More spin from Team Burnham? – politicalbetting.com
More spin from Team Burnham? – politicalbetting.com
? Mayor of Greater Manchester’s camp makes discreet approaches to senior officials as speculation mounts about his return to Westminster? https://t.co/C0gTWHrvT4 pic.twitter.com/dctMHDfo6e
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Unlike Ange thankfully
And the sense of presumption/ entitlement is off the charts.
Did one of his rivals give the Telegraph this story, or is he really so tin-eared ?
Although Burnham has quite a hurdle to clear to be a contender...
The purpose of the spin at this point is entirely to get some Labour MPs to hold back their signatures whilst a possible by-election run can be firmed up, which could be the difference between one of the others reaching 81 too soon or not. It is the sowing of a doubt rather than an exercise in gospel truth, a stalling exercise to afford Burnham the opportunity to reach the starting line.
Edit - beaten to it by StuartinRomford
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Md5kgNSD30w
On the Reform camps to concentrate migrants for deportation.
The location methodology brings to mind a quote.
“Own the Libtards”
The location is half of the reason for them - to “give Them a taste of their own medicine”.
Richard Dawkins
@RichardDawkins
·
5 Jun 2021
Kafka’s Metamorphosis is called a major work of literature. Why? If it’s SF it’s bad SF. If, like Animal Farm, it’s an allegory, an allegory of what? Scholarly answers range from pretentious Freudian to far-fetched feminist. I don’t get it. Where are the Emperor’s clothes?
A genine lol reply to puncture his ever increasing self importance.
Moose Allain Ꙭ
@MooseAllain
Wondering if anyone else has been affected by any of the issues in Kafka's The Metamorphosis? At the moment I'm just putting out feelers.
Luke Tryl
@LukeTryl
·
1h
Our Final Welsh MRP finds Labour being squeezed. Plaid leading on vote share but tied with Reform on seats and clutch of highly marginal 6th seats
🌼Plaid Cymru 34 seats
➡️Reform UK 34 seats
🌹Labour 14 seats
🌳Conservatives 9 seats
💚Greens 5 seats
https://x.com/LukeTryl/status/2051226566894448876
There have been a few Spectator debates (in the Round House at the British Museum by the look of it) about (essentially) "Reform or Conservative?"
This one is Clare Coutinho, Nick Timothy, Matt Goodwin, and Danny Kruger.
https://www.youtube.com/live/kajmqn2yZSI
7 minute speeches, and quite interesting. To me the best was Clare Coutinho, who actually addressed the topic imo. The reform side were making, to my ear, Ref UK event speeches to the wrong audience.
https://news.sky.com/story/iran-war-latest-trump-blockade-strait-of-hormuz-lebanon-13509565
And back to my break.
There's been a bit of a scandal in Canada about Jim Pattison (Canadian billionaire) selling a warehouse in Virginia to the DHS. He reverse-ferreted.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/sofiachierchio/2026/01/30/billionaire-jim-pattison-refuses-to-sell-warehouse-to-dhs-for-ice-facility/
The one thing about the Burnham saga is the labour party has real problems with loyalty and Starmer himself
And this has yet to be confirmed by US but not looking good for peace anytime soon
https://news.sky.com/liveblog-webview/iran-war-latest-trump-blockade-strait-of-hormuz-lebanon-13509565
It will all become clearer this weekend - as to where contenders sit, and whether Starmer can be removed.
So it’s escalation and the further destruction of infrastructure and the damage that does to us all.
Bart will be pleased
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Boer_War_concentration_camps
But my point is the biggest toxicity in this announcement is the MAGA-style partisanship.
(He's dead, btw.)
A revealing little insight on these people. There was a stained glass window of HIM, rather than say a Saint or a bible story, in a Baptist Seminary, which was removed some years ago. They aggrandise themselves, regardless of all the "Prayer for Humility" type hymns. The window style is truly gruesome:
(Report: https://www.brnow.org/news/SWBTS-removes-controversial-stained-glass-windows/ .)
It could just be some Iranian media spin .
https://bsky.app/profile/shipwreck75.bsky.social/post/3mkzhwr2hak27
That said I do like this method of fighting a war where everyone just pretends they shot the other side.
The MAGA stuff with reform isn’t new but a vote loser for them
I’d see it probably more like internment than the industrial extermination of people
My theory is that it may not have a single meaning of its own - it uses the SF style of "One impossible technology/event - then follow the consequences". The meaning is in the interpretations imposed upon it by the readers and reviewers. A literary Rorschach test.
A casual glance at the reviews over the years, certainly suggests people finding their now preoccupations and concerns in it.
In the case of housing large groups of people in confined spaces, the lesson of the Boer War is that without discipline, careful planning, funding and organisation, the results rapidly become disastrous. Even if that wasn't the intention.
Edit: in fact they called the policy reconcentración.
1 - The location thing is juvenile and revealing, and smacks of a deliberate knee jerk. I'm not sure if that will be a political net plus.
2 - I thought that they had been noisily complaining about use of "camps" (eg the demonstrations at the former RAF bases). Said demonstrations then moved on to Jenrick's "migrant hotels" then to "migrant HMOs". Interpretation: the point is the opportunity to complain for attention, rather than fix the problem.
3 - Zia Yusuf lays out that the "camps" will be used to "hold them for a couple of weeks until deportation". Has he explained how he is going to enfoirce deportations within a couple of weeks, both from a "legal" point of view, and a "persuading countries (if they can be identified) to accept them back point of views?
