On labour, when you consider where they lost and who they lost to it seems to me they are caught in a bind not able to square the circle of lost votes to right and left
It may well be that labour's only hope is to move left with someone like Rayner or Miliband because in Scotland, Wales, London and the cities that is where their missing votes are
Starmer is labour's biggest problem and bringing in Brown and Harman defies belief
He just has to go if labour want to start the process of being electable again
Not really. The Greens came a poor fifth on seats, if Labour moved left they would fail to regain seats lost to Reform and would lose more seats to the Tories and LDs.
In Scotland and Wales the SNP and Plaid only won most seats being reasonably centrist not hard left
Sunday quiz. Guess where this is from (capitals mine)? Which country produced this document?
“single / lone parent - state pension age or over: 244.40 256.00
couple - state pension age or over: 366.00 383.35
single / lone parent - reached state pension age on or after 1 April 2021 couple - both reached state pension age on or after 1 April 2021: 227.10 346.60 238.00
for the claimant and the other party to the marriage where one or more members of the marriage are state pension age or over for each additional spouse who is a member of the same household as the claimant and one or more of the members are state pension age or over: 366.00 383.35
If the claimant is a member of a POLYGAMOUS marriage and all of the members of the marriage have attained pensionable age on or after 1 April 2021
For the claimant and the other party to the marriage
For each additional spouse who is a member of the same household as the claimant: 346.60 363.25 119.50 125.25”
So an additional spouse in a polygamous marriage gets just under half what they would get as a single person?
'We are the only party that can bring our country together'
I think that's probably true. I just wish they'd have bloody well done it over the past couple of years.
It’s really really not true. Labour has lost its white working class vote in much of England and Wales, forever. Or for a very long time. The WWC have worked out that Reform will better represent their interests. And they will
It’s exactly what happened to Labour in Scotland with the SNP but much worse, because this is absolutely Labour’s core vote. Unless they get it back they will never again win a majority. But the kind of policies needed to win them back would be intolerable for Labour MPs and hugely alienating for their London and middle class vote
TL;DR: Labour are fucked
In Wales it was Plaid and Reform and I do not see any labour recovery in Wales in years
'We are the only party that can bring our country together'
I think that's probably true. I just wish they'd have bloody well done it over the past couple of years.
It’s really really not true. Labour has lost its white working class vote in much of England and Wales, forever. Or for a very long time. The WWC have worked out that Reform will better represent their interests. And they will
It’s exactly what happened to Labour in Scotland with the SNP but much worse, because this is absolutely Labour’s core vote. Unless they get it back they will never again win a majority. But the kind of policies needed to win them back would be intolerable for Labour MPs and hugely alienating for their London and middle class vote
TL;DR: Labour are fucked
The WWC believe that Reform will better represent their interests.
I suspect they will be in for a nasty surprise and then turn on mass to the next party that offers then hope that doesn’t exist
Rejoining the EU - or attempting to Rejoin (we might be vetoed) - would be easily as agonising as Brexit and probably much worse. Because quitting a club is ultimately easier than joining. Especially joining a club that isn’t sure you’d be a good member
It would five-ten years of anguished and tedious negotiations during which the EU - and every member state - would try to extract as much juice from the British Orange as possible. They would make the pips squeak
And, despite what “Ben Judah” says, we would certainly have to join the euro. It’s the one way to shackle us forever
we would not be vetoed per se. We would be told full fat including Euro and Schengen, or no.
Actually, I don't think that necessarily true. The EU is happy to have many countries indefinitely delaying Euro membership, because the time is never quite right. I have no doubt that -if we were going to be writing a large cheque- then we would get the same treatment.
No, we would be legally obligated to adopt the euro in future, under law, once we met the convergence criteria.
Even if the UK government tried to game in the medium-term it would never go away and with the way things work in the UK I could even see domestic legal challenges to compel us to join.
There may be a "legal obligation to join", yet there are a number of countries within the Single Market with their own free-floating currencies - Sweden since 2003, and they have had a referendum which said "do not join the Exchange Rate Mechanism II", which is a required stage on the way to the Euro.
It can be done. Perhaps we need to be pragmatic to find the best for the UK in an era which has been significantly changed geopolitically, not obsessively ideological.
Sweden. Swe-den. Sweden!
Sweden Sweden Sweden!
SWEDEN!
It just doesn't wash. These arguments are nothing but a vain attempt to play down the risks out of fear that it'd otherwise be a real political obstacle to winning a Rejoin vote.
We'd be obliged to adopt the euro and committed to do so, by law.
No ifs, no buts.
Agreed.
I suspect that in the next generation there will come a point at which that will be the price we are willing to pay, and we will indeed rejoin (if we are let back in).
But I also suspect it would need a failed Reform government (and perhaps even a failed Green one) before we were to contemplate that reality as a nation.
Yes, or not?
Rejoin being the primary objective of British politics - and weirdly always seen as gravitationally inevitable - might just be a very Gen X/Boomer thing, who dominate political leadership and the chatterati but future younger generations may not be quite so bothered.
To be honest, it all feels quite passé. It's not the 1990s anymore, which was peak 'The Future is Europe'.
Setting aside your imaginary "future younger generations", support for rejoining is strongest among those aged 16-24.
None of them are talking about though, are they? You are.
They talk about Gaza, gyms, influencers, gender identity, debt, and personal growth.
They don't talk about the EU. If they did the LDs would be riding high, not the Greens.
The Greens are even more explicitly pro-Rejoin than the Lib Dems.
Interesting Substack here from Patrick English of Yougov on how Labour is shedding more voters to Green than Reform:
There has been some discussion on pb in the past about whether Labour was right to attack Reform, who were more a threat to the Conservatives, and whether that opened the opposite flank.
However, at a more simplistic level, there is a pleasing symmetry in England that might mislead:- Reform gained 1,451 councillors Labour lost almost the same number: 1,496. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/topics/cr45k7vqw1pt
And in a lot of those results, the split vote between Labour and the Greens is what got Reform elected.
That's one way of looking at it; another is that attacking opponents isn't what gets you the bulk of your vote. If the electorate don't want you for positive reasons then you don't get their vote.
The reality is that attacking the Greens wouldn't have gained Labour many votes.
Reform won so many seats because it was a multiparty election, with five national parties in a FPTP system, and Reform got a few percent more backing than anyone else.
On a PB pedantry, I think Reform are down to 1450 as they have already chucked one out.
There are some more lining up on the plank around various anti-semitism problems.
I think there are not a few paper candidates elected for the Greens, too.
It will be an interesting exercise to see what difference (if any) having the most inexperience set of councillors in living memory makes, in local authorities where there was a wholesale clear out of the incumbents.
'We are the only party that can bring our country together'
I think that's probably true. I just wish they'd have bloody well done it over the past couple of years.
It’s really really not true. Labour has lost its white working class vote in much of England and Wales, forever. Or for a very long time. The WWC have worked out that Reform will better represent their interests. And they will
It’s exactly what happened to Labour in Scotland with the SNP but much worse, because this is absolutely Labour’s core vote. Unless they get it back they will never again win a majority. But the kind of policies needed to win them back would be intolerable for Labour MPs and hugely alienating for their London and middle class vote
TL;DR: Labour are fucked
In Wales it was Plaid and Reform and I do not see any labour recovery in Wales in years
Having finally broken from Labour it could be forever.
But then Labour swept back in Scotland in 2024, even if they blew it again.
On labour, when you consider where they lost and who they lost to it seems to me they are caught in a bind not able to square the circle of lost votes to right and left
It may well be that labour's only hope is to move left with someone like Rayner or Miliband because in Scotland, Wales, London and the cities that is where their missing votes are
Starmer is labour's biggest problem and bringing in Brown and Harman defies belief
He just has to go if labour want to start the process of being electable again
Not really. The Greens came a poor fifth on seats, if Labour moved left they would fail to regain seats lost to Reform and would lose more seats to the Tories and LDs.
In Scotland and Wales the SNP and Plaid only won most seats being reasonably centrist not hard left
Plaid are not centrist and Swinney is already demanding independence
Rejoining the EU - or attempting to Rejoin (we might be vetoed) - would be easily as agonising as Brexit and probably much worse. Because quitting a club is ultimately easier than joining. Especially joining a club that isn’t sure you’d be a good member
It would five-ten years of anguished and tedious negotiations during which the EU - and every member state - would try to extract as much juice from the British Orange as possible. They would make the pips squeak
And, despite what “Ben Judah” says, we would certainly have to join the euro. It’s the one way to shackle us forever
we would not be vetoed per se. We would be told full fat including Euro and Schengen, or no.
Actually, I don't think that necessarily true. The EU is happy to have many countries indefinitely delaying Euro membership, because the time is never quite right. I have no doubt that -if we were going to be writing a large cheque- then we would get the same treatment.
No, we would be legally obligated to adopt the euro in future, under law, once we met the convergence criteria.
Even if the UK government tried to game in the medium-term it would never go away and with the way things work in the UK I could even see domestic legal challenges to compel us to join.
There may be a "legal obligation to join", yet there are a number of countries within the Single Market with their own free-floating currencies - Sweden since 2003, and they have had a referendum which said "do not join the Exchange Rate Mechanism II", which is a required stage on the way to the Euro.
It can be done. Perhaps we need to be pragmatic to find the best for the UK in an era which has been significantly changed geopolitically, not obsessively ideological.
Sweden. Swe-den. Sweden!
Sweden Sweden Sweden!
SWEDEN!
It just doesn't wash. These arguments are nothing but a vain attempt to play down the risks out of fear that it'd otherwise be a real political obstacle to winning a Rejoin vote.
We'd be obliged to adopt the euro and committed to do so, by law.
No ifs, no buts.
Agreed.
I suspect that in the next generation there will come a point at which that will be the price we are willing to pay, and we will indeed rejoin (if we are let back in).
But I also suspect it would need a failed Reform government (and perhaps even a failed Green one) before we were to contemplate that reality as a nation.
Yes, or not?
Rejoin being the primary objective of British politics - and weirdly always seen as gravitationally inevitable - might just be a very Gen X/Boomer thing, who dominate political leadership and the chatterati but future younger generations may not be quite so bothered.
To be honest, it all feels quite passé. It's not the 1990s anymore, which was peak 'The Future is Europe'.
Setting aside your imaginary "future younger generations", support for rejoining is strongest among those aged 16-24.
None of them are talking about though, are they? You are.
They talk about Gaza, gyms, influencers, gender identity, debt, and personal growth.
They don't talk about the EU. If they did the LDs would be riding high, not the Greens.
The Greens are even more explicitly pro-Rejoin than the Lib Dems.
Interesting Substack here from Patrick English of Yougov on how Labour is shedding more voters to Green than Reform:
There has been some discussion on pb in the past about whether Labour was right to attack Reform, who were more a threat to the Conservatives, and whether that opened the opposite flank.
However, at a more simplistic level, there is a pleasing symmetry in England that might mislead:- Reform gained 1,451 councillors Labour lost almost the same number: 1,496. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/topics/cr45k7vqw1pt
And in a lot of those results, the split vote between Labour and the Greens is what got Reform elected.
That's one way of looking at it; another is that attacking opponents isn't what gets you the bulk of your vote. If the electorate don't want you for positive reasons then you don't get their vote.
The reality is that attacking the Greens wouldn't have gained Labour many votes.
Reform won so many seats because it was a multiparty election, with five national parties in a FPTP system, and Reform got a few percent more backing than anyone else.
On a PB pedantry, I think Reform are down to 1450 as they have already chucked one out.
There are some more lining up on the plank around various anti-semitism problems.
I think there are not a few paper candidates elected for the Greens, too.
It will be an interesting exercise to see what difference (if any) having the most inexperience set of councillors in living memory makes, in local authorities where there was a wholesale clear out of the incumbents.
If there any PB local government experts, that might make the basis of a great header a few months down the line.
'We are the only party that can bring our country together'
I think that's probably true. I just wish they'd have bloody well done it over the past couple of years.
It’s really really not true. Labour has lost its white working class vote in much of England and Wales, forever. Or for a very long time. The WWC have worked out that Reform will better represent their interests. And they will
It’s exactly what happened to Labour in Scotland with the SNP but much worse, because this is absolutely Labour’s core vote. Unless they get it back they will never again win a majority. But the kind of policies needed to win them back would be intolerable for Labour MPs and hugely alienating for their London and middle class vote
TL;DR: Labour are fucked
In Wales it was Plaid and Reform and I do not see any labour recovery in Wales in years
It goes the way of Scotland. Plaid are there for the next 25 years unless the Conservatives and Reform becomes one. Welsh Conservatives have been quite "Reformy" for a while.
Trying to pick through the entrails and detritus of the round of local elections in London.
I've oft repeated this old adage when it comes to elections - "it's never as good as you hope or as bad as you fear". For each of the five parties, the elections in London offered plenty of positives and negatives.
Labour took a beating as most predicted but perhaps not quite as severe as some hoped (or feared). They still hold 9 Boroughs and might yet continue to run the administration in others. Inner East and South London was a nightmare but the West not so bad. Arguably, Merton was one of the party's best performances in the whole country.
The Conservatives ended up with a small net gain of Councillors but took a pounding in Havering and south west London. They easily held off Reform in Bromley and Bexley and captured Westminster but just failed in Enfield and Barnet but are now only on 22 Boroughs.
The Liberal Democrats further strengthened their hold on the "golden triangle" but made little progress in Merton, their main target. However, they did make small gains in other boroughs and are now back on more councils (15 in all).
The Greens duly swept Inner East and South London taking Hackney, Lewisham and Walton Forest and winning 16 seats in Newham but performances in other areas were more muted. Nonetheless, they now have more councillors than the Liberal Democrats in London and are arguably the winners of the night in the capital but still only represented on 20 of the 32 Boroughs.
Reform won Havering but failed miserably in Bromley, Bexley and Hillingdon against entrenched Conservatives. They remain largely irrelevant in much of the capital with representation on only 11 Boroughs for all their performance in the rest of England says otherwise.
Rejoining the EU - or attempting to Rejoin (we might be vetoed) - would be easily as agonising as Brexit and probably much worse. Because quitting a club is ultimately easier than joining. Especially joining a club that isn’t sure you’d be a good member
It would five-ten years of anguished and tedious negotiations during which the EU - and every member state - would try to extract as much juice from the British Orange as possible. They would make the pips squeak
And, despite what “Ben Judah” says, we would certainly have to join the euro. It’s the one way to shackle us forever
we would not be vetoed per se. We would be told full fat including Euro and Schengen, or no.
Actually, I don't think that necessarily true. The EU is happy to have many countries indefinitely delaying Euro membership, because the time is never quite right. I have no doubt that -if we were going to be writing a large cheque- then we would get the same treatment.
No, we would be legally obligated to adopt the euro in future, under law, once we met the convergence criteria.
Even if the UK government tried to game in the medium-term it would never go away and with the way things work in the UK I could even see domestic legal challenges to compel us to join.
There may be a "legal obligation to join", yet there are a number of countries within the Single Market with their own free-floating currencies - Sweden since 2003, and they have had a referendum which said "do not join the Exchange Rate Mechanism II", which is a required stage on the way to the Euro.
It can be done. Perhaps we need to be pragmatic to find the best for the UK in an era which has been significantly changed geopolitically, not obsessively ideological.
Sweden. Swe-den. Sweden!
Sweden Sweden Sweden!
SWEDEN!
It just doesn't wash. These arguments are nothing but a vain attempt to play down the risks out of fear that it'd otherwise be a real political obstacle to winning a Rejoin vote.
We'd be obliged to adopt the euro and committed to do so, by law.
No ifs, no buts.
Agreed.
I suspect that in the next generation there will come a point at which that will be the price we are willing to pay, and we will indeed rejoin (if we are let back in).
But I also suspect it would need a failed Reform government (and perhaps even a failed Green one) before we were to contemplate that reality as a nation.
Yes, or not?
Rejoin being the primary objective of British politics - and weirdly always seen as gravitationally inevitable - might just be a very Gen X/Boomer thing, who dominate political leadership and the chatterati but future younger generations may not be quite so bothered.
To be honest, it all feels quite passé. It's not the 1990s anymore, which was peak 'The Future is Europe'.
Setting aside your imaginary "future younger generations", support for rejoining is strongest among those aged 16-24.
None of them are talking about though, are they? You are.
They talk about Gaza, gyms, influencers, gender identity, debt, and personal growth.
They don't talk about the EU. If they did the LDs would be riding high, not the Greens.
The Greens are even more explicitly pro-Rejoin than the Lib Dems.
Interesting Substack here from Patrick English of Yougov on how Labour is shedding more voters to Green than Reform:
There has been some discussion on pb in the past about whether Labour was right to attack Reform, who were more a threat to the Conservatives, and whether that opened the opposite flank.
However, at a more simplistic level, there is a pleasing symmetry in England that might mislead:- Reform gained 1,451 councillors Labour lost almost the same number: 1,496. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/topics/cr45k7vqw1pt
And in a lot of those results, the split vote between Labour and the Greens is what got Reform elected.
That's one way of looking at it; another is that attacking opponents isn't what gets you the bulk of your vote. If the electorate don't want you for positive reasons then you don't get their vote.
The reality is that attacking the Greens wouldn't have gained Labour many votes.
Reform won so many seats because it was a multiparty election, with five national parties in a FPTP system, and Reform got a few percent more backing than anyone else.
On a PB pedantry, I think Reform are down to 1450 as they have already chucked one out.
There are some more lining up on the plank around various anti-semitism problems.
There's the wife beater and child abuser in Sunderland too.
The EU wants us for our money and our clout. The Eurozone doesn't want us, because we'd be a total pain in the arse, and suck financial services away from Frankfurt. And we'd leave the ECB with the job of effectively guaranteeing British banks.
If we wanted to join the EU with a big cheque and no Eurozone (for now at least), we probably could.
But it's a bullshit argument, because I don't believe a referendum on EU membership would be won. No one wants to go through that argument/fight again.
That's a good argument for now, for the next ten years or so.
The catch is that the demographics of the Leave/Stay Out/Faragists vote are horrible. Unless they can convert a meaningful number of middle-aged people to the idea that staying out is a good idea every year, the popularity of Brexit dies in a generation or so. There won't be an argument, because only a handful of freaks will want to argue it.
That would be different if Brexit were unambiguously going well, but the best case can be made is that it's doing less harm than the worst-case scenario. So it's not going to sell itself.
I've done the 'Brexit is a ghastly heirloom, currently kept to not annoy the family patriarch' analogy before. One of the reasons the Greens are surging is that the youth seem increasingly impatient to book a skip and dump it.
I've heard this argument my whole political life. "The Tories are dying out" is another one.
It doesn't work like that, because politics and people aren't static.
Although, judging by Thursday, the Tories ARE dying out.
Not true at all, indeed the only age group the Tories now generally lead Reform are under 25s
The EU wants us for our money and our clout. The Eurozone doesn't want us, because we'd be a total pain in the arse, and suck financial services away from Frankfurt. And we'd leave the ECB with the job of effectively guaranteeing British banks.
If we wanted to join the EU with a big cheque and no Eurozone (for now at least), we probably could.
But it's a bullshit argument, because I don't believe a referendum on EU membership would be won. No one wants to go through that argument/fight again.
That's a good argument for now, for the next ten years or so.
The catch is that the demographics of the Leave/Stay Out/Faragists vote are horrible. Unless they can convert a meaningful number of middle-aged people to the idea that staying out is a good idea every year, the popularity of Brexit dies in a generation or so. There won't be an argument, because only a handful of freaks will want to argue it.
That would be different if Brexit were unambiguously going well, but the best case can be made is that it's doing less harm than the worst-case scenario. So it's not going to sell itself.
I've done the 'Brexit is a ghastly heirloom, currently kept to not annoy the family patriarch' analogy before. One of the reasons the Greens are surging is that the youth seem increasingly impatient to book a skip and dump it.
I've heard this argument my whole political life. "The Tories are dying out" is another one.
It doesn't work like that, because politics and people aren't static.
Although, judging by Thursday, the Tories ARE dying out.
Not at all. A huge chunk are now voting Reform, but the Tories still won over 800 seats and 20% of the ENV. Not great, not terrible.
The centre-right block is very comfortably well above 40%, and sometimes approaches near 50%.
It'd be near certain to win the next GE were it constituted as one.
What you are advocating however is not the Conservative Party.
RefCon will subsume the Conservative Party and the grouping will assume the cache of the Conservative name at some stage in the future. Hoorah the Conservatives survive, but they bear no relationship to the politics of McMillan, Butler, Heath or even Thatcher for that matter.
In essence the name alone lives on.
FWIW the existential threat to Labour is a clear and present danger. Labour's USP is social equality. What we have seen so far has been hidden under a bushel by this Government and taking money from OAPs and the poor shoots their USP down in flames.
That is my prediction on what will happen for the Tories. Probably 2030. Just depends on whether it's a reverse takeover by Reform or not.
Any merged entity is legally unlikely to be able to keep the name, as there'd likely be a group wanting to continue standing as Conservatives and possibly also as Reform, akin to both the 'Liberal Party' and 'SDP' brands that continued after the merged party was created.
As one election fades, there will be others on the horizon.
What's happening on Local Government reorganisation? Do those successful councillors who are in areas deemed to be reorganised just sit on their hands in the hope of being successful the next time? Will they actually be able to achieve anything?
It seems to be a strange mix - in Hampshire the 'old' county council has elected councillors for another, legally, four year term, whilst knowing that the government intends to truncate this to probably two years, so they disappear probably in 2028. Meanwhile I think the original plan was to elect 'shadow' councillors to the new councils next year, although this too may fall back to 2028 as I wouldn't think having both sets of councillors serving together makes any sense. Meanwhile in Surrey they've gone ahead and elected the new shadow councils this year.
'We are the only party that can bring our country together'
I think that's probably true. I just wish they'd have bloody well done it over the past couple of years.
It’s really really not true. Labour has lost its white working class vote in much of England and Wales, forever. Or for a very long time. The WWC have worked out that Reform will better represent their interests. And they will
It’s exactly what happened to Labour in Scotland with the SNP but much worse, because this is absolutely Labour’s core vote. Unless they get it back they will never again win a majority. But the kind of policies needed to win them back would be intolerable for Labour MPs and hugely alienating for their London and middle class vote
TL;DR: Labour are fucked
In Wales it was Plaid and Reform and I do not see any labour recovery in Wales in years
It goes the way of Scotland. Plaid are there for the next 25 years unless the Conservatives and Reform becomes one. Welsh Conservatives have been quite "Reformy" for a while.
Our conservative MS was reelected to the Senedd, and it is fair to compare the end of labour in Wales to their end to the SNP in Scotland
What if, while the Rejoiners are asking us to Rejoin, a country like Germany elects a governing party like the AfD?
Because that is very possible in coming years. Especially with OFFICIAL data like this
🇩🇪 Germany 2025 Crime Stats dropped and it’s jaw-dropping:
Algerian nationals are committing crimes at 18x the rate of native Germans… and nearly 100x the rate of Japanese nationals.
The breakdowns are even wilder:
- Murder: Tunisians at 27x the German rate - Rape & Sexual Assault: Guinea 21x, Gambia 19x, Algeria 16x - Robbery: Algeria 111x, Libya 50x the German rate
We're talking about official numbers here.
The disparities are INSANE
Source: German Federal Crime Statistics (PKS 2025)“
'We are the only party that can bring our country together'
I think that's probably true. I just wish they'd have bloody well done it over the past couple of years.
It’s really really not true. Labour has lost its white working class vote in much of England and Wales, forever. Or for a very long time. The WWC have worked out that Reform will better represent their interests. And they will
It’s exactly what happened to Labour in Scotland with the SNP but much worse, because this is absolutely Labour’s core vote. Unless they get it back they will never again win a majority. But the kind of policies needed to win them back would be intolerable for Labour MPs and hugely alienating for their London and middle class vote
TL;DR: Labour are fucked
The WWC believe that Reform will better represent their interests.
I suspect they will be in for a nasty surprise and then turn on mass to the next party that offers then hope that doesn’t exist
To a degree, but many will go the full MAGA and simply deny reality. Its the sunk cost fallacy made into politics.
Nigel Farage says a “serious” hack of his computer led to the revelation that he received a £5m undeclared gift
Reform UK is “exploring” its legal options
Hahahaha
So he had no intention otherwise of ever declaring it?
Interesting.
Out of interest, what's the law on this?
If some randomer gives me £5m, I don't have to declare it to anyone, as I'm just a random private citizen. (Gifts of any size are always welcome!).
If the same rando gives £5m to the PM, or indeed any serving MP, it would have to be declared.
At the time Farage received the £5m, AFAIK he was a private citizen, effectively the same position as me, who doesn't have to declare anything.
Shortly afterwards, he goes back into the fray as leader of Reform, and a month or so after that, he's elected as an MP.
I suspect (but don't know) that the reporting requirements are not retrospective; so as long as get given gifts before standing for Parliament, you don't need to tell anyone. In which case, I suspect the law can't lay a glove on him, even if one might think the whole thing isn't quite in the spirit of the law.
Incidentally, I'm not sure why everyone seems to think that Farage has been "bought" for the cause of crypto deregulation. I'd hazard a guess he didn't need to be bought, he was already in favour - underneath the coat of many colours he's using to get elected, I think he's got a pretty libertarian streak that likes the idea of the stare having no direct control over people's use of money.
I think it's more likely that the £5m was given *because* Farage believes in crypto deregulation, in the hopes that he'd go off and get elected and enact some of his beliefs. And I'm not sure that we can frown too much about this - most of the money given to political parties is from people or organisations (cough, unions, cough) who think they share the same policies or beliefs, and want to see them enacted. The only difference in this case is the number of zeros on the end of the cheque is above average. I suspect a lot of the stink is really bitterness from other politicians whose policies are less likely to appeal to the seriously wealthy donor class.
Very much one of those irregular verbs: I have received a supportive donation, you have been bought for cash, he has been charged under the bribery act...
the reporting requirements are retrospective, he's as guilty as a puppy beside a fresh poo
Note that this only applies to polygamous wives married abroad. These extra benefits only go to foreigners breaking the law of the UK, not to British people
As one election fades, there will be others on the horizon.
What's happening on Local Government reorganisation? Do those successful councillors who are in areas deemed to be reorganised just sit on their hands in the hope of being successful the next time? Will they actually be able to achieve anything?
It seems to be a strange mix - in Hampshire the 'old' county council has elected councillors for another, legally, four year term, whilst knowing that the government intends to truncate this to probably two years, so they disappear probably in 2028. Meanwhile I think the original plan was to elect 'shadow' councillors to the new councils next year, although this too may fall back to 2028 as I wouldn't think having both sets of councillors serving together makes any sense. Meanwhile in Surrey they've gone ahead and elected the new shadow councils this year.
Nigel Farage says a “serious” hack of his computer led to the revelation that he received a £5m undeclared gift
Reform UK is “exploring” its legal options
Hahahaha
So he had no intention otherwise of ever declaring it?
Interesting.
Out of interest, what's the law on this?
If some randomer gives me £5m, I don't have to declare it to anyone, as I'm just a random private citizen. (Gifts of any size are always welcome!).
If the same rando gives £5m to the PM, or indeed any serving MP, it would have to be declared.
At the time Farage received the £5m, AFAIK he was a private citizen, effectively the same position as me, who doesn't have to declare anything.
Shortly afterwards, he goes back into the fray as leader of Reform, and a month or so after that, he's elected as an MP.
I suspect (but don't know) that the reporting requirements are not retrospective; so as long as get given gifts before standing for Parliament, you don't need to tell anyone. In which case, I suspect the law can't lay a glove on him, even if one might think the whole thing isn't quite in the spirit of the law.
Incidentally, I'm not sure why everyone seems to think that Farage has been "bought" for the cause of crypto deregulation. I'd hazard a guess he didn't need to be bought, he was already in favour - underneath the coat of many colours he's using to get elected, I think he's got a pretty libertarian streak that likes the idea of the stare having no direct control over people's use of money.
I think it's more likely that the £5m was given *because* Farage believes in crypto deregulation, in the hopes that he'd go off and get elected and enact some of his beliefs. And I'm not sure that we can frown too much about this - most of the money given to political parties is from people or organisations (cough, unions, cough) who think they share the same policies or beliefs, and want to see them enacted. The only difference in this case is the number of zeros on the end of the cheque is above average. I suspect a lot of the stink is really bitterness from other politicians whose policies are less likely to appeal to the seriously wealthy donor class.
Very much one of those irregular verbs: I have received a supportive donation, you have been bought for cash, he has been charged under the bribery act...
the reporting requirements are retrospective, he's as guilty as a puppy beside a fresh poo
Clearly guilty. But Farage probably doesn't mind being made a martyr of - can parrot the two tier rules angle, and guarantees plenty of attention and coverage to him rather than the official opposition over the summer. Sadly it won't do him any harm and may even help.
The EU wants us for our money and our clout. The Eurozone doesn't want us, because we'd be a total pain in the arse, and suck financial services away from Frankfurt. And we'd leave the ECB with the job of effectively guaranteeing British banks.
If we wanted to join the EU with a big cheque and no Eurozone (for now at least), we probably could.
But it's a bullshit argument, because I don't believe a referendum on EU membership would be won. No one wants to go through that argument/fight again.
That's a good argument for now, for the next ten years or so.
The catch is that the demographics of the Leave/Stay Out/Faragists vote are horrible. Unless they can convert a meaningful number of middle-aged people to the idea that staying out is a good idea every year, the popularity of Brexit dies in a generation or so. There won't be an argument, because only a handful of freaks will want to argue it.
That would be different if Brexit were unambiguously going well, but the best case can be made is that it's doing less harm than the worst-case scenario. So it's not going to sell itself.
I've done the 'Brexit is a ghastly heirloom, currently kept to not annoy the family patriarch' analogy before. One of the reasons the Greens are surging is that the youth seem increasingly impatient to book a skip and dump it.
I've heard this argument my whole political life. "The Tories are dying out" is another one.
It doesn't work like that, because politics and people aren't static.
Although, judging by Thursday, the Tories ARE dying out.
Not at all. A huge chunk are now voting Reform, but the Tories still won over 800 seats and 20% of the ENV. Not great, not terrible.
The centre-right block is very comfortably well above 40%, and sometimes approaches near 50%.
It'd be near certain to win the next GE were it constituted as one.
Estimated NEV for the Tories from Thursday is 17%, the same as Labour, with the LibDems on 16%.
It seems some quote 17%, and Railings & Thrasher on Sky at 20% NEV for the conservatives
BBC Projected National share based off the council results.
Reform 26% Green 18% Labour 17% Conservative 17% Lib Dems 16%
So England only?
So probably more to gain for Labour by appealing to the Green vote, as renewables, electrification and green industrial revolution are already their policies (naive assumption that voting Green is about green policies). However more to gain for the Conservatives by going further right and racist. The winner is likely to be party with the most uneven spread of their vote.
The EU wants us for our money and our clout. The Eurozone doesn't want us, because we'd be a total pain in the arse, and suck financial services away from Frankfurt. And we'd leave the ECB with the job of effectively guaranteeing British banks.
If we wanted to join the EU with a big cheque and no Eurozone (for now at least), we probably could.
But it's a bullshit argument, because I don't believe a referendum on EU membership would be won. No one wants to go through that argument/fight again.
That's a good argument for now, for the next ten years or so.
The catch is that the demographics of the Leave/Stay Out/Faragists vote are horrible. Unless they can convert a meaningful number of middle-aged people to the idea that staying out is a good idea every year, the popularity of Brexit dies in a generation or so. There won't be an argument, because only a handful of freaks will want to argue it.
That would be different if Brexit were unambiguously going well, but the best case can be made is that it's doing less harm than the worst-case scenario. So it's not going to sell itself.
I've done the 'Brexit is a ghastly heirloom, currently kept to not annoy the family patriarch' analogy before. One of the reasons the Greens are surging is that the youth seem increasingly impatient to book a skip and dump it.
I've heard this argument my whole political life. "The Tories are dying out" is another one.
It doesn't work like that, because politics and people aren't static.
Although, judging by Thursday, the Tories ARE dying out.
Not at all. A huge chunk are now voting Reform, but the Tories still won over 800 seats and 20% of the ENV. Not great, not terrible.
The centre-right block is very comfortably well above 40%, and sometimes approaches near 50%.
It'd be near certain to win the next GE were it constituted as one.
Estimated NEV for the Tories from Thursday is 17%, the same as Labour, with the LibDems on 16%.
It seems some quote 17%, and Railings & Thrasher on Sky at 20% NEV for the conservatives
BBC Projected National share based off the council results.
Reform 26% Green 18% Labour 17% Conservative 17% Lib Dems 16%
Yes I know
Two different projections are being used by BBC and Sky
The difference, as I understand it, is that Sky is just adjusting for the areas that didn't have local elections and is showing us what the vote shares would be if every area had voted in a local election - in essence it's a crude scaling up of the local election votes and doesn't adjust for factors such as how many candidates were put up, or that many voters didn't have the chance to vote for some of the parties.
The BBC model goes further and tries to adjust, using historical voting patterns, for such factors, working from a standardised model built up over years so that the translation from the partial set of local election voters is better interpreted as an indicator of national voting intentions.
The BBC's is, I suggest, the better approach. In my ward I had neither LibDem nor Green candidate, so the BBC would have used historical patterns to put my vote into those columns whereas Sky would simply have ignored the partial choice I was offered.
What if, while the Rejoiners are asking us to Rejoin, a country like Germany elects a governing party like the AfD?
Because that is very possible in coming years. Especially with OFFICIAL data like this
🇩🇪 Germany 2025 Crime Stats dropped and it’s jaw-dropping:
Algerian nationals are committing crimes at 18x the rate of native Germans… and nearly 100x the rate of Japanese nationals.
The breakdowns are even wilder:
- Murder: Tunisians at 27x the German rate - Rape & Sexual Assault: Guinea 21x, Gambia 19x, Algeria 16x - Robbery: Algeria 111x, Libya 50x the German rate
We're talking about official numbers here.
The disparities are INSANE
Source: German Federal Crime Statistics (PKS 2025)“
What if, while the Rejoiners are asking us to Rejoin, a country like Germany elects a governing party like the AfD?
Because that is very possible in coming years. Especially with OFFICIAL data like this
🇩🇪 Germany 2025 Crime Stats dropped and it’s jaw-dropping:
Algerian nationals are committing crimes at 18x the rate of native Germans… and nearly 100x the rate of Japanese nationals.
The breakdowns are even wilder:
- Murder: Tunisians at 27x the German rate - Rape & Sexual Assault: Guinea 21x, Gambia 19x, Algeria 16x - Robbery: Algeria 111x, Libya 50x the German rate
We're talking about official numbers here.
The disparities are INSANE
Source: German Federal Crime Statistics (PKS 2025)“
Deporting people who have been convicted of these types of offences would be supported by I suspect nearly every one.
Reform however want to deport law abiding people because they’ve moved onto the next scapegoat. Net migration is falling rapidly so they’ve decided to move onto the next target . And after that it will be someone else . Reform survive by just keeping people angry and finding another group to attack .
The EU wants us for our money and our clout. The Eurozone doesn't want us, because we'd be a total pain in the arse, and suck financial services away from Frankfurt. And we'd leave the ECB with the job of effectively guaranteeing British banks.
If we wanted to join the EU with a big cheque and no Eurozone (for now at least), we probably could.
But it's a bullshit argument, because I don't believe a referendum on EU membership would be won. No one wants to go through that argument/fight again.
That's a good argument for now, for the next ten years or so.
The catch is that the demographics of the Leave/Stay Out/Faragists vote are horrible. Unless they can convert a meaningful number of middle-aged people to the idea that staying out is a good idea every year, the popularity of Brexit dies in a generation or so. There won't be an argument, because only a handful of freaks will want to argue it.
That would be different if Brexit were unambiguously going well, but the best case can be made is that it's doing less harm than the worst-case scenario. So it's not going to sell itself.
I've done the 'Brexit is a ghastly heirloom, currently kept to not annoy the family patriarch' analogy before. One of the reasons the Greens are surging is that the youth seem increasingly impatient to book a skip and dump it.
I've heard this argument my whole political life. "The Tories are dying out" is another one.
It doesn't work like that, because politics and people aren't static.
Although, judging by Thursday, the Tories ARE dying out.
Not at all. A huge chunk are now voting Reform, but the Tories still won over 800 seats and 20% of the ENV. Not great, not terrible.
The centre-right block is very comfortably well above 40%, and sometimes approaches near 50%.
It'd be near certain to win the next GE were it constituted as one.
What you are advocating however is not the Conservative Party.
RefCon will subsume the Conservative Party and the grouping will assume the cache of the Conservative name at some stage in the future. Hoorah the Conservatives survive, but they bear no relationship to the politics of McMillan, Butler, Heath or even Thatcher for that matter.
In essence the name alone lives on.
FWIW the existential threat to Labour is a clear and present danger. Labour's USP is social equality. What we have seen so far has been hidden under a bushel by this Government and taking money from OAPs and the poor shoots their USP down in flames.
If it’s true that Reform are mainly just old Tories, how can it be that, if the two parties were to merge, the Tory party would be much different to how it was before the Reformers left?
As one election fades, there will be others on the horizon.
What's happening on Local Government reorganisation? Do those successful councillors who are in areas deemed to be reorganised just sit on their hands in the hope of being successful the next time? Will they actually be able to achieve anything?
It seems to be a strange mix - in Hampshire the 'old' county council has elected councillors for another, legally, four year term, whilst knowing that the government intends to truncate this to probably two years, so they disappear probably in 2028. Meanwhile I think the original plan was to elect 'shadow' councillors to the new councils next year, although this too may fall back to 2028 as I wouldn't think having both sets of councillors serving together makes any sense. Meanwhile in Surrey they've gone ahead and elected the new shadow councils this year.
All a good excuse not to fix potholes.
Which are horrendous in Hampshire.
Tory run Hampshire? Surely not!
It's a hung council, and the hold-off has been due to Labour's botched reforms.
This may now continue for another 2 years or more.
Note that this only applies to polygamous wives married abroad. These extra benefits only go to foreigners breaking the law of the UK, not to British people
If they were not married, wouldn't they be a single claimant and getting £244.40 rather than £119.50..........
Slightly weird that the PB gammons are going on about the bogeyman of the UK being back in the EU with an AfD led Germany when the AfD seem very much their shot glass of schnapps.
'We are the only party that can bring our country together'
I think that's probably true. I just wish they'd have bloody well done it over the past couple of years.
It’s really really not true. Labour has lost its white working class vote in much of England and Wales, forever. Or for a very long time. The WWC have worked out that Reform will better represent their interests. And they will
It’s exactly what happened to Labour in Scotland with the SNP but much worse, because this is absolutely Labour’s core vote. Unless they get it back they will never again win a majority. But the kind of policies needed to win them back would be intolerable for Labour MPs and hugely alienating for their London and middle class vote
TL;DR: Labour are fucked
The WWC believe that Reform will better represent their interests.
I suspect they will be in for a nasty surprise and then turn on mass to the next party that offers then hope that doesn’t exist
Both you and Leon are over-interpreting. Very many of their voters just want to chuck a brick through the window of the established parties and don't have strong or clear views as to what sort of window they'd like instead.
What if, while the Rejoiners are asking us to Rejoin, a country like Germany elects a governing party like the AfD?
Because that is very possible in coming years. Especially with OFFICIAL data like this
🇩🇪 Germany 2025 Crime Stats dropped and it’s jaw-dropping:
Algerian nationals are committing crimes at 18x the rate of native Germans… and nearly 100x the rate of Japanese nationals.
The breakdowns are even wilder:
- Murder: Tunisians at 27x the German rate - Rape & Sexual Assault: Guinea 21x, Gambia 19x, Algeria 16x - Robbery: Algeria 111x, Libya 50x the German rate
We're talking about official numbers here.
The disparities are INSANE
Source: German Federal Crime Statistics (PKS 2025)“
Deporting people who have been convicted of these types of offences would be supported by I suspect nearly every one.
Reform however want to deport law abiding people because they’ve moved onto the next scapegoat. Net migration is falling rapidly so they’ve decided to move onto the next target . And after that it will be someone else . Reform survive by just keeping people angry and finding another group to attack .
I don't agree with that.
I have sympathy with the view there are a large number of people who are here, who shouldn't be, who qualified solely on a technicality, who should have temporary cover only and then politely made to leave.
The EU wants us for our money and our clout. The Eurozone doesn't want us, because we'd be a total pain in the arse, and suck financial services away from Frankfurt. And we'd leave the ECB with the job of effectively guaranteeing British banks.
If we wanted to join the EU with a big cheque and no Eurozone (for now at least), we probably could.
But it's a bullshit argument, because I don't believe a referendum on EU membership would be won. No one wants to go through that argument/fight again.
That's a good argument for now, for the next ten years or so.
The catch is that the demographics of the Leave/Stay Out/Faragists vote are horrible. Unless they can convert a meaningful number of middle-aged people to the idea that staying out is a good idea every year, the popularity of Brexit dies in a generation or so. There won't be an argument, because only a handful of freaks will want to argue it.
That would be different if Brexit were unambiguously going well, but the best case can be made is that it's doing less harm than the worst-case scenario. So it's not going to sell itself.
I've done the 'Brexit is a ghastly heirloom, currently kept to not annoy the family patriarch' analogy before. One of the reasons the Greens are surging is that the youth seem increasingly impatient to book a skip and dump it.
I've heard this argument my whole political life. "The Tories are dying out" is another one.
It doesn't work like that, because politics and people aren't static.
Although, judging by Thursday, the Tories ARE dying out.
Not at all. A huge chunk are now voting Reform, but the Tories still won over 800 seats and 20% of the ENV. Not great, not terrible.
The centre-right block is very comfortably well above 40%, and sometimes approaches near 50%.
It'd be near certain to win the next GE were it constituted as one.
What you are advocating however is not the Conservative Party.
RefCon will subsume the Conservative Party and the grouping will assume the cache of the Conservative name at some stage in the future. Hoorah the Conservatives survive, but they bear no relationship to the politics of McMillan, Butler, Heath or even Thatcher for that matter.
In essence the name alone lives on.
FWIW the existential threat to Labour is a clear and present danger. Labour's USP is social equality. What we have seen so far has been hidden under a bushel by this Government and taking money from OAPs and the poor shoots their USP down in flames.
If it’s true that Reform are mainly just old Tories, how can it be that, if the two parties were to merge, the Tory party would be much different to how it was before the Reformers left?
It would be similar to the Tory party of 2019, but not similar to the current version or the Tory party of 2009, let alone 1999.
What if, while the Rejoiners are asking us to Rejoin, a country like Germany elects a governing party like the AfD?
Because that is very possible in coming years. Especially with OFFICIAL data like this
🇩🇪 Germany 2025 Crime Stats dropped and it’s jaw-dropping:
Algerian nationals are committing crimes at 18x the rate of native Germans… and nearly 100x the rate of Japanese nationals.
The breakdowns are even wilder:
- Murder: Tunisians at 27x the German rate - Rape & Sexual Assault: Guinea 21x, Gambia 19x, Algeria 16x - Robbery: Algeria 111x, Libya 50x the German rate
We're talking about official numbers here.
The disparities are INSANE
Source: German Federal Crime Statistics (PKS 2025)“
Deporting people who have been convicted of these types of offences would be supported by I suspect nearly every one.
Reform however want to deport law abiding people because they’ve moved onto the next scapegoat. Net migration is falling rapidly so they’ve decided to move onto the next target . And after that it will be someone else . Reform survive by just keeping people angry and finding another group to attack .
You say that, but all parties except the Tories and Reform are committed to keeping the ECHR, which is the legal basis upon which our judges are keeping these people in the country. And afraicr you yourself are bitterly opposed to scrapping it. So you can 'agree' all you like - these outrages will continue until the ECHR is removed from British law. That may not be all that is needed, but it is a necessary prerequisite.
As for deporting the law abiding, if they have no legal right to be in the UK, and they are not making a vital contribution, why would they not be deported? That is how a country with borders works.
Rejoining the EU - or attempting to Rejoin (we might be vetoed) - would be easily as agonising as Brexit and probably much worse. Because quitting a club is ultimately easier than joining. Especially joining a club that isn’t sure you’d be a good member
It would five-ten years of anguished and tedious negotiations during which the EU - and every member state - would try to extract as much juice from the British Orange as possible. They would make the pips squeak
And, despite what “Ben Judah” says, we would certainly have to join the euro. It’s the one way to shackle us forever
we would not be vetoed per se. We would be told full fat including Euro and Schengen, or no.
Actually, I don't think that necessarily true. The EU is happy to have many countries indefinitely delaying Euro membership, because the time is never quite right. I have no doubt that -if we were going to be writing a large cheque- then we would get the same treatment.
No, we would be legally obligated to adopt the euro in future, under law, once we met the convergence criteria.
Even if the UK government tried to game in the medium-term it would never go away and with the way things work in the UK I could even see domestic legal challenges to compel us to join.
There may be a "legal obligation to join", yet there are a number of countries within the Single Market with their own free-floating currencies - Sweden since 2003, and they have had a referendum which said "do not join the Exchange Rate Mechanism II", which is a required stage on the way to the Euro.
It can be done. Perhaps we need to be pragmatic to find the best for the UK in an era which has been significantly changed geopolitically, not obsessively ideological.
Sweden. Swe-den. Sweden!
Sweden Sweden Sweden!
SWEDEN!
It just doesn't wash. These arguments are nothing but a vain attempt to play down the risks out of fear that it'd otherwise be a real political obstacle to winning a Rejoin vote.
We'd be obliged to adopt the euro and committed to do so, by law.
No ifs, no buts.
Agreed.
I suspect that in the next generation there will come a point at which that will be the price we are willing to pay, and we will indeed rejoin (if we are let back in).
But I also suspect it would need a failed Reform government (and perhaps even a failed Green one) before we were to contemplate that reality as a nation.
Yes, or not?
Rejoin being the primary objective of British politics - and weirdly always seen as gravitationally inevitable - might just be a very Gen X/Boomer thing, who dominate political leadership and the chatterati but future younger generations may not be quite so bothered.
To be honest, it all feels quite passé. It's not the 1990s anymore, which was peak 'The Future is Europe'.
Setting aside your imaginary "future younger generations", support for rejoining is strongest among those aged 16-24.
None of them are talking about though, are they? You are.
They talk about Gaza, gyms, influencers, gender identity, debt, and personal growth.
They don't talk about the EU. If they did the LDs would be riding high, not the Greens.
The Greens are even more explicitly pro-Rejoin than the Lib Dems.
Interesting Substack here from Patrick English of Yougov on how Labour is shedding more voters to Green than Reform:
There has been some discussion on pb in the past about whether Labour was right to attack Reform, who were more a threat to the Conservatives, and whether that opened the opposite flank.
However, at a more simplistic level, there is a pleasing symmetry in England that might mislead:- Reform gained 1,451 councillors Labour lost almost the same number: 1,496. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/topics/cr45k7vqw1pt
And in a lot of those results, the split vote between Labour and the Greens is what got Reform elected.
That's one way of looking at it; another is that attacking opponents isn't what gets you the bulk of your vote. If the electorate don't want you for positive reasons then you don't get their vote.
The reality is that attacking the Greens wouldn't have gained Labour many votes.
Reform won so many seats because it was a multiparty election, with five national parties in a FPTP system, and Reform got a few percent more backing than anyone else.
On a PB pedantry, I think Reform are down to 1450 as they have already chucked one out.
There are some more lining up on the plank around various anti-semitism problems.
I think there are not a few paper candidates elected for the Greens, too.
It will be an interesting exercise to see what difference (if any) having the most inexperience set of councillors in living memory makes, in local authorities where there was a wholesale clear out of the incumbents.
Green party handlers apologised to one newly elected councillor in Finsbury Park, north London, put down as a “paper candidate”, who pulled off an unexpected win. “You’re going to be great, we’ll support you,” they said, according to the Islington Tribune.
What if, while the Rejoiners are asking us to Rejoin, a country like Germany elects a governing party like the AfD?
Because that is very possible in coming years. Especially with OFFICIAL data like this
🇩🇪 Germany 2025 Crime Stats dropped and it’s jaw-dropping:
Algerian nationals are committing crimes at 18x the rate of native Germans… and nearly 100x the rate of Japanese nationals.
The breakdowns are even wilder:
- Murder: Tunisians at 27x the German rate - Rape & Sexual Assault: Guinea 21x, Gambia 19x, Algeria 16x - Robbery: Algeria 111x, Libya 50x the German rate
We're talking about official numbers here.
The disparities are INSANE
Source: German Federal Crime Statistics (PKS 2025)“
Sunday quiz. Guess where this is from (capitals mine)? Which country produced this document?
“single / lone parent - state pension age or over: 244.40 256.00
couple - state pension age or over: 366.00 383.35
single / lone parent - reached state pension age on or after 1 April 2021 couple - both reached state pension age on or after 1 April 2021: 227.10 346.60 238.00
for the claimant and the other party to the marriage where one or more members of the marriage are state pension age or over for each additional spouse who is a member of the same household as the claimant and one or more of the members are state pension age or over: 366.00 383.35
If the claimant is a member of a POLYGAMOUS marriage and all of the members of the marriage have attained pensionable age on or after 1 April 2021
For the claimant and the other party to the marriage
For each additional spouse who is a member of the same household as the claimant: 346.60 363.25 119.50 125.25”
So an additional spouse in a polygamous marriage gets just under half what they would get as a single person?
Additional sums for a partner if both are retirement age is 121.6 (366-244.40) while the additional polygamous partner only gets 119.50. So marriage pays. From experience, if it was the other way around there would be a lot more polygamous partnerships. Conversely it's better to separate before retirement so you get 488.80 (244.40 * 2)
'We are the only party that can bring our country together'
I think that's probably true. I just wish they'd have bloody well done it over the past couple of years.
It’s really really not true. Labour has lost its white working class vote in much of England and Wales, forever. Or for a very long time. The WWC have worked out that Reform will better represent their interests. And they will
It’s exactly what happened to Labour in Scotland with the SNP but much worse, because this is absolutely Labour’s core vote. Unless they get it back they will never again win a majority. But the kind of policies needed to win them back would be intolerable for Labour MPs and hugely alienating for their London and middle class vote
TL;DR: Labour are fucked
The WWC believe that Reform will better represent their interests.
I suspect they will be in for a nasty surprise and then turn on mass to the next party that offers then hope that doesn’t exist
Both you and Leon are over-interpreting. Very many of their voters just want to chuck a brick through the window of the established parties and don't have strong or clear views as to what sort of window they'd like instead.
I suspect Eek has more knowledge of these communities than you do.
'We are the only party that can bring our country together'
I think that's probably true. I just wish they'd have bloody well done it over the past couple of years.
It’s really really not true. Labour has lost its white working class vote in much of England and Wales, forever. Or for a very long time. The WWC have worked out that Reform will better represent their interests. And they will
It’s exactly what happened to Labour in Scotland with the SNP but much worse, because this is absolutely Labour’s core vote. Unless they get it back they will never again win a majority. But the kind of policies needed to win them back would be intolerable for Labour MPs and hugely alienating for their London and middle class vote
TL;DR: Labour are fucked
The WWC believe that Reform will better represent their interests.
I suspect they will be in for a nasty surprise and then turn on mass to the next party that offers then hope that doesn’t exist
Which is hopecasting and an admission the next GE is as good as lost.
I hold no candle for Reform but the SNP have shown that you can dine off political identity in office for an awfully long time.
'We are the only party that can bring our country together'
I think that's probably true. I just wish they'd have bloody well done it over the past couple of years.
It’s really really not true. Labour has lost its white working class vote in much of England and Wales, forever. Or for a very long time. The WWC have worked out that Reform will better represent their interests. And they will
It’s exactly what happened to Labour in Scotland with the SNP but much worse, because this is absolutely Labour’s core vote. Unless they get it back they will never again win a majority. But the kind of policies needed to win them back would be intolerable for Labour MPs and hugely alienating for their London and middle class vote
TL;DR: Labour are fucked
I was in Reformland yesterday. I took my daughter and some friends round to another friend's house. Small end-terrace on the edge of a large council estate, where Reform signs were very much in evidence (one of my daughters' friends* giggled nervously as she pointed it out - oddly, the youth seem to pronounce it REEForm). Small Victorian houses on the next street with adverts for 'the HMO guys - always on the lookout for more houses'. You could kind of feel the hopelessness of the area: it was the last in the queue and there only to be shat upon. You can see the attraction of a party which at least doesn't appear to actively despise you.
*These are girls my daughter knows through football: they're a mixed bunch, socially, but my daughter is very much in a minority in growing up in an owner-occupied house.
'We are the only party that can bring our country together'
I think that's probably true. I just wish they'd have bloody well done it over the past couple of years.
It’s really really not true. Labour has lost its white working class vote in much of England and Wales, forever. Or for a very long time. The WWC have worked out that Reform will better represent their interests. And they will
It’s exactly what happened to Labour in Scotland with the SNP but much worse, because this is absolutely Labour’s core vote. Unless they get it back they will never again win a majority. But the kind of policies needed to win them back would be intolerable for Labour MPs and hugely alienating for their London and middle class vote
TL;DR: Labour are fucked
The WWC believe that Reform will better represent their interests.
I suspect they will be in for a nasty surprise and then turn on mass to the next party that offers then hope that doesn’t exist
Both you and Leon are over-interpreting. Very many of their voters just want to chuck a brick through the window of the established parties and don't have strong or clear views as to what sort of window they'd like instead.
That’s what they said after the first SNP breakthrough. “They will come back to Labour”. They didn’t
Labour offers less than nothing to the white working classes. It actively insults them. It won’t even give them benefits for their polygamous wives, you only get that if you’re Muslim from abroad
'We are the only party that can bring our country together'
I think that's probably true. I just wish they'd have bloody well done it over the past couple of years.
It’s really really not true. Labour has lost its white working class vote in much of England and Wales, forever. Or for a very long time. The WWC have worked out that Reform will better represent their interests. And they will
It’s exactly what happened to Labour in Scotland with the SNP but much worse, because this is absolutely Labour’s core vote. Unless they get it back they will never again win a majority. But the kind of policies needed to win them back would be intolerable for Labour MPs and hugely alienating for their London and middle class vote
TL;DR: Labour are fucked
The WWC believe that Reform will better represent their interests.
I suspect they will be in for a nasty surprise and then turn on mass to the next party that offers then hope that doesn’t exist
Both you and Leon are over-interpreting. Very many of their voters just want to chuck a brick through the window of the established parties and don't have strong or clear views as to what sort of window they'd like instead.
A lazy, incurious view. Much the same was said about the Chartists.
As one election fades, there will be others on the horizon.
What's happening on Local Government reorganisation? Do those successful councillors who are in areas deemed to be reorganised just sit on their hands in the hope of being successful the next time? Will they actually be able to achieve anything?
It seems to be a strange mix - in Hampshire the 'old' county council has elected councillors for another, legally, four year term, whilst knowing that the government intends to truncate this to probably two years, so they disappear probably in 2028. Meanwhile I think the original plan was to elect 'shadow' councillors to the new councils next year, although this too may fall back to 2028 as I wouldn't think having both sets of councillors serving together makes any sense. Meanwhile in Surrey they've gone ahead and elected the new shadow councils this year.
All a good excuse not to fix potholes.
Which are horrendous in Hampshire.
Tory run Hampshire? Surely not!
Tory run Hampshire has got itself into almost as big a financial hole as Tory run Surrey. Hampshire asked government for permission to push up its council tax by some large amount this year (16% rings a bell), but was refused.
What if, while the Rejoiners are asking us to Rejoin, a country like Germany elects a governing party like the AfD?
Because that is very possible in coming years. Especially with OFFICIAL data like this
🇩🇪 Germany 2025 Crime Stats dropped and it’s jaw-dropping:
Algerian nationals are committing crimes at 18x the rate of native Germans… and nearly 100x the rate of Japanese nationals.
The breakdowns are even wilder:
- Murder: Tunisians at 27x the German rate - Rape & Sexual Assault: Guinea 21x, Gambia 19x, Algeria 16x - Robbery: Algeria 111x, Libya 50x the German rate
We're talking about official numbers here.
The disparities are INSANE
Source: German Federal Crime Statistics (PKS 2025)“
Deporting people who have been convicted of these types of offences would be supported by I suspect nearly every one.
Reform however want to deport law abiding people because they’ve moved onto the next scapegoat. Net migration is falling rapidly so they’ve decided to move onto the next target . And after that it will be someone else . Reform survive by just keeping people angry and finding another group to attack .
I don't agree with that.
I have sympathy with the view there are a large number of people who are here, who shouldn't be, who qualified solely on a technicality, who should have temporary cover only and then politely made to leave.
And who are going to do the jobs of that large amount of people when they’re deported ? And what will companies do when they suddenly lose lots of workers . Many Brits simply think many of those jobs are beneath them .
I don’t believe in retrospective changes . By all means put new rules in but at least people know what to expect if they come here .
The EU wants us for our money and our clout. The Eurozone doesn't want us, because we'd be a total pain in the arse, and suck financial services away from Frankfurt. And we'd leave the ECB with the job of effectively guaranteeing British banks.
If we wanted to join the EU with a big cheque and no Eurozone (for now at least), we probably could.
But it's a bullshit argument, because I don't believe a referendum on EU membership would be won. No one wants to go through that argument/fight again.
That's a good argument for now, for the next ten years or so.
The catch is that the demographics of the Leave/Stay Out/Faragists vote are horrible. Unless they can convert a meaningful number of middle-aged people to the idea that staying out is a good idea every year, the popularity of Brexit dies in a generation or so. There won't be an argument, because only a handful of freaks will want to argue it.
That would be different if Brexit were unambiguously going well, but the best case can be made is that it's doing less harm than the worst-case scenario. So it's not going to sell itself.
I've done the 'Brexit is a ghastly heirloom, currently kept to not annoy the family patriarch' analogy before. One of the reasons the Greens are surging is that the youth seem increasingly impatient to book a skip and dump it.
I've heard this argument my whole political life. "The Tories are dying out" is another one.
It doesn't work like that, because politics and people aren't static.
Although, judging by Thursday, the Tories ARE dying out.
Not at all. A huge chunk are now voting Reform, but the Tories still won over 800 seats and 20% of the ENV. Not great, not terrible.
The centre-right block is very comfortably well above 40%, and sometimes approaches near 50%.
It'd be near certain to win the next GE were it constituted as one.
Estimated NEV for the Tories from Thursday is 17%, the same as Labour, with the LibDems on 16%.
It seems some quote 17%, and Railings & Thrasher on Sky at 20% NEV for the conservatives
BBC Projected National share based off the council results.
Reform 26% Green 18% Labour 17% Conservative 17% Lib Dems 16%
Yes I know
Two different projections are being used by BBC and Sky
The difference, as I understand it, is that Sky is just adjusting for the areas that didn't have local elections and is showing us what the vote shares would be if every area had voted in a local election - in essence it's a crude scaling up of the local election votes and doesn't adjust for factors such as how many candidates were put up, or that many voters didn't have the chance to vote for some of the parties.
The BBC model goes further and tries to adjust, using historical voting patterns, for such factors, working from a standardised model built up over years so that the translation from the partial set of local election voters is better interpreted as an indicator of national voting intentions.
The BBC's is, I suggest, the better approach. In my ward I had neither LibDem nor Green candidate, so the BBC would have used historical patterns to put my vote into those columns whereas Sky would simply have ignored the partial choice I was offered.
I see the IOW narrowly avoided a Reform majority council.
'We are the only party that can bring our country together'
I think that's probably true. I just wish they'd have bloody well done it over the past couple of years.
It’s really really not true. Labour has lost its white working class vote in much of England and Wales, forever. Or for a very long time. The WWC have worked out that Reform will better represent their interests. And they will
It’s exactly what happened to Labour in Scotland with the SNP but much worse, because this is absolutely Labour’s core vote. Unless they get it back they will never again win a majority. But the kind of policies needed to win them back would be intolerable for Labour MPs and hugely alienating for their London and middle class vote
TL;DR: Labour are fucked
I was in Reformland yesterday. I took my daughter and some friends round to another friend's house. Small end-terrace on the edge of a large council estate, where Reform signs were very much in evidence (one of my daughters' friends* giggled nervously as she pointed it out - oddly, the youth seem to pronounce it REEForm). Small Victorian houses on the next street with adverts for 'the HMO guys - always on the lookout for more houses'. You could kind of feel the hopelessness of the area: it was the last in the queue and there only to be shat upon. You can see the attraction of a party which at least doesn't appear to actively despise you.
*These are girls my daughter knows through football: they're a mixed bunch, socially, but my daughter is very much in a minority in growing up in an owner-occupied house.
One of the good things Reform has done in Durham is putting the brakes on HMO’s. They really are a blight on communities.
You can see from PB that so many people despise not just the Reform voters but these communities as a whole.
At least Reform talk to and listen to them. They may fail, they may not.
The EU wants us for our money and our clout. The Eurozone doesn't want us, because we'd be a total pain in the arse, and suck financial services away from Frankfurt. And we'd leave the ECB with the job of effectively guaranteeing British banks.
If we wanted to join the EU with a big cheque and no Eurozone (for now at least), we probably could.
But it's a bullshit argument, because I don't believe a referendum on EU membership would be won. No one wants to go through that argument/fight again.
That's a good argument for now, for the next ten years or so.
The catch is that the demographics of the Leave/Stay Out/Faragists vote are horrible. Unless they can convert a meaningful number of middle-aged people to the idea that staying out is a good idea every year, the popularity of Brexit dies in a generation or so. There won't be an argument, because only a handful of freaks will want to argue it.
That would be different if Brexit were unambiguously going well, but the best case can be made is that it's doing less harm than the worst-case scenario. So it's not going to sell itself.
I've done the 'Brexit is a ghastly heirloom, currently kept to not annoy the family patriarch' analogy before. One of the reasons the Greens are surging is that the youth seem increasingly impatient to book a skip and dump it.
I've heard this argument my whole political life. "The Tories are dying out" is another one.
It doesn't work like that, because politics and people aren't static.
Although, judging by Thursday, the Tories ARE dying out.
Not at all. A huge chunk are now voting Reform, but the Tories still won over 800 seats and 20% of the ENV. Not great, not terrible.
The centre-right block is very comfortably well above 40%, and sometimes approaches near 50%.
It'd be near certain to win the next GE were it constituted as one.
What you are advocating however is not the Conservative Party.
RefCon will subsume the Conservative Party and the grouping will assume the cache of the Conservative name at some stage in the future. Hoorah the Conservatives survive, but they bear no relationship to the politics of McMillan, Butler, Heath or even Thatcher for that matter.
In essence the name alone lives on.
FWIW the existential threat to Labour is a clear and present danger. Labour's USP is social equality. What we have seen so far has been hidden under a bushel by this Government and taking money from OAPs and the poor shoots their USP down in flames.
If it’s true that Reform are mainly just old Tories, how can it be that, if the two parties were to merge, the Tory party would be much different to how it was before the Reformers left?
Most obviously, because of the more sensible Tories - like David Gauke - who have left the old Tory party and are now criticised scathingly by their current leader. But also because Reform isn't just the old Tories - they're led by Farage who hasn't been a Tory for a very long time, but also because of the previously non-political people they've dragged in at the base. Of the 19 newly elected Reform councillors who may well end up running my local council, I don't think any of them have any sort of political track record, and the Tory leader said last week that he only knew who a few of them are.
What if, while the Rejoiners are asking us to Rejoin, a country like Germany elects a governing party like the AfD?
Because that is very possible in coming years. Especially with OFFICIAL data like this
🇩🇪 Germany 2025 Crime Stats dropped and it’s jaw-dropping:
Algerian nationals are committing crimes at 18x the rate of native Germans… and nearly 100x the rate of Japanese nationals.
The breakdowns are even wilder:
- Murder: Tunisians at 27x the German rate - Rape & Sexual Assault: Guinea 21x, Gambia 19x, Algeria 16x - Robbery: Algeria 111x, Libya 50x the German rate
We're talking about official numbers here.
The disparities are INSANE
Source: German Federal Crime Statistics (PKS 2025)“
Deporting people who have been convicted of these types of offences would be supported by I suspect nearly every one.
Reform however want to deport law abiding people because they’ve moved onto the next scapegoat. Net migration is falling rapidly so they’ve decided to move onto the next target . And after that it will be someone else . Reform survive by just keeping people angry and finding another group to attack .
I don't agree with that.
I have sympathy with the view there are a large number of people who are here, who shouldn't be, who qualified solely on a technicality, who should have temporary cover only and then politely made to leave.
And who are going to do the jobs of that large amount of people when they’re deported ? And what will companies do when they suddenly lose lots of workers . Many Brits simply think many of those jobs are beneath them .
I don’t believe in retrospective changes . By all means put new rules in but at least people know what to expect if they come here .
Arguably we can manage without quite so many deliveroo drivers.
Rejoining the EU - or attempting to Rejoin (we might be vetoed) - would be easily as agonising as Brexit and probably much worse. Because quitting a club is ultimately easier than joining. Especially joining a club that isn’t sure you’d be a good member
It would five-ten years of anguished and tedious negotiations during which the EU - and every member state - would try to extract as much juice from the British Orange as possible. They would make the pips squeak
And, despite what “Ben Judah” says, we would certainly have to join the euro. It’s the one way to shackle us forever
we would not be vetoed per se. We would be told full fat including Euro and Schengen, or no.
Actually, I don't think that necessarily true. The EU is happy to have many countries indefinitely delaying Euro membership, because the time is never quite right. I have no doubt that -if we were going to be writing a large cheque- then we would get the same treatment.
No, we would be legally obligated to adopt the euro in future, under law, once we met the convergence criteria.
Even if the UK government tried to game in the medium-term it would never go away and with the way things work in the UK I could even see domestic legal challenges to compel us to join.
There may be a "legal obligation to join", yet there are a number of countries within the Single Market with their own free-floating currencies - Sweden since 2003, and they have had a referendum which said "do not join the Exchange Rate Mechanism II", which is a required stage on the way to the Euro.
It can be done. Perhaps we need to be pragmatic to find the best for the UK in an era which has been significantly changed geopolitically, not obsessively ideological.
Sweden. Swe-den. Sweden!
Sweden Sweden Sweden!
SWEDEN!
It just doesn't wash. These arguments are nothing but a vain attempt to play down the risks out of fear that it'd otherwise be a real political obstacle to winning a Rejoin vote.
We'd be obliged to adopt the euro and committed to do so, by law.
No ifs, no buts.
Agreed.
I suspect that in the next generation there will come a point at which that will be the price we are willing to pay, and we will indeed rejoin (if we are let back in).
But I also suspect it would need a failed Reform government (and perhaps even a failed Green one) before we were to contemplate that reality as a nation.
Yes, or not?
Rejoin being the primary objective of British politics - and weirdly always seen as gravitationally inevitable - might just be a very Gen X/Boomer thing, who dominate political leadership and the chatterati but future younger generations may not be quite so bothered.
To be honest, it all feels quite passé. It's not the 1990s anymore, which was peak 'The Future is Europe'.
Setting aside your imaginary "future younger generations", support for rejoining is strongest among those aged 16-24.
None of them are talking about though, are they? You are.
They talk about Gaza, gyms, influencers, gender identity, debt, and personal growth.
They don't talk about the EU. If they did the LDs would be riding high, not the Greens.
The Greens are even more explicitly pro-Rejoin than the Lib Dems.
Interesting Substack here from Patrick English of Yougov on how Labour is shedding more voters to Green than Reform:
There has been some discussion on pb in the past about whether Labour was right to attack Reform, who were more a threat to the Conservatives, and whether that opened the opposite flank.
However, at a more simplistic level, there is a pleasing symmetry in England that might mislead:- Reform gained 1,451 councillors Labour lost almost the same number: 1,496. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/topics/cr45k7vqw1pt
And in a lot of those results, the split vote between Labour and the Greens is what got Reform elected.
That's one way of looking at it; another is that attacking opponents isn't what gets you the bulk of your vote. If the electorate don't want you for positive reasons then you don't get their vote.
The reality is that attacking the Greens wouldn't have gained Labour many votes.
Reform won so many seats because it was a multiparty election, with five national parties in a FPTP system, and Reform got a few percent more backing than anyone else.
On a PB pedantry, I think Reform are down to 1450 as they have already chucked one out.
There are some more lining up on the plank around various anti-semitism problems.
I think there are not a few paper candidates elected for the Greens, too.
It will be an interesting exercise to see what difference (if any) having the most inexperience set of councillors in living memory makes, in local authorities where there was a wholesale clear out of the incumbents.
West Yorkshire will make a particularly interesting case study.
Wakefield and Calderdale have swung from commanding Labour majority to Reform majority (in the first case, nearly every seat).
Bradford and Kirklees went NOC, with Reform pluralities, both composed of almost all first time councillors.
Only Leeds (with just a third of seats up for election) hasn't seen huge change - though Reform and the Greens picked up most seats.
What are the other regions with quite so big a turnover of councillors ?
Rejoining the EU - or attempting to Rejoin (we might be vetoed) - would be easily as agonising as Brexit and probably much worse. Because quitting a club is ultimately easier than joining. Especially joining a club that isn’t sure you’d be a good member
It would five-ten years of anguished and tedious negotiations during which the EU - and every member state - would try to extract as much juice from the British Orange as possible. They would make the pips squeak
And, despite what “Ben Judah” says, we would certainly have to join the euro. It’s the one way to shackle us forever
we would not be vetoed per se. We would be told full fat including Euro and Schengen, or no.
Actually, I don't think that necessarily true. The EU is happy to have many countries indefinitely delaying Euro membership, because the time is never quite right. I have no doubt that -if we were going to be writing a large cheque- then we would get the same treatment.
No, we would be legally obligated to adopt the euro in future, under law, once we met the convergence criteria.
Even if the UK government tried to game in the medium-term it would never go away and with the way things work in the UK I could even see domestic legal challenges to compel us to join.
There may be a "legal obligation to join", yet there are a number of countries within the Single Market with their own free-floating currencies - Sweden since 2003, and they have had a referendum which said "do not join the Exchange Rate Mechanism II", which is a required stage on the way to the Euro.
It can be done. Perhaps we need to be pragmatic to find the best for the UK in an era which has been significantly changed geopolitically, not obsessively ideological.
Sweden. Swe-den. Sweden!
Sweden Sweden Sweden!
SWEDEN!
It just doesn't wash. These arguments are nothing but a vain attempt to play down the risks out of fear that it'd otherwise be a real political obstacle to winning a Rejoin vote.
We'd be obliged to adopt the euro and committed to do so, by law.
No ifs, no buts.
Agreed.
I suspect that in the next generation there will come a point at which that will be the price we are willing to pay, and we will indeed rejoin (if we are let back in).
But I also suspect it would need a failed Reform government (and perhaps even a failed Green one) before we were to contemplate that reality as a nation.
Yes, or not?
Rejoin being the primary objective of British politics - and weirdly always seen as gravitationally inevitable - might just be a very Gen X/Boomer thing, who dominate political leadership and the chatterati but future younger generations may not be quite so bothered.
To be honest, it all feels quite passé. It's not the 1990s anymore, which was peak 'The Future is Europe'.
Polling shows it’s the young, not Boomers, who are most keen on rejoin.
And yet it's the Boomers who keep bleating on about it.
That's just the PB demographics.
It's also the young who are probably least aware of the implications, and would therefore be the most put off by them.
The EU wants us for our money and our clout. The Eurozone doesn't want us, because we'd be a total pain in the arse, and suck financial services away from Frankfurt. And we'd leave the ECB with the job of effectively guaranteeing British banks.
If we wanted to join the EU with a big cheque and no Eurozone (for now at least), we probably could.
But it's a bullshit argument, because I don't believe a referendum on EU membership would be won. No one wants to go through that argument/fight again.
That's a good argument for now, for the next ten years or so.
The catch is that the demographics of the Leave/Stay Out/Faragists vote are horrible. Unless they can convert a meaningful number of middle-aged people to the idea that staying out is a good idea every year, the popularity of Brexit dies in a generation or so. There won't be an argument, because only a handful of freaks will want to argue it.
That would be different if Brexit were unambiguously going well, but the best case can be made is that it's doing less harm than the worst-case scenario. So it's not going to sell itself.
I've done the 'Brexit is a ghastly heirloom, currently kept to not annoy the family patriarch' analogy before. One of the reasons the Greens are surging is that the youth seem increasingly impatient to book a skip and dump it.
I've heard this argument my whole political life. "The Tories are dying out" is another one.
It doesn't work like that, because politics and people aren't static.
Although, judging by Thursday, the Tories ARE dying out.
Not at all. A huge chunk are now voting Reform, but the Tories still won over 800 seats and 20% of the ENV. Not great, not terrible.
The centre-right block is very comfortably well above 40%, and sometimes approaches near 50%.
It'd be near certain to win the next GE were it constituted as one.
What you are advocating however is not the Conservative Party.
RefCon will subsume the Conservative Party and the grouping will assume the cache of the Conservative name at some stage in the future. Hoorah the Conservatives survive, but they bear no relationship to the politics of McMillan, Butler, Heath or even Thatcher for that matter.
In essence the name alone lives on.
FWIW the existential threat to Labour is a clear and present danger. Labour's USP is social equality. What we have seen so far has been hidden under a bushel by this Government and taking money from OAPs and the poor shoots their USP down in flames.
If it’s true that Reform are mainly just old Tories, how can it be that, if the two parties were to merge, the Tory party would be much different to how it was before the Reformers left?
It would be similar to the Tory party of 2019, but not similar to the current version or the Tory party of 2009, let alone 1999.
I’m no expert, but surely all major political parties have shape shifted to an extent over time?
What if, while the Rejoiners are asking us to Rejoin, a country like Germany elects a governing party like the AfD?
Because that is very possible in coming years. Especially with OFFICIAL data like this
🇩🇪 Germany 2025 Crime Stats dropped and it’s jaw-dropping:
Algerian nationals are committing crimes at 18x the rate of native Germans… and nearly 100x the rate of Japanese nationals.
The breakdowns are even wilder:
- Murder: Tunisians at 27x the German rate - Rape & Sexual Assault: Guinea 21x, Gambia 19x, Algeria 16x - Robbery: Algeria 111x, Libya 50x the German rate
We're talking about official numbers here.
The disparities are INSANE
Source: German Federal Crime Statistics (PKS 2025)“
To anybody vaguely numerate, those figures look extremely misleading. I'm struggling to find the actual source of the data, but it's immediately noticeable that the nationalities mentioned are not very common in Germany. Why no mention of Syrians or Turks, for example? Given that the crime rate in Germany is relatively low, you'd probably only need say one incident of murder by a Tunisian to achieve "27x the German rate". There are lies, damned lies...
'We are the only party that can bring our country together'
I think that's probably true. I just wish they'd have bloody well done it over the past couple of years.
It’s really really not true. Labour has lost its white working class vote in much of England and Wales, forever. Or for a very long time. The WWC have worked out that Reform will better represent their interests. And they will
It’s exactly what happened to Labour in Scotland with the SNP but much worse, because this is absolutely Labour’s core vote. Unless they get it back they will never again win a majority. But the kind of policies needed to win them back would be intolerable for Labour MPs and hugely alienating for their London and middle class vote
TL;DR: Labour are fucked
In Wales it was Plaid and Reform and I do not see any labour recovery in Wales in years
It goes the way of Scotland. Plaid are there for the next 25 years unless the Conservatives and Reform becomes one. Welsh Conservatives have been quite "Reformy" for a while.
Our conservative MS was reelected to the Senedd, and it is fair to compare the end of labour in Wales to their end to the SNP in Scotland
The great Andrew RT Davies was elected here too.
Reform's USPs here were fear of foreigners, returning speed limits to 70, the M4 relief, and fear of foreigners.
On labour, when you consider where they lost and who they lost to it seems to me they are caught in a bind not able to square the circle of lost votes to right and left
It may well be that labour's only hope is to move left with someone like Rayner or Miliband because in Scotland, Wales, London and the cities that is where their missing votes are
Starmer is labour's biggest problem and bringing in Brown and Harman defies belief
He just has to go if labour want to start the process of being electable again
Not really. The Greens came a poor fifth on seats, if Labour moved left they would fail to regain seats lost to Reform and would lose more seats to the Tories and LDs.
In Scotland and Wales the SNP and Plaid only won most seats being reasonably centrist not hard left
Plaid are not centrist and Swinney is already demanding independence
Their new leader is, Swinney completely failed to win a majority which was his target for an indyref2 mandate
The EU wants us for our money and our clout. The Eurozone doesn't want us, because we'd be a total pain in the arse, and suck financial services away from Frankfurt. And we'd leave the ECB with the job of effectively guaranteeing British banks.
If we wanted to join the EU with a big cheque and no Eurozone (for now at least), we probably could.
But it's a bullshit argument, because I don't believe a referendum on EU membership would be won. No one wants to go through that argument/fight again.
That's a good argument for now, for the next ten years or so.
The catch is that the demographics of the Leave/Stay Out/Faragists vote are horrible. Unless they can convert a meaningful number of middle-aged people to the idea that staying out is a good idea every year, the popularity of Brexit dies in a generation or so. There won't be an argument, because only a handful of freaks will want to argue it.
That would be different if Brexit were unambiguously going well, but the best case can be made is that it's doing less harm than the worst-case scenario. So it's not going to sell itself.
I've done the 'Brexit is a ghastly heirloom, currently kept to not annoy the family patriarch' analogy before. One of the reasons the Greens are surging is that the youth seem increasingly impatient to book a skip and dump it.
I've heard this argument my whole political life. "The Tories are dying out" is another one.
It doesn't work like that, because politics and people aren't static.
Although, judging by Thursday, the Tories ARE dying out.
Not at all. A huge chunk are now voting Reform, but the Tories still won over 800 seats and 20% of the ENV. Not great, not terrible.
The centre-right block is very comfortably well above 40%, and sometimes approaches near 50%.
It'd be near certain to win the next GE were it constituted as one.
What you are advocating however is not the Conservative Party.
RefCon will subsume the Conservative Party and the grouping will assume the cache of the Conservative name at some stage in the future. Hoorah the Conservatives survive, but they bear no relationship to the politics of McMillan, Butler, Heath or even Thatcher for that matter.
In essence the name alone lives on.
FWIW the existential threat to Labour is a clear and present danger. Labour's USP is social equality. What we have seen so far has been hidden under a bushel by this Government and taking money from OAPs and the poor shoots their USP down in flames.
If it’s true that Reform are mainly just old Tories, how can it be that, if the two parties were to merge, the Tory party would be much different to how it was before the Reformers left?
It would be similar to the Tory party of 2019, but not similar to the current version or the Tory party of 2009, let alone 1999.
I’m no expert, but surely all major political parties have shape shifted to an extent over time?
It is true Parties evolve.
The Tory Party goes one of two ways. It throws it's lot in with Reform, jettisons the "Wets" and wins handsomely. Alternatively more right wingers leave to Reform and Restore and the Conservative Party of Butler returns. This takes a long, long time, unless Reform and Restore implode which is not unlikely.
It is more vexing to determine how Labour come out of this alive. I think the only way forward is a Wilsonian mixed economy socialism, which is where Rayner and Burnham come in. The New Labour, Blue Tory experiment I fear is dead.
It's one thing to think that Starmer should Leave. It's another to have a good idea as to what should happen next.
Unless the next step is understood, broadly agreed and has reasonable prospect of success, it risks turning into a greater fiasco. In which case, he should probably Remain for now.
The personality of inertia is as ineffective as a party of inertia. Nothing moves forward until the charisma-free zone that is Starmer is removed.
What if, while the Rejoiners are asking us to Rejoin, a country like Germany elects a governing party like the AfD?
Because that is very possible in coming years. Especially with OFFICIAL data like this
🇩🇪 Germany 2025 Crime Stats dropped and it’s jaw-dropping:
Algerian nationals are committing crimes at 18x the rate of native Germans… and nearly 100x the rate of Japanese nationals.
The breakdowns are even wilder:
- Murder: Tunisians at 27x the German rate - Rape & Sexual Assault: Guinea 21x, Gambia 19x, Algeria 16x - Robbery: Algeria 111x, Libya 50x the German rate
We're talking about official numbers here.
The disparities are INSANE
Source: German Federal Crime Statistics (PKS 2025)“
Deporting people who have been convicted of these types of offences would be supported by I suspect nearly every one.
Reform however want to deport law abiding people because they’ve moved onto the next scapegoat. Net migration is falling rapidly so they’ve decided to move onto the next target . And after that it will be someone else . Reform survive by just keeping people angry and finding another group to attack .
I don't agree with that.
I have sympathy with the view there are a large number of people who are here, who shouldn't be, who qualified solely on a technicality, who should have temporary cover only and then politely made to leave.
And who are going to do the jobs of that large amount of people when they’re deported ? And what will companies do when they suddenly lose lots of workers . Many Brits simply think many of those jobs are beneath them .
I don’t believe in retrospective changes . By all means put new rules in but at least people know what to expect if they come here .
Arguably we can manage without quite so many deliveroo drivers.
Yes, as a kid I had to trudge to the Maccies..no illegals to deliver to me..😏
Rejoining the EU - or attempting to Rejoin (we might be vetoed) - would be easily as agonising as Brexit and probably much worse. Because quitting a club is ultimately easier than joining. Especially joining a club that isn’t sure you’d be a good member
It would five-ten years of anguished and tedious negotiations during which the EU - and every member state - would try to extract as much juice from the British Orange as possible. They would make the pips squeak
And, despite what “Ben Judah” says, we would certainly have to join the euro. It’s the one way to shackle us forever
we would not be vetoed per se. We would be told full fat including Euro and Schengen, or no.
Actually, I don't think that necessarily true. The EU is happy to have many countries indefinitely delaying Euro membership, because the time is never quite right. I have no doubt that -if we were going to be writing a large cheque- then we would get the same treatment.
No, we would be legally obligated to adopt the euro in future, under law, once we met the convergence criteria.
Even if the UK government tried to game in the medium-term it would never go away and with the way things work in the UK I could even see domestic legal challenges to compel us to join.
That's true of a whole bunch of countries, none of which have joined the Euro.
Like Sweden.
Yes but Sweden are in a very different position than us. They are members already and fairly committed to the EU. I think that if we were applying again we would be made to join the Euro right away. It would be proof of commitment and make a further withdrawal almost impossible. And since we are not France we would probably have to comply with Euro rules too which would require a sharp cut in the deficit. Which may not, in fairness, be a bad thing.
I might add that getting our borrowing rates down to ECB levels would undoubtedly be by far the biggest single gain from rejoining. It would make some sense economically.
Joining the Euro is a process that takes time. We would not have to join right away, because it’s not practical for anyone to join right away.
I never want to join the Euro. Ever.
I find it fascinating how europhiles think they can mollify eurosceptics just by saying it "takes time" and "not right away". See also "two-speed Europe". Exactly the same people who'd then shrug their shoulders a few years down the line when European politics or its treaties demanded we adopt a law, regulation or commitment despite domestic opposition.
Being disingenuous is baked in. It's calculated deception.
We've been here before, and that's precisely why we left.
The promises made for what Brexit would deliver have all turned out to be disingenuous, which is why the polling shows a large majority see Brexit as a mistake and a small majority support rejoin.
Of course the Brexiteers now expect the public to trust them, as if their drivel hadn’t been utter shite for years. “The EU will certainly do this. No ifs. No buts”.
Rejoining the EU - or attempting to Rejoin (we might be vetoed) - would be easily as agonising as Brexit and probably much worse. Because quitting a club is ultimately easier than joining. Especially joining a club that isn’t sure you’d be a good member
It would five-ten years of anguished and tedious negotiations during which the EU - and every member state - would try to extract as much juice from the British Orange as possible. They would make the pips squeak
And, despite what “Ben Judah” says, we would certainly have to join the euro. It’s the one way to shackle us forever
we would not be vetoed per se. We would be told full fat including Euro and Schengen, or no.
Actually, I don't think that necessarily true. The EU is happy to have many countries indefinitely delaying Euro membership, because the time is never quite right. I have no doubt that -if we were going to be writing a large cheque- then we would get the same treatment.
No, we would be legally obligated to adopt the euro in future, under law, once we met the convergence criteria.
Even if the UK government tried to game in the medium-term it would never go away and with the way things work in the UK I could even see domestic legal challenges to compel us to join.
That's true of a whole bunch of countries, none of which have joined the Euro.
Like Sweden.
Yes but Sweden are in a very different position than us. They are members already and fairly committed to the EU. I think that if we were applying again we would be made to join the Euro right away. It would be proof of commitment and make a further withdrawal almost impossible. And since we are not France we would probably have to comply with Euro rules too which would require a sharp cut in the deficit. Which may not, in fairness, be a bad thