat. The rehabilitation of Orban is already underway in certain op-ed pages. The argument: if he left without bloodshed, he was never really a threat.
Really ? ..Majoritarian multipliers. Gerrymandered maps. Courts with loyalists on 12-year terms. A Budget Council that can dissolve parliament if a budget lapses...
I also missed our banning opposition leaders from appearing on state TV.
Our system has many faults, certainly. But they accumulated by happenstance over many, many decades rather than being engineered in by a single party and its leader to keep themselves in power.
This pretence that Hungary was somehow not greatly different from any other European democracy is foolish or mendacious.
I can easily think of another country in which many of those factors already happen and where both sides are happy to indulge when they are the majority and at regional level a permanent majority.
And if we want to look at the UK wasn't Scottish and Welsh devolution arranged in such a way as expected to produce permanent Labour control ?
Thanks Gareth, very readable as always. My Starmer exit book is built on 2 assessments I've made. He will not run for a 2nd term. He will not be replaced this year. 2027 is when he goes, I think, and it will be (technically) voluntary rather than forced by a hostile challenge.
The number that matters most in this piece isn’t the margin on Sunday.
In 2014, Orban’s vote share fell from 52.7% to 44.9% - and he kept his supermajority anyway. Because the constitutional machinery he built between 2010 and 2014 was designed to convert a plurality into unchecked power. Majoritarian multipliers. Gerrymandered maps. Courts with loyalists on 12-year terms. A Budget Council that can dissolve parliament if a budget lapses.
He said it plainly to an Austrian reporter: “I make no secret of the fact that in this respect I tie the hands of the next government. Not just the next one, but the next ten.”
Magyar won the election. He did not yet win the system. Those are two different things and the distance between them is where democracies get lost.
JVL’s point - and it lands hard - is that the American illiberal project is watching Hungary right now not as a cautionary tale but as a how-to guide for what comes after a defeat. The rehabilitation of Orban is already underway in certain op-ed pages. The argument: if he left without bloodshed, he was never really a threat.
The mass replacement of the Judiciary was especially notable.
In 2012 he reduced the compulsory retirement age for Judges from 70 to 62, which required a large cohort of senior judges to retire, including 20 from 70-80 on the Supreme Court.
He backed off to 65 when the European Court found the measure to be discriminatory by age.
Once the far right get in they’ll never want to leave and will attack the pillars that hold up democracy in an attempt to remain in power .
We’ve seen this from the hilariously named Law and Justice party in Poland , Fidesz in Hungary and Slovakia beginning to go down this road. And of course the attempts to dismantle that in the USA .
And I expect we’ll see the same from Reform if they got in .
People’s assumptions that democracy is safe ignores what’s happening .
People can call me melodramatic but Reform are a danger to our democracy and voters need to step up and do everything possible to stop them .
Starmer goes when there's a replacement available who isn't an obvious downgrade.
That is to say, not yet.
May is going to be a slaughter, with Labour getting mullered in Wales, Scotland, Red Wall and Birmingham by 4 different parties.
After that, anyone will look like an upgrade to Labour MPs.
I doubt that. All the potential replacements add downsides that Starmer doesn't have. Plus, after May, there's a shedload of bad news coming courtesy of the fallout from operation epic fiasco, and Starmer may as well mop that up as well before anyone new jumps on the horse.
And if we need evidence that, once your party is in a big hole, changing leaders doesn't always provide a ladder, cf. those who got to follow the charlatan Johnson. ...
Rudakubana's parents knew their son was stockpiling weapons and planning an attack. They chose silence. Three little girls paid with their lives.
As I said yesterday morning, they should face the consequences of their actions, or indeed their inaction. If they escape criminal charges on a technicality, the Government should deport them.
And if the ECHR stands in the way?
That tells you everything you need to know about why we must leave.
As with the Shamima Begum case, there’s a lot of people who will be worried about stuff like this.
Where did she oppose the rule of law?
Politicians have the ability to change the law. Hiding behind the "rule of law" is not a politicians job.
If the law is right, argue that. If the law is wrong, argue to change it. She made an argument to change the law, not break the law.
If they escape criminal charges on a technicality, the Government should deport them.
So deporting people without a conviction let alone a charging decision is not a world I want to live in.
I'd argue Scott Mills has lost his job without a charging decisions or conviction, but I know the legal eagles will explain again about the contract.
The comparison is valid for me - there is a contract of sorts to the country that gives you asylum. Step away from this precise case and you see others where crimes are committed yet the person is still allowed to stay.
I’ve argued against the concept if the Home Sec have the power to strip citizenship from the start.
Imagine the following -
1) setup a fake country (South Georgia). Accidentally fail to include any right to actually live there. 2) Grant citizenship of fake country to anyone you don’t like 3) Strip them of citizenship.
This sort of activist justice from MPs sounds great until they get the wrong person and then somebody ends up dead.
The “remove citizenship” thing was invented because it became functionally impossible to charge people with treason. And difficulties with deportation.
The lawyers for Hook Hand were very proud of the fact they were fighting against deportation and extradition.l, in a general sense. And they were clear that they wanted to end deportation for *anything*.
I pointed out to a couple of them that the Government wouldn’t just sit there. Their answers were illuminating.
The number that matters most in this piece isn’t the margin on Sunday.
In 2014, Orban’s vote share fell from 52.7% to 44.9% - and he kept his supermajority anyway. Because the constitutional machinery he built between 2010 and 2014 was designed to convert a plurality into unchecked power. Majoritarian multipliers. Gerrymandered maps. Courts with loyalists on 12-year terms. A Budget Council that can dissolve parliament if a budget lapses.
He said it plainly to an Austrian reporter: “I make no secret of the fact that in this respect I tie the hands of the next government. Not just the next one, but the next ten.”
Magyar won the election. He did not yet win the system. Those are two different things and the distance between them is where democracies get lost.
JVL’s point - and it lands hard - is that the American illiberal project is watching Hungary right now not as a cautionary tale but as a how-to guide for what comes after a defeat. The rehabilitation of Orban is already underway in certain op-ed pages. The argument: if he left without bloodshed, he was never really a threat.
It would, though there is a distasteful argument made by many across the spectrum in favour of tying the hands of future governments. We see it regularly with advocates for "international law" where commitments are made then signed as "international law" with an expectation that it will bind all future governments . . . and that today's should be bound by commitments made in the past.
No Parliament should bind its successor. That is profoundly undemocratic. It is no better when "we" do it, than when the likes of Orban does it.
You're basically making the argument that there should be no international treaties, which is crackers.
Governments have always routinely done things which, by their nature, are meant to stick and are likely to be hard to unpick in practice, and frankly not worth the time and investment of political capital. That isn't the meaning of "binding your successor" and the alternative is not doing anything with a time horizon going beyond your current term of office.
How long before someone tries creating an international treaty that says the rights of citizens have primacy over the rights of non-citizens.
So an human rights ruling on Right to Family life, in a deportation case, is automatically countered by a higher human right?
And since it is an obligation, and an international treaty, there’s no changing it.
Remember, in the 90s my American relatives (liberals all) were telling me that the right can rage all it likes. But America is a land of law. And the law was progressive.
Not sure I understand your point.
Some international treaties are good, some are bad, some are indifferent in terms of their impact. What I am arguing is that they shouldn't be banned from being made on the basis of a fundamental misunderstanding about what it means to bind a successor.
International treaties, despite their imperfections, are a useful and necessary way for sovereign governments to deal with common issues. It's cloud cuckoo land to have a situation where they automatically lapse because of a change of government in one of the signatory nations. It is possible to extricate yourself from an international treaty and people do it - but there are both reputational and other costs.
The point is that, at the moment, the treaties are nice and progressive.
But what happens when the other side figures out how to use them to pick in *their* policies?
“Treaty On The Mandatory Expulsion Of Immigrants”….
In the US, the MAGA right took over chunks of the judiciary. Which means that even after Trump, they will have immense power until judges die or retire.
The constitution is the most powerful ornament of State in the US & it is the court interprets the constitution & presidents elect justices for life...
Rudakubana's parents knew their son was stockpiling weapons and planning an attack. They chose silence. Three little girls paid with their lives.
As I said yesterday morning, they should face the consequences of their actions, or indeed their inaction. If they escape criminal charges on a technicality, the Government should deport them.
And if the ECHR stands in the way?
That tells you everything you need to know about why we must leave.
As with the Shamima Begum case, there’s a lot of people who will be worried about stuff like this.
Where did she oppose the rule of law?
Politicians have the ability to change the law. Hiding behind the "rule of law" is not a politicians job.
If the law is right, argue that. If the law is wrong, argue to change it. She made an argument to change the law, not break the law.
If they escape criminal charges on a technicality, the Government should deport them.
So deporting people without a conviction let alone a charging decision is not a world I want to live in.
Yes, the deportation part is just wrong. And the challenge to the ECHR is simply spurious. I worry about her analytical abilities, frankly.
Somebody I respect said she’s better suited to being a Spectator columnist/GB News presenter than Tory leader.
She works from the principle she is right and works backwards with that.
We saw it with how her team floundered by the recent question about does she object to Jewish public prayers.
There is a complete absence of intellectual rigour in modern politics.
Without going all nostalgic that wasn't the case in the 1980s.
So when, why and how did it change ?
I don't doubt social media played a part.
People are getting promoted too quickly, they ain’t all Daves.
At this stage of her parliamentary career Mrs Thatcher was a junior shadow minister, John Major was a junior minister at the DHSS when comparing to when Badenoch became leader.
The number that matters most in this piece isn’t the margin on Sunday.
In 2014, Orban’s vote share fell from 52.7% to 44.9% - and he kept his supermajority anyway. Because the constitutional machinery he built between 2010 and 2014 was designed to convert a plurality into unchecked power. Majoritarian multipliers. Gerrymandered maps. Courts with loyalists on 12-year terms. A Budget Council that can dissolve parliament if a budget lapses.
He said it plainly to an Austrian reporter: “I make no secret of the fact that in this respect I tie the hands of the next government. Not just the next one, but the next ten.”
Magyar won the election. He did not yet win the system. Those are two different things and the distance between them is where democracies get lost.
JVL’s point - and it lands hard - is that the American illiberal project is watching Hungary right now not as a cautionary tale but as a how-to guide for what comes after a defeat. The rehabilitation of Orban is already underway in certain op-ed pages. The argument: if he left without bloodshed, he was never really a threat.
It would, though there is a distasteful argument made by many across the spectrum in favour of tying the hands of future governments. We see it regularly with advocates for "international law" where commitments are made then signed as "international law" with an expectation that it will bind all future governments . . . and that today's should be bound by commitments made in the past.
No Parliament should bind its successor. That is profoundly undemocratic. It is no better when "we" do it, than when the likes of Orban does it.
You're basically making the argument that there should be no international treaties, which is crackers.
Governments have always routinely done things which, by their nature, are meant to stick and are likely to be hard to unpick in practice, and frankly not worth the time and investment of political capital. That isn't the meaning of "binding your successor" and the alternative is not doing anything with a time horizon going beyond your current term of office.
How long before someone tries creating an international treaty that says the rights of citizens have primacy over the rights of non-citizens.
So an human rights ruling on Right to Family life, in a deportation case, is automatically countered by a higher human right?
And since it is an obligation, and an international treaty, there’s no changing it.
Remember, in the 90s my American relatives (liberals all) were telling me that the right can rage all it likes. But America is a land of law. And the law was progressive.
Not sure I understand your point.
Some international treaties are good, some are bad, some are indifferent in terms of their impact. What I am arguing is that they shouldn't be banned from being made on the basis of a fundamental misunderstanding about what it means to bind a successor.
International treaties, despite their imperfections, are a useful and necessary way for sovereign governments to deal with common issues. It's cloud cuckoo land to have a situation where they automatically lapse because of a change of government in one of the signatory nations. It is possible to extricate yourself from an international treaty and people do it - but there are both reputational and other costs.
The point is that, at the moment, the treaties are nice and progressive.
But what happens when the other side figures out how to use them to pick in *their* policies?
“Treaty On The Mandatory Expulsion Of Immigrants”….
In the US, the MAGA right took over chunks of the judiciary. Which means that even after Trump, they will have immense power until judges die or retire.
The constitution is the most powerful ornament of State in the US & it is the court interprets the constitution & presidents elect justices for life...
The lawyers and politicians found it expedient to make the Supreme Court the third and highest chamber of the legislative branch.
Green leader Zack Polanski will call for policies to end the "affordability crisis" tomorrow
- The introduction of a 10:1 pay ratio, whereby the highest-paid employee earns no more than ten times the lowest-paid
- Free school meals for all primary and secondary pupils
- Universal energy bill support for households and stronger rent controls
- A customs union with the EU to cut business costs
Not sure this is the right moves Zack
I've suggested the pay ratio before for public sector organisations.
Applying it to football clubs might be difficult.
Surely it would just lead to outsourcing where it wasn't already happening.
Great news for catering, cleaning, logistics companies.
No-one will want cooks, cleaners, or drivers on their payroll.
Probably a few startups doing contract unskilled office work as well, no-one will want a £20k receptionist or security guy on the books if that means they can only pay the directors £200k.
You could probably AI a lot of semi-skilled office jobs too, exacerbating the unemployment problem.
That's a loophole which would be rapidly closed by any government prepared to impose the absurd policy.
How?
You have companies contracting other companies to do work.
Presumably there could be an attempt to define whether a business is primarily providing labour as a service (e.g. contract cleaners) or goods (such as manufacturing cleaning chemicals). In the former case the contractors wages would count as your own for the purpose of the pay ratio, and in the latter not.
This would considerably increase the bureaucracy and complexity required for compliance, and a whole bunch of litigation determining the boundary, as with the cake/biscuit and employee/self-employed distinctions.
The other loophole is finding other ways to pay top staff that isn't on the books as salary. Dividends, shares, loans, I'm sure there would be all manner of creativity.
I do think there's a problem with the way in which Executive pay has exploded, with little to show for it in terms of performance, but I think there should be a better way to achieve the same sort of end than the blunt force trauma of the proposed policy. But I'm glad that the question of how to achieve a more equitable distribution of income is raised as a political issue.
Green leader Zack Polanski will call for policies to end the "affordability crisis" tomorrow
- The introduction of a 10:1 pay ratio, whereby the highest-paid employee earns no more than ten times the lowest-paid
- Free school meals for all primary and secondary pupils
- Universal energy bill support for households and stronger rent controls
- A customs union with the EU to cut business costs
Not sure this is the right moves Zack
I've suggested the pay ratio before for public sector organisations.
Applying it to football clubs might be difficult.
Surely it would just lead to outsourcing where it wasn't already happening.
Great news for catering, cleaning, logistics companies.
No-one will want cooks, cleaners, or drivers on their payroll.
Probably a few startups doing contract unskilled office work as well, no-one will want a £20k receptionist or security guy on the books if that means they can only pay the directors £200k.
You could probably AI a lot of semi-skilled office jobs too, exacerbating the unemployment problem.
That's a loophole which would be rapidly closed by any government prepared to impose the absurd policy.
How?
You have companies contracting other companies to do work.
When the contracted worker an ongoing basis is largely for one company it would be deemed as employment, for a start.
After that it would get more complicated - but mandating the 10:1 ratio would involve a great deal of complication for everyone, anyway. A government determined to do something quite so dirigiste would presumably be equally determined to go after attempts to sidestep the mandate.
Rudakubana's parents knew their son was stockpiling weapons and planning an attack. They chose silence. Three little girls paid with their lives.
As I said yesterday morning, they should face the consequences of their actions, or indeed their inaction. If they escape criminal charges on a technicality, the Government should deport them.
And if the ECHR stands in the way?
That tells you everything you need to know about why we must leave.
As with the Shamima Begum case, there’s a lot of people who will be worried about stuff like this.
Where did she oppose the rule of law?
Politicians have the ability to change the law. Hiding behind the "rule of law" is not a politicians job.
If the law is right, argue that. If the law is wrong, argue to change it. She made an argument to change the law, not break the law.
If they escape criminal charges on a technicality, the Government should deport them.
So deporting people without a conviction let alone a charging decision is not a world I want to live in.
Yes, the deportation part is just wrong. And the challenge to the ECHR is simply spurious. I worry about her analytical abilities, frankly.
Somebody I respect said she’s better suited to being a Spectator columnist/GB News presenter than Tory leader.
She works from the principle she is right and works backwards with that.
We saw it with how her team floundered by the recent question about does she object to Jewish public prayers.
There is a complete absence of intellectual rigour in modern politics.
Without going all nostalgic that wasn't the case in the 1980s.
So when, why and how did it change ?
I don't doubt social media played a part.
People are getting promoted too quickly, they ain’t all Daves.
At this stage of her parliamentary career Mrs Thatcher was a junior shadow minister, John Major was a junior minister at the DHSS when comparing to when Badenoch became leader.
Dave too might have avoided some of his mistakes with a bit more experience ?
Rudakubana's parents knew their son was stockpiling weapons and planning an attack. They chose silence. Three little girls paid with their lives.
As I said yesterday morning, they should face the consequences of their actions, or indeed their inaction. If they escape criminal charges on a technicality, the Government should deport them.
And if the ECHR stands in the way?
That tells you everything you need to know about why we must leave.
Rudakubana's parents knew their son was stockpiling weapons and planning an attack. They chose silence. Three little girls paid with their lives.
As I said yesterday morning, they should face the consequences of their actions, or indeed their inaction. If they escape criminal charges on a technicality, the Government should deport them.
And if the ECHR stands in the way?
That tells you everything you need to know about why we must leave.
As with the Shamima Begum case, there’s a lot of people who will be worried about stuff like this.
Where did she oppose the rule of law?
Politicians have the ability to change the law. Hiding behind the "rule of law" is not a politicians job.
If the law is right, argue that. If the law is wrong, argue to change it. She made an argument to change the law, not break the law.
If they escape criminal charges on a technicality, the Government should deport them.
So deporting people without a conviction let alone a charging decision is not a world I want to live in.
Yes, the deportation part is just wrong. And the challenge to the ECHR is simply spurious. I worry about her analytical abilities, frankly.
Somebody I respect said she’s better suited to being a Spectator columnist/GB News presenter than Tory leader.
She works from the principle she is right and works backwards with that.
We saw it with how her team floundered by the recent question about does she object to Jewish public prayers.
There is a complete absence of intellectual rigour in modern politics.
Without going all nostalgic that wasn't the case in the 1980s.
So when, why and how did it change ?
I don't doubt social media played a part.
People are getting promoted too quickly, they ain’t all Daves.
At this stage of her parliamentary career Mrs Thatcher was a junior shadow minister, John Major was a junior minister at the DHSS when comparing to when Badenoch became leader.
Albeit Starmer and Farage are older now than Major when he left office and Thatcher when she became PM
Interesting piece of research for those who follow health fads.
Cold Plunging Might Make Your Biomarkers Worse https://tryterra.co/research/cold-plunging-biomarker-effect ..The stress-to-adaptation crossover sits at around 3 sessions per 14 days — below that threshold, you're just spiking sympathetic activity. Above it, cold exposure starts to improve recovery scores, sleep scores, and resting heart rate..
Thanks to Gareth for another very informative header. I'm not sure I see the parallel with the US. Starmer is much more credible than Biden. The other difference is that Labour are facing a threat from the left as well as the right.
If Labour are to replace Starmer, they need to have a good idea of who they want to replace him with and for what purpose.
Biden also won like Starmer, Harris lost after she replaced Biden as Democratic nominee
Rudakubana's parents knew their son was stockpiling weapons and planning an attack. They chose silence. Three little girls paid with their lives.
As I said yesterday morning, they should face the consequences of their actions, or indeed their inaction. If they escape criminal charges on a technicality, the Government should deport them.
And if the ECHR stands in the way?
That tells you everything you need to know about why we must leave.
It's not directly analogous in that Bullen definitely has Russian citizenship - Russia has been clear he is welcome and indeed he's been there for a decade.
For Begum, I think the courts have accepted she is entitled to Bangladeshi citizenship by birth. But Bangladesh dispute this and have suggested she'd face the death penalty if she entered the country.
So whereas Bullen is living high on the hog courtesy of Uncle Vlad, Begum is in a seemingly permanent limbo in a Syrian detention camp.
You can say she brought it upon herself, and I actually have a bit of sympathy for that. But she really isn't in a comparable situation to Bullen.
She was also groomed as a minor and is a victim of human trafficking. Her demonization is victim blaming at its most extreme.
The number that matters most in this piece isn’t the margin on Sunday.
In 2014, Orban’s vote share fell from 52.7% to 44.9% - and he kept his supermajority anyway. Because the constitutional machinery he built between 2010 and 2014 was designed to convert a plurality into unchecked power. Majoritarian multipliers. Gerrymandered maps. Courts with loyalists on 12-year terms. A Budget Council that can dissolve parliament if a budget lapses.
He said it plainly to an Austrian reporter: “I make no secret of the fact that in this respect I tie the hands of the next government. Not just the next one, but the next ten.”
Magyar won the election. He did not yet win the system. Those are two different things and the distance between them is where democracies get lost.
JVL’s point - and it lands hard - is that the American illiberal project is watching Hungary right now not as a cautionary tale but as a how-to guide for what comes after a defeat. The rehabilitation of Orban is already underway in certain op-ed pages. The argument: if he left without bloodshed, he was never really a threat.
It would, though there is a distasteful argument made by many across the spectrum in favour of tying the hands of future governments. We see it regularly with advocates for "international law" where commitments are made then signed as "international law" with an expectation that it will bind all future governments . . . and that today's should be bound by commitments made in the past.
No Parliament should bind its successor. That is profoundly undemocratic. It is no better when "we" do it, than when the likes of Orban does it.
You're basically making the argument that there should be no international treaties, which is crackers.
Governments have always routinely done things which, by their nature, are meant to stick and are likely to be hard to unpick in practice, and frankly not worth the time and investment of political capital. That isn't the meaning of "binding your successor" and the alternative is not doing anything with a time horizon going beyond your current term of office.
How long before someone tries creating an international treaty that says the rights of citizens have primacy over the rights of non-citizens.
So an human rights ruling on Right to Family life, in a deportation case, is automatically countered by a higher human right?
And since it is an obligation, and an international treaty, there’s no changing it.
Remember, in the 90s my American relatives (liberals all) were telling me that the right can rage all it likes. But America is a land of law. And the law was progressive.
Not sure I understand your point.
Some international treaties are good, some are bad, some are indifferent in terms of their impact. What I am arguing is that they shouldn't be banned from being made on the basis of a fundamental misunderstanding about what it means to bind a successor.
International treaties, despite their imperfections, are a useful and necessary way for sovereign governments to deal with common issues. It's cloud cuckoo land to have a situation where they automatically lapse because of a change of government in one of the signatory nations. It is possible to extricate yourself from an international treaty and people do it - but there are both reputational and other costs.
The point is that, at the moment, the treaties are nice and progressive.
But what happens when the other side figures out how to use them to pick in *their* policies?
“Treaty On The Mandatory Expulsion Of Immigrants”….
In the US, the MAGA right took over chunks of the judiciary. Which means that even after Trump, they will have immense power until judges die or retire.
The constitution is the most powerful ornament of State in the US & it is the court interprets the constitution & presidents elect justices for life...
Rudakubana's parents knew their son was stockpiling weapons and planning an attack. They chose silence. Three little girls paid with their lives.
As I said yesterday morning, they should face the consequences of their actions, or indeed their inaction. If they escape criminal charges on a technicality, the Government should deport them.
And if the ECHR stands in the way?
That tells you everything you need to know about why we must leave.
As with the Shamima Begum case, there’s a lot of people who will be worried about stuff like this.
Where did she oppose the rule of law?
Politicians have the ability to change the law. Hiding behind the "rule of law" is not a politicians job.
If the law is right, argue that. If the law is wrong, argue to change it. She made an argument to change the law, not break the law.
If they escape criminal charges on a technicality, the Government should deport them.
So deporting people without a conviction let alone a charging decision is not a world I want to live in.
Yes, the deportation part is just wrong. And the challenge to the ECHR is simply spurious. I worry about her analytical abilities, frankly.
Somebody I respect said she’s better suited to being a Spectator columnist/GB News presenter than Tory leader.
She works from the principle she is right and works backwards with that.
We saw it with how her team floundered by the recent question about does she object to Jewish public prayers.
There is a complete absence of intellectual rigour in modern politics.
Without going all nostalgic that wasn't the case in the 1980s.
So when, why and how did it change ?
I don't doubt social media played a part.
I wouldn't say Neil Kinnock and his Labour Party were particularly intellectually rigorous, nor was Ashdown and Steel even if Thatcher, Foot and Jenkins and Owen were
The number that matters most in this piece isn’t the margin on Sunday.
In 2014, Orban’s vote share fell from 52.7% to 44.9% - and he kept his supermajority anyway. Because the constitutional machinery he built between 2010 and 2014 was designed to convert a plurality into unchecked power. Majoritarian multipliers. Gerrymandered maps. Courts with loyalists on 12-year terms. A Budget Council that can dissolve parliament if a budget lapses.
He said it plainly to an Austrian reporter: “I make no secret of the fact that in this respect I tie the hands of the next government. Not just the next one, but the next ten.”
Magyar won the election. He did not yet win the system. Those are two different things and the distance between them is where democracies get lost.
JVL’s point - and it lands hard - is that the American illiberal project is watching Hungary right now not as a cautionary tale but as a how-to guide for what comes after a defeat. The rehabilitation of Orban is already underway in certain op-ed pages. The argument: if he left without bloodshed, he was never really a threat.
It would, though there is a distasteful argument made by many across the spectrum in favour of tying the hands of future governments. We see it regularly with advocates for "international law" where commitments are made then signed as "international law" with an expectation that it will bind all future governments . . . and that today's should be bound by commitments made in the past.
No Parliament should bind its successor. That is profoundly undemocratic. It is no better when "we" do it, than when the likes of Orban does it.
You're basically making the argument that there should be no international treaties, which is crackers.
Governments have always routinely done things which, by their nature, are meant to stick and are likely to be hard to unpick in practice, and frankly not worth the time and investment of political capital. That isn't the meaning of "binding your successor" and the alternative is not doing anything with a time horizon going beyond your current term of office.
How long before someone tries creating an international treaty that says the rights of citizens have primacy over the rights of non-citizens.
So an human rights ruling on Right to Family life, in a deportation case, is automatically countered by a higher human right?
And since it is an obligation, and an international treaty, there’s no changing it.
Remember, in the 90s my American relatives (liberals all) were telling me that the right can rage all it likes. But America is a land of law. And the law was progressive.
Not sure I understand your point.
Some international treaties are good, some are bad, some are indifferent in terms of their impact. What I am arguing is that they shouldn't be banned from being made on the basis of a fundamental misunderstanding about what it means to bind a successor.
International treaties, despite their imperfections, are a useful and necessary way for sovereign governments to deal with common issues. It's cloud cuckoo land to have a situation where they automatically lapse because of a change of government in one of the signatory nations. It is possible to extricate yourself from an international treaty and people do it - but there are both reputational and other costs.
They should not be banned, but they should be used for what they are for - handling international relations.
Abusing them to pass domestic laws on an international basis, to bind a successor, is the wrong thing to do.
The problems come when the political classes get together to pass unpopular legislation over the heads of their own electorates. Much EU legislation can be said to fall into this category, especially the social policy stuff of recent decades.
Of course you can then end up with a severe backlash, as seen in the US and with a nascent version of it appearing in Europe, where populists get elected on a promise to turn the tables in the hall upside-down.
Starmer goes when there's a replacement available who isn't an obvious downgrade.
That is to say, not yet.
May is going to be a slaughter, with Labour getting mullered in Wales, Scotland, Red Wall and Birmingham by 4 different parties.
After that, anyone will look like an upgrade to Labour MPs.
OK then- who?
Rayner is still sin binned, Burnham is still trapped in Manchester. And whilst they're better at politics, I suspect they'd be worse at government. Though that might be my inner old Tory wet speaking.
The traditional shortlist is still Reeves, Cooper, Mahmood, Lammy.
Starmer got the job faute de mieux. Mieux are still pretty fauteing.
Ed Miliband!
This suggestion has nothing to do with the fact I tipped Ed Miliband at 100/1 to succeed Starmer.
Labour members still would vote for Starmer over Ed Miliband 44% to 41%
Rudakubana's parents knew their son was stockpiling weapons and planning an attack. They chose silence. Three little girls paid with their lives.
As I said yesterday morning, they should face the consequences of their actions, or indeed their inaction. If they escape criminal charges on a technicality, the Government should deport them.
And if the ECHR stands in the way?
That tells you everything you need to know about why we must leave.
It's not directly analogous in that Bullen definitely has Russian citizenship - Russia has been clear he is welcome and indeed he's been there for a decade.
For Begum, I think the courts have accepted she is entitled to Bangladeshi citizenship by birth. But Bangladesh dispute this and have suggested she'd face the death penalty if she entered the country.
So whereas Bullen is living high on the hog courtesy of Uncle Vlad, Begum is in a seemingly permanent limbo in a Syrian detention camp.
You can say she brought it upon herself, and I actually have a bit of sympathy for that. But she really isn't in a comparable situation to Bullen.
She was also groomed as a minor and is a victim of human trafficking. Her demonization is victim blaming at its most extreme.
She then went on to commit a large number of serious crimes. Including war crimes. According to her own account.
Rudakubana's parents knew their son was stockpiling weapons and planning an attack. They chose silence. Three little girls paid with their lives.
As I said yesterday morning, they should face the consequences of their actions, or indeed their inaction. If they escape criminal charges on a technicality, the Government should deport them.
And if the ECHR stands in the way?
That tells you everything you need to know about why we must leave.
It's not directly analogous in that Bullen definitely has Russian citizenship - Russia has been clear he is welcome and indeed he's been there for a decade.
For Begum, I think the courts have accepted she is entitled to Bangladeshi citizenship by birth. But Bangladesh dispute this and have suggested she'd face the death penalty if she entered the country.
So whereas Bullen is living high on the hog courtesy of Uncle Vlad, Begum is in a seemingly permanent limbo in a Syrian detention camp.
You can say she brought it upon herself, and I actually have a bit of sympathy for that. But she really isn't in a comparable situation to Bullen.
She was also groomed as a minor and is a victim of human trafficking. Her demonization is victim blaming at its most extreme.
She then went on to commit a large number of serious crimes. Including war crimes. According to her own account.
For which she should be in court in the Uk and sentenced as appropriate.
Just because she committed crimes doesn’t allow us to dump our problem on another country
The number that matters most in this piece isn’t the margin on Sunday.
In 2014, Orban’s vote share fell from 52.7% to 44.9% - and he kept his supermajority anyway. Because the constitutional machinery he built between 2010 and 2014 was designed to convert a plurality into unchecked power. Majoritarian multipliers. Gerrymandered maps. Courts with loyalists on 12-year terms. A Budget Council that can dissolve parliament if a budget lapses.
He said it plainly to an Austrian reporter: “I make no secret of the fact that in this respect I tie the hands of the next government. Not just the next one, but the next ten.”
Magyar won the election. He did not yet win the system. Those are two different things and the distance between them is where democracies get lost.
JVL’s point - and it lands hard - is that the American illiberal project is watching Hungary right now not as a cautionary tale but as a how-to guide for what comes after a defeat. The rehabilitation of Orban is already underway in certain op-ed pages. The argument: if he left without bloodshed, he was never really a threat.
It would, though there is a distasteful argument made by many across the spectrum in favour of tying the hands of future governments. We see it regularly with advocates for "international law" where commitments are made then signed as "international law" with an expectation that it will bind all future governments . . . and that today's should be bound by commitments made in the past.
No Parliament should bind its successor. That is profoundly undemocratic. It is no better when "we" do it, than when the likes of Orban does it.
You're basically making the argument that there should be no international treaties, which is crackers.
Governments have always routinely done things which, by their nature, are meant to stick and are likely to be hard to unpick in practice, and frankly not worth the time and investment of political capital. That isn't the meaning of "binding your successor" and the alternative is not doing anything with a time horizon going beyond your current term of office.
How long before someone tries creating an international treaty that says the rights of citizens have primacy over the rights of non-citizens.
So an human rights ruling on Right to Family life, in a deportation case, is automatically countered by a higher human right?
And since it is an obligation, and an international treaty, there’s no changing it.
Remember, in the 90s my American relatives (liberals all) were telling me that the right can rage all it likes. But America is a land of law. And the law was progressive.
Not sure I understand your point.
Some international treaties are good, some are bad, some are indifferent in terms of their impact. What I am arguing is that they shouldn't be banned from being made on the basis of a fundamental misunderstanding about what it means to bind a successor.
International treaties, despite their imperfections, are a useful and necessary way for sovereign governments to deal with common issues. It's cloud cuckoo land to have a situation where they automatically lapse because of a change of government in one of the signatory nations. It is possible to extricate yourself from an international treaty and people do it - but there are both reputational and other costs.
They should not be banned, but they should be used for what they are for - handling international relations.
Abusing them to pass domestic laws on an international basis, to bind a successor, is the wrong thing to do.
The problems come when the political classes get together to pass unpopular legislation over the heads of their own electorates. Much EU legislation can be said to fall into this category, especially the social policy stuff of recent decades.
Of course you can then end up with a severe backlash, as seen in the US and with a nascent version of it appearing in Europe, where populists get elected on a promise to turn the tables in the hall upside-down.
The problem there is that the political class has lost interest in persuading the population, in many cases.
And then wonder why people vote for the horrid people who oppose the consensus.
They need to channel their inner Abraham Lincoln.
Yes, getting the people to agreed is difficult and time consuming. Yes, it means waiting years, sometimes, for change.
Rudakubana's parents knew their son was stockpiling weapons and planning an attack. They chose silence. Three little girls paid with their lives.
As I said yesterday morning, they should face the consequences of their actions, or indeed their inaction. If they escape criminal charges on a technicality, the Government should deport them.
And if the ECHR stands in the way?
That tells you everything you need to know about why we must leave.
It's not directly analogous in that Bullen definitely has Russian citizenship - Russia has been clear he is welcome and indeed he's been there for a decade.
For Begum, I think the courts have accepted she is entitled to Bangladeshi citizenship by birth. But Bangladesh dispute this and have suggested she'd face the death penalty if she entered the country.
So whereas Bullen is living high on the hog courtesy of Uncle Vlad, Begum is in a seemingly permanent limbo in a Syrian detention camp.
You can say she brought it upon herself, and I actually have a bit of sympathy for that. But she really isn't in a comparable situation to Bullen.
She was also groomed as a minor and is a victim of human trafficking. Her demonization is victim blaming at its most extreme.
She then went on to commit a large number of serious crimes. Including war crimes. According to her own account.
For which she should be in court in the Uk and sentenced as appropriate.
Just because she committed crimes doesn’t allow us to dump our problem on another country
For that we would need to be able to prosecute her. The routes to that have been methodically removed.
A sane, joined up governance would be to replace them. Even if only for future cases.
I would start with a reworking of the treason laws to make it prosecutable.
JD Vance and Turning Point could only fill 25% of this venue in Atlanta, Georgia, per Jake Traylor of MSNOW. Nobody likes MAGA anymore and that’s a beautiful thing.
It won’t be Ed M. Pb as usual shows a blind spot for Labour politics.
I hate him but it will almost certainly be Andy Burnham in 2028 or 2029.
How does he get into Parliament? He's blocked by the Labour exec, would also need to win a seat at a time when Labour is third in the national polling (as of this mornings latest poll) and tried and failed to win the leadership before?
Rudakubana's parents knew their son was stockpiling weapons and planning an attack. They chose silence. Three little girls paid with their lives.
As I said yesterday morning, they should face the consequences of their actions, or indeed their inaction. If they escape criminal charges on a technicality, the Government should deport them.
And if the ECHR stands in the way?
That tells you everything you need to know about why we must leave.
It's not directly analogous in that Bullen definitely has Russian citizenship - Russia has been clear he is welcome and indeed he's been there for a decade.
For Begum, I think the courts have accepted she is entitled to Bangladeshi citizenship by birth. But Bangladesh dispute this and have suggested she'd face the death penalty if she entered the country.
So whereas Bullen is living high on the hog courtesy of Uncle Vlad, Begum is in a seemingly permanent limbo in a Syrian detention camp.
You can say she brought it upon herself, and I actually have a bit of sympathy for that. But she really isn't in a comparable situation to Bullen.
I was surprised that the British courts ruled that Begum's theoretical entitlement to Bangladeshi citizenship was enough to enable the British government to strip her of her British citizenship without leaving her stateless. But they looked at all the evidence and are experienced judges, so that's the way the law as enacted works.
My amateurish legal reasoning sees an obvious parallel with every British citizen's theoretical entitlement to Irish citizenship (British citizenship entities you to reside in Ireland, after a certain number of years of residency you can apply for Irish citizenship). Plus I'm not sure how being moved to a prison in Northern Ireland would interact with the citizenship provisions of the Good Friday Agreement.
Everyone's British citizenship could be at risk from a malicious government.
I'm aiming to get myself three citizenships (Britain, Ireland, Austria) just to be on the safe side.
Rudakubana's parents knew their son was stockpiling weapons and planning an attack. They chose silence. Three little girls paid with their lives.
As I said yesterday morning, they should face the consequences of their actions, or indeed their inaction. If they escape criminal charges on a technicality, the Government should deport them.
And if the ECHR stands in the way?
That tells you everything you need to know about why we must leave.
It's not directly analogous in that Bullen definitely has Russian citizenship - Russia has been clear he is welcome and indeed he's been there for a decade.
For Begum, I think the courts have accepted she is entitled to Bangladeshi citizenship by birth. But Bangladesh dispute this and have suggested she'd face the death penalty if she entered the country.
So whereas Bullen is living high on the hog courtesy of Uncle Vlad, Begum is in a seemingly permanent limbo in a Syrian detention camp.
You can say she brought it upon herself, and I actually have a bit of sympathy for that. But she really isn't in a comparable situation to Bullen.
She was also groomed as a minor and is a victim of human trafficking. Her demonization is victim blaming at its most extreme.
Where were her sympathies when people were being set alight in cages?
The number that matters most in this piece isn’t the margin on Sunday.
In 2014, Orban’s vote share fell from 52.7% to 44.9% - and he kept his supermajority anyway. Because the constitutional machinery he built between 2010 and 2014 was designed to convert a plurality into unchecked power. Majoritarian multipliers. Gerrymandered maps. Courts with loyalists on 12-year terms. A Budget Council that can dissolve parliament if a budget lapses.
He said it plainly to an Austrian reporter: “I make no secret of the fact that in this respect I tie the hands of the next government. Not just the next one, but the next ten.”
Magyar won the election. He did not yet win the system. Those are two different things and the distance between them is where democracies get lost.
JVL’s point - and it lands hard - is that the American illiberal project is watching Hungary right now not as a cautionary tale but as a how-to guide for what comes after a defeat. The rehabilitation of Orban is already underway in certain op-ed pages. The argument: if he left without bloodshed, he was never really a threat.
It would, though there is a distasteful argument made by many across the spectrum in favour of tying the hands of future governments. We see it regularly with advocates for "international law" where commitments are made then signed as "international law" with an expectation that it will bind all future governments . . . and that today's should be bound by commitments made in the past.
No Parliament should bind its successor. That is profoundly undemocratic. It is no better when "we" do it, than when the likes of Orban does it.
You're basically making the argument that there should be no international treaties, which is crackers.
Governments have always routinely done things which, by their nature, are meant to stick and are likely to be hard to unpick in practice, and frankly not worth the time and investment of political capital. That isn't the meaning of "binding your successor" and the alternative is not doing anything with a time horizon going beyond your current term of office.
How long before someone tries creating an international treaty that says the rights of citizens have primacy over the rights of non-citizens.
So an human rights ruling on Right to Family life, in a deportation case, is automatically countered by a higher human right?
And since it is an obligation, and an international treaty, there’s no changing it.
Remember, in the 90s my American relatives (liberals all) were telling me that the right can rage all it likes. But America is a land of law. And the law was progressive.
Not sure I understand your point.
Some international treaties are good, some are bad, some are indifferent in terms of their impact. What I am arguing is that they shouldn't be banned from being made on the basis of a fundamental misunderstanding about what it means to bind a successor.
International treaties, despite their imperfections, are a useful and necessary way for sovereign governments to deal with common issues. It's cloud cuckoo land to have a situation where they automatically lapse because of a change of government in one of the signatory nations. It is possible to extricate yourself from an international treaty and people do it - but there are both reputational and other costs.
The point is that, at the moment, the treaties are nice and progressive.
But what happens when the other side figures out how to use them to pick in *their* policies?
“Treaty On The Mandatory Expulsion Of Immigrants”….
In the US, the MAGA right took over chunks of the judiciary. Which means that even after Trump, they will have immense power until judges die or retire.
The constitution is the most powerful ornament of State in the US & it is the court interprets the constitution & presidents elect justices for life...
The lawyers and politicians found it expedient to make the Supreme Court the third and highest chamber of the legislative branch.
Whoops.
It all stems back to, I think 1803.
Madison vs Marbury was the most amazing example of a court creating power for itself. Then just wait 220 years to add the MAGA rocketfuel on top...
Rudakubana's parents knew their son was stockpiling weapons and planning an attack. They chose silence. Three little girls paid with their lives.
As I said yesterday morning, they should face the consequences of their actions, or indeed their inaction. If they escape criminal charges on a technicality, the Government should deport them.
And if the ECHR stands in the way?
That tells you everything you need to know about why we must leave.
It's not directly analogous in that Bullen definitely has Russian citizenship - Russia has been clear he is welcome and indeed he's been there for a decade.
For Begum, I think the courts have accepted she is entitled to Bangladeshi citizenship by birth. But Bangladesh dispute this and have suggested she'd face the death penalty if she entered the country.
So whereas Bullen is living high on the hog courtesy of Uncle Vlad, Begum is in a seemingly permanent limbo in a Syrian detention camp.
You can say she brought it upon herself, and I actually have a bit of sympathy for that. But she really isn't in a comparable situation to Bullen.
I was surprised that the British courts ruled that Begum's theoretical entitlement to Bangladeshi citizenship was enough to enable the British government to strip her of her British citizenship without leaving her stateless. But they looked at all the evidence and are experienced judges, so that's the way the law as enacted works.
My amateurish legal reasoning sees an obvious parallel with every British citizen's theoretical entitlement to Irish citizenship (British citizenship entities you to reside in Ireland, after a certain number of years of residency you can apply for Irish citizenship). Plus I'm not sure how being moved to a prison in Northern Ireland would interact with the citizenship provisions of the Good Friday Agreement.
Everyone's British citizenship could be at risk from a malicious government.
I'm aiming to get myself three citizenships (Britain, Ireland, Austria) just to be on the safe side.
It wasn't theoretical, they ruled she already had it from birth. That's definitely not the same as being eligible for citizenship after a certain number of years of residence.
Rudakubana's parents knew their son was stockpiling weapons and planning an attack. They chose silence. Three little girls paid with their lives.
As I said yesterday morning, they should face the consequences of their actions, or indeed their inaction. If they escape criminal charges on a technicality, the Government should deport them.
And if the ECHR stands in the way?
That tells you everything you need to know about why we must leave.
It's not directly analogous in that Bullen definitely has Russian citizenship - Russia has been clear he is welcome and indeed he's been there for a decade.
For Begum, I think the courts have accepted she is entitled to Bangladeshi citizenship by birth. But Bangladesh dispute this and have suggested she'd face the death penalty if she entered the country.
So whereas Bullen is living high on the hog courtesy of Uncle Vlad, Begum is in a seemingly permanent limbo in a Syrian detention camp.
You can say she brought it upon herself, and I actually have a bit of sympathy for that. But she really isn't in a comparable situation to Bullen.
She was also groomed as a minor and is a victim of human trafficking. Her demonization is victim blaming at its most extreme.
Where were her sympathies when people were being set alight in cages?
With ISIS.
Yes. I find what she did abhorrent and I find the desire to expel her from our club (of British citizenship) understandable.
But, y'know, there's that thing about the protections of the law existing for everyone - including the most depraved killer - or they exist for no-one.
I think it's extraordinarily dangerous to give the state the power to strip you of your citizenship.
Rudakubana's parents knew their son was stockpiling weapons and planning an attack. They chose silence. Three little girls paid with their lives.
As I said yesterday morning, they should face the consequences of their actions, or indeed their inaction. If they escape criminal charges on a technicality, the Government should deport them.
And if the ECHR stands in the way?
That tells you everything you need to know about why we must leave.
It's not directly analogous in that Bullen definitely has Russian citizenship - Russia has been clear he is welcome and indeed he's been there for a decade.
For Begum, I think the courts have accepted she is entitled to Bangladeshi citizenship by birth. But Bangladesh dispute this and have suggested she'd face the death penalty if she entered the country.
So whereas Bullen is living high on the hog courtesy of Uncle Vlad, Begum is in a seemingly permanent limbo in a Syrian detention camp.
You can say she brought it upon herself, and I actually have a bit of sympathy for that. But she really isn't in a comparable situation to Bullen.
I was surprised that the British courts ruled that Begum's theoretical entitlement to Bangladeshi citizenship was enough to enable the British government to strip her of her British citizenship without leaving her stateless. But they looked at all the evidence and are experienced judges, so that's the way the law as enacted works.
My amateurish legal reasoning sees an obvious parallel with every British citizen's theoretical entitlement to Irish citizenship (British citizenship entities you to reside in Ireland, after a certain number of years of residency you can apply for Irish citizenship). Plus I'm not sure how being moved to a prison in Northern Ireland would interact with the citizenship provisions of the Good Friday Agreement.
Everyone's British citizenship could be at risk from a malicious government.
I'm aiming to get myself three citizenships (Britain, Ireland, Austria) just to be on the safe side.
It wasn't theoretical, they ruled she already had it from birth. That's definitely not the same as being eligible for citizenship after a certain number of years of residence.
I mean it is theoretical, because she doesn't have Bangladeshi citizenship in reality, and Bangladesh insist that their citizenship law does not work the way it was interpreted by British courts to work.
✴️Young women are 26 pts less favourable to capitalism than young men, and feel much more positively towards communism than capitalism.
✴️Women u25 dislike capitalism so much, they view it as (un)favourably as fascism.
✴️UK should pay slavery reparations by a 2-1 margin
Young middle class educated white women feel the most strongly about these issues.
✴️17% of ABC1 women have a positive view of capitalism compared to 32% of C2DE women
✴️ABC1 women more likely to think the economy works against them
White women are more critical about the country and their chances in it than those from an ethnic minority background
✴️Young white women are more likely to say the country is racist and sexist
✴️Young white women are less likely to say they feel valued by society
Strikingly, young women are *a lot* more negative about the opposite gender than young men.
✴️6 in 10 (58%) say they would find it difficult to date someone who disagreed on Gaza
✴️3 in 4 (74%) say the say the same about views of Donald Trump, with even more saying they wouldn't date someone who disagreed about social justice
That chart says 45% of white women say the UK is not racist, 37% say it is. 39% of young BAME women say it is racist, same as 39% say it is not so their data does NOT say that young white women are more likely to say their country is racist
Rudakubana's parents knew their son was stockpiling weapons and planning an attack. They chose silence. Three little girls paid with their lives.
As I said yesterday morning, they should face the consequences of their actions, or indeed their inaction. If they escape criminal charges on a technicality, the Government should deport them.
And if the ECHR stands in the way?
That tells you everything you need to know about why we must leave.
It's not directly analogous in that Bullen definitely has Russian citizenship - Russia has been clear he is welcome and indeed he's been there for a decade.
For Begum, I think the courts have accepted she is entitled to Bangladeshi citizenship by birth. But Bangladesh dispute this and have suggested she'd face the death penalty if she entered the country.
So whereas Bullen is living high on the hog courtesy of Uncle Vlad, Begum is in a seemingly permanent limbo in a Syrian detention camp.
You can say she brought it upon herself, and I actually have a bit of sympathy for that. But she really isn't in a comparable situation to Bullen.
She was also groomed as a minor and is a victim of human trafficking. Her demonization is victim blaming at its most extreme.
Where were her sympathies when people were being set alight in cages?
With ISIS.
Yes. I find what she did abhorrent and I find the desire to expel her from our club (of British citizenship) understandable.
But, y'know, there's that thing about the protections of the law existing for everyone - including the most depraved killer - or they exist for no-one.
I think it's extraordinarily dangerous to give the state the power to strip you of your citizenship.
Theramenes would have entered the chat. But he was stripped of his citizenship and executed without trial.
JD Vance and Turning Point could only fill 25% of this venue in Atlanta, Georgia, per Jake Traylor of MSNOW. Nobody likes MAGA anymore and that’s a beautiful thing.
Comments
And this is Starmer’s problem. Upsets the left, the right and much of the middle.
Not a murmur about this white, middle aged, man having the same.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/04/12/former-policeman-stripped-citizenship-links-to-russia/
No Parliament should bind its successor. That is profoundly undemocratic. It is no better when "we" do it, than when the likes of Orban does it.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/science-environment-68767184
There comes a point where the parents have to take some accountability although there is a risk of the system simply blaming parents for its own inadequacies. We saw with the Axel R report some institutions were more concerned at the thought of him possibly being stereotyped, as in the discussion with some of the teachers, than what he was doing.
If anyone should be held to account it is them,
"He won the election but he did not yet win the system" is a line that could easily be used about a victorious Farage in 2029.
Altogether now:
Our Blob good, their Blob bad.
She works from the principle she is right and works backwards with that.
We saw it with how her team floundered by the recent question about does she object to Jewish public prayers.
Governments have always routinely done things which, by their nature, are meant to stick and are likely to be hard to unpick in practice, and frankly not worth the time and investment of political capital. That isn't the meaning of "binding your successor" and the alternative is not doing anything with a time horizon going beyond your current term of office.
And they should all be able to be exited if that is how we vote.
No-one will want cooks, cleaners, or drivers on their payroll.
Probably a few startups doing contract unskilled office work as well, no-one will want a £20k receptionist or security guy on the books if that means they can only pay the directors £200k.
You could probably AI a lot of semi-skilled office jobs too, exacerbating the unemployment problem.
Without going all nostalgic that wasn't the case in the 1980s.
So when, why and how did it change ?
I don't doubt social media played a part.
Incredible courage.
Soundbite politics preceded social media.
A tragedy only narrowly avoided.
..James and Jennifer Crumbley have become the first US parents to receive prison sentences for a shooting rampage committed by their child. They were each sentenced to 10-15 years in prison on involuntary manslaughter charges.
Here's what happened:
Judge Cheryl Matthews said the Crumbleys' dual convictions were not a result of their poor parenting, but because of "repeated acts or lack of acts that could have halted an oncoming runaway train"..
Labour second with the former and the Conservatives second with the latter, which is right will decide whether it is SKS or Kemi facing their leadership under threat after the May elections
On Terrorism, the lack of ideology seems to be the sticking point. I'd argue that his ideology of extreme violence would fit, but if not then the definition of terrorism needs to be looked at, as was I think suggested at the time.
For Begum, I think the courts have accepted she is entitled to Bangladeshi citizenship by birth. But Bangladesh dispute this and have suggested she'd face the death penalty if she entered the country.
So whereas Bullen is living high on the hog courtesy of Uncle Vlad, Begum is in a seemingly permanent limbo in a Syrian detention camp.
You can say she brought it upon herself, and I actually have a bit of sympathy for that. But she really isn't in a comparable situation to Bullen.
So an human rights ruling on Right to Family life, in a deportation case, is automatically countered by a higher human right?
And since it is an obligation, and an international treaty, there’s no changing it.
Remember, in the 90s my American relatives (liberals all) were telling me that the right can rage all it likes. But America is a land of law. And the law was progressive.
https://labourlist.org/2026/02/keir-starmer-wes-streeting-leadership-survation-poll/
..Majoritarian multipliers. Gerrymandered maps. Courts with loyalists on 12-year terms. A Budget Council that can dissolve parliament if a budget lapses...
I also missed our banning opposition leaders from appearing on state TV.
Our system has many faults, certainly.
But they accumulated by happenstance over many, many decades rather than being engineered in by a single party and its leader to keep themselves in power.
This pretence that Hungary was somehow not greatly different from any other European democracy is foolish or mendacious.
The comparison is valid for me - there is a contract of sorts to the country that gives you asylum. Step away from this precise case and you see others where crimes are committed yet the person is still allowed to stay.
The "Challenge" series
https://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2025/06/02/the-challenge-for-labour/
https://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2025/06/12/the-challenge-for-plaid-cymru/
https://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2025/06/21/the-challenge-for-reform-uk/
https://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2025/07/11/the-challenge-for-the-liberal-democrats/
https://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2025/07/22/challenge-for-the-snp/
https://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2025/09/08/the-challenge-for-the-green-parties/
https://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2025/09/20/the-challenge-for-the-conservatives/
Other
https://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2024/09/24/persepolis-now-looking-at-the-future-of-iran/
https://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2024/10/15/the-butterfly-effect-bush-vs-gore-revisited/
https://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2024/10/29/senatus-populusque-previewing-novembers-other-elections/
https://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2024/11/25/trumped-why-the-democrats-lost-and-what-they-need-to-do-next/
https://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2025/01/08/the-law-of-unintended-consequences/
https://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2025/01/08/rebuild-copy-or-destroy-how-should-we-deal-with-our-cities-history/
https://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2025/03/07/the-seventy-five-years-war-how-to-fix-israel-and-palestine/
https://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2025/04/22/papa-dont-preach-looking-at-the-contenders-to-be-next-pope/
https://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2025/10/03/analysing-the-september-2025-yougov-mrp/
https://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2025/11/11/will-tactical-voting-stop-reform-im-not-convinced/
https://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2025/11/19/the-first-cut-is-the-lightest/
https://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2026/01/13/wipeout-in-wales-could-labour-get-0-seats-in-the-senedd/
https://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2026/02/05/rage-against-the-machine-charting-the-rise-of-outsider-parties/
https://www.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2026/04/15/knives-out-will-labour-mps-remove-sir-keir-starmer/
Democracy requires accepting that sometimes you lose.
"But what if ..." is the mantra of a mindset that refuses to accept defeat, whether it be Orban or our own advocates of subverting democracy.
Yes it was worse in Hungary, subjectively. But it is not a unique problem there that is not seen here, and subverting democracy is a dangerous path to go down as while today that might suit your interests, you should always realise that someone you dislike can do the same thing.
Some international treaties are good, some are bad, some are indifferent in terms of their impact. What I am arguing is that they shouldn't be banned from being made on the basis of a fundamental misunderstanding about what it means to bind a successor.
International treaties, despite their imperfections, are a useful and necessary way for sovereign governments to deal with common issues. It's cloud cuckoo land to have a situation where they automatically lapse because of a change of government in one of the signatory nations. It is possible to extricate yourself from an international treaty and people do it - but there are both reputational and other costs.
Abusing them to pass domestic laws on an international basis, to bind a successor, is the wrong thing to do.
Imagine the following -
1) setup a fake country (South Georgia). Accidentally fail to include any right to actually live there.
2) Grant citizenship of fake country to anyone you don’t like
3) Strip them of citizenship.
You have companies contracting other companies to do work.
If Labour are to replace Starmer, they need to have a good idea of who they want to replace him with and for what purpose.
And you can in general withdraw from international obligations... but you're going to get a reputation as an unreliable international player if you make a habit of it.
I've never said the asylum system in the UK gets everything right. Indeed, I've said the opposite. The system was run down under the Conservatives, so it was inefficient with long waits. I've long said we need a better system to better make decisions, which means more promptly, but also more accurately. We should only be giving asylum to those with bona fide claims and not to those without, we should make those decisions as quickly as possible, and we should deport those who don't have valid claims. That is clearly not what currently happens. Good on the BBC for their reporting in this case, and I hope appropriate action is taken.
Is pretending to be gay a widespread and successful tactic for getting asylum? The number of cases is low. A lower proportion of asylum claimants purport to be gay than the proportion in the general population who say they are gay. Do some asylum claimants make fraudulent claims? Yes, and we should have a system that spots those as well as possible.
The BBC article identifies a particular issue with Pakistani and Bangladeshi claimants. There are more asylum applicants claiming to be gay from those two countries than all other countries put together. Asylum applicants are a diverse group. https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/migration-to-the-uk-asylum/ has a useful Table 1. This shows applications by country, top ten countries shown (2024 data on application numbers, 2021-3 data for success rates). You get some countries where there are undeniably conflicts and repression going on, and applicants from these countries have high acceptance rates (e.g., Eritrea, Syria and Sudan all on 99%, Iran on 87%). These claimants have often come into the country on a boat across the channel. But then you also have a lot of applications from countries that appear more stable and safer with, unsurprisingly, lower acceptance rates, including in South Asia: there's Pakistan (57%), Bangladesh (26%) and India (6%). These claimants have often come into the country on some sort of visa, but then claim asylum once over here, often when their visa is about to run out.
A lot of outrage is directed as those coming over on small boats, who generally are fleeing real persecution, whereas the fake asylum claimants (if we go on who gets rejected) have typically come into the country on visas and then claim. The solution to this is not to machine gun small boats in the channel. It's bilateral deals to address the issue with particular countries, as Sunak successfully* did with Albania.
* https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/commentaries/albanian-asylum-seekers-in-the-uk-and-eu-a-look-at-recent-data/ discusses how much that specific deal affected numbers versus broader issues.
But what happens when the other side figures out how to use them to pick in *their* policies?
“Treaty On The Mandatory Expulsion Of Immigrants”….
In the US, the MAGA right took over chunks of the judiciary. Which means that even after Trump, they will have immense power until judges die or retire.
The big problem for Labour is that no Labour MPs seem to have a clue about what Starmer has done wrong, or failed to do, that changing leader would improve. Changing the leader to do the same failed things with a different face will fail.
At the moment my expectation is that, new leader or not, Labour are going to fail to implement the changes the country requires, and so they will be fantastically unpopular.
https://x.com/Scarlett__Mag/status/2044312076424724870
✴️Young women are 26 pts less favourable to capitalism than young men, and feel much more positively towards communism than capitalism.
✴️Women u25 dislike capitalism so much, they view it as (un)favourably as fascism.
✴️UK should pay slavery reparations by a 2-1 margin
Young middle class educated white women feel the most strongly about these issues.
✴️17% of ABC1 women have a positive view of capitalism compared to 32% of C2DE women
✴️ABC1 women more likely to think the economy works against them
White women are more critical about the country and their chances in it than those from an ethnic minority background
✴️Young white women are more likely to say the country is racist and sexist
✴️Young white women are less likely to say they feel valued by society
Strikingly, young women are *a lot* more negative about the opposite gender than young men.
✴️6 in 10 (58%) say they would find it difficult to date someone who disagreed on Gaza
✴️3 in 4 (74%) say the say the same about views of Donald Trump, with even more saying they wouldn't date someone who disagreed about social justice
And if we want to look at the UK wasn't Scottish and Welsh devolution arranged in such a way as expected to produce permanent Labour control ?
In 2012 he reduced the compulsory retirement age for Judges from 70 to 62, which required a large cohort of senior judges to retire, including 20 from 70-80 on the Supreme Court.
He backed off to 65 when the European Court found the measure to be discriminatory by age.
We’ve seen this from the hilariously named Law and Justice party in Poland , Fidesz in Hungary and Slovakia beginning to go down this road. And of course the attempts to dismantle that in the USA .
And I expect we’ll see the same from Reform if they got in .
People’s assumptions that democracy is safe ignores what’s happening .
People can call me melodramatic but Reform are a danger to our democracy and voters need to step up and do everything possible to stop them .
And if we need evidence that, once your party is in a big hole, changing leaders doesn't always provide a ladder, cf. those who got to follow the charlatan Johnson. ...
The lawyers for Hook Hand were very proud of the fact they were fighting against deportation and extradition.l, in a general sense. And they were clear that they wanted to end deportation for *anything*.
I pointed out to a couple of them that the Government wouldn’t just sit there. Their answers were illuminating.
At this stage of her parliamentary career Mrs Thatcher was a junior shadow minister, John Major was a junior minister at the DHSS when comparing to when Badenoch became leader.
Whoops.
This would considerably increase the bureaucracy and complexity required for compliance, and a whole bunch of litigation determining the boundary, as with the cake/biscuit and employee/self-employed distinctions.
The other loophole is finding other ways to pay top staff that isn't on the books as salary. Dividends, shares, loans, I'm sure there would be all manner of creativity.
I do think there's a problem with the way in which Executive pay has exploded, with little to show for it in terms of performance, but I think there should be a better way to achieve the same sort of end than the blunt force trauma of the proposed policy. But I'm glad that the question of how to achieve a more equitable distribution of income is raised as a political issue.
After that it would get more complicated - but mandating the 10:1 ratio would involve a great deal of complication for everyone, anyway.
A government determined to do something quite so dirigiste would presumably be equally determined to go after attempts to sidestep the mandate.
He probably doesn’t have as well funded a lobbying campaign as Shamima Begum
Cold Plunging Might Make Your Biomarkers Worse
https://tryterra.co/research/cold-plunging-biomarker-effect
..The stress-to-adaptation crossover sits at around 3 sessions per 14 days — below that threshold, you're just spiking sympathetic activity. Above it, cold exposure starts to improve recovery scores, sleep scores, and resting heart rate..
Her demonization is victim blaming at its most extreme.
Of course you can then end up with a severe backlash, as seen in the US and with a nascent version of it appearing in Europe, where populists get elected on a promise to turn the tables in the hall upside-down.
Not even listed on betfair anymore!
(on him at 1000)
https://x.com/GBPolitcs/status/2044173460121788800?s=20
Just because she committed crimes doesn’t allow us to dump our problem on another country
And then wonder why people vote for the horrid people who oppose the consensus.
They need to channel their inner Abraham Lincoln.
Yes, getting the people to agreed is difficult and time consuming. Yes, it means waiting years, sometimes, for change.
A sane, joined up governance would be to replace them. Even if only for future cases.
I would start with a reworking of the treason laws to make it prosecutable.
I hate him but it will almost certainly be Andy Burnham in 2028 or 2029.
Harry Sisson
@harryjsisson
JD Vance and Turning Point could only fill 25% of this venue in Atlanta, Georgia, per Jake Traylor of MSNOW. Nobody likes MAGA anymore and that’s a beautiful thing.
https://x.com/harryjsisson/status/2044242233092632693
My amateurish legal reasoning sees an obvious parallel with every British citizen's theoretical entitlement to Irish citizenship (British citizenship entities you to reside in Ireland, after a certain number of years of residency you can apply for Irish citizenship). Plus I'm not sure how being moved to a prison in Northern Ireland would interact with the citizenship provisions of the Good Friday Agreement.
Everyone's British citizenship could be at risk from a malicious government.
I'm aiming to get myself three citizenships (Britain, Ireland, Austria) just to be on the safe side.
With ISIS.
Madison vs Marbury was the most amazing example of a court creating power for itself. Then just wait 220 years to add the MAGA rocketfuel on top...
✴️Grads are also more likely to back slavery reparations say we need more government intervention to ensure life is fa
But, y'know, there's that thing about the protections of the law existing for everyone - including the most depraved killer - or they exist for no-one.
I think it's extraordinarily dangerous to give the state the power to strip you of your citizenship.
Burnham gets into Parliament 2028/2029.
My eyes are brilliant when it comes to making money on the Labour leadership markets.
#LegendaryModestyKlaxon
https://x.com/Scarlett__Mag/status/2044312085400584376?s=20
It’s all been done before.
(One interesting comparison made is Grima Wormtongue, for those who are .. er .. hobbit-holers.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LW5Y65GFT70