4 - If they are not concentration camps, they will turn into them when the demanded timescale is shown to be a fantasy - just as has happened for Trump's camps run by ICE. I think that these camps, and the people who have died in them, will come back to haunt Trump and his senior ministers should the USA surviveve as a constitutional democracy.
{Göringstrasse etc}
1) He needs a seat to become available
2) He needs the byelection to be scheduled for as soon as possible
3) He needs the NEC to overturn their ban on him standing
4) He needs to be selected for the seat
5) He needs to win the byelection
6) He needs any Labour leadership contest to happen after he is back in parliament
7) He needs to win the leadership contest
The hardest ones are 2,3,6 as they are dependent on what his political opponents do. It's not in the interests of the Starmer faction to allow him to stand and it's not in the interests of other contenders like Streeting for a contest to be delayed.
You can also have your classic Soviet work camps, where you can exploit natural resources in appalling conditions by importing huge swaths of populations to live there in appalling conditions, where they work briefly until they die, worn-out and malnourished
The Nazis refined this where the work is pointless (moving heavy stones from one place to another, then bringing them back) and then bought this to its ultimate expression in the death camp, where the inmates were killed directly as quickly as possible upon arrival.
So there you are: British camps, Soviet camps, Nazi camps. A neat little hierarchy of murder.
So for the Reform camps, you'd need a new phrase. I suggest "American camps" or "camps on the American model", where people are moved en masse to a large facility with poor care and no legal rights, pending their deportation.
But yes, the performative nastiness from Reform, including the implicit dehumanisation in their promise to “impose” what they see as an alien blight on their political enemies, means I am not as laid back about the direction of travel as many on here.
Both are odious cxnts but Yusuf is particularly smug .
Basically this is step 2 in a focus group driven campaign point
Step 1
Focus group; Do something about all those illegal immigrants.
Reform: We will abrogate all human rights and planning laws so our government can arbitrarily set up detention centres wherever we want.
Step 2
Focus group: But I don't want these centres anywhere near me and now you tell me I can't do anything to stop it.
Reform: Thanks to our new arbitrary powers we commit to putting these centres away from anyone who voted for them
Some days after he said he'd close them.
Presumably if Streeting has the signatures the contest is immediately started and must conclude within a fairly prompt timetable?
Again, if that’s the case and we do think Streeting will go for it, look for contenders who could enter the fray as unity candidates - candidates who may not have indicated any ambition to be leader but who might be tempted to throw their hat in the ring if the cabinet/party want a unifier. Think the Milibands, Coopers, Healeys of this world.
Nigel. Spreading the love.
All 3 are a very real threat to the stability of this country and need to be found out
Food prices up by 50% in five years?
“There is a lot of ruin in a country”
https://x.com/PippaCrerar/status/2051238900530561480
NEW: Labour MPs are calling for end to “endless drama” of leadership speculation, with some warning that repeated briefings about toppling Keir Starmer are putting off voters, @peterwalker99 reports.
“All people want is a government which works, and not the endless drama. We are in a very tricky global situation, and to have this never-ending conversation about who might have a certain number of supporters feels extremely self-indulgent,” says one MP.
I can't think of any of the three realistic alternatives who come close. I hope Polanski wins. Davey would be the only realistic alternative. If any choose a sensible new leader then everything changes but leaders matter and surely you couldn't vote for Farage Badenoch or Starmer?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayCK5lB2RV4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sKpEKTabec (Daniel Hannan, Paul Goodman, Victoria Atkins, David Davis)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDFvOWh6bvM (David Starkey and Danny Kruger)
I haven't watched any of these so I don't know if they are any good or not.
I just do not like hate but that does not stop me attacking their ideas
The man's arrogance knows no bounds.
Five minutes at minimum wage will earn you enough to buy 400g beans and 800g bread.
Its housing which is expensive.
They’ve done a lot of good but nobody knows about it.
They can get away with one new leader if that leader then holds on until 2028/2029.
This is the best time.
Operation Epic Fury, Meet Operation Colossal Blunder
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/04/opinion/iran-us-israel-war-drones-strait-of-hormuz.html
Operation Epic Fury, Meet Operation Colossal Blunder
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/04/opinion/iran-us-israel-war-drones-strait-of-hormuz.html
Agree on 1.
But I doubt they’ll be opening gas chambers or hiring Dr mengele for them and such melodramatic teaddle as using terms like concentration camps simply makes arguments against laughable. I’d say internment camps personally
It has an exciting new bar chart, showing Indies just behind Labour and the bars are to scale! Except that shaping the top of Labour's bar into a downward arrow, and theirs into an upward arrow, makes them look the same at a casual glance.
He’s got a small majority in his seat but surely if Labour has any chance of winning in 2029 he’ll be able to find a safer seat if needed and if not Labour are out of government anyway.
If he’d gone with Badenoch or Farage’s advice Labour would be polling under 10% now.
That can only be achieved by a prolonged war. I don’t think it would even be guaranteed by a complete victory.
Of course, after the Israeli elections the pressure from Jerusalem is likely to slacken, as either it will have worked and Netanyahu will still be in power, or it will have failed and he will be in prison. That may help, but Trump is committed now so then again it may not.
But now trump needs distraction from the Iran disaster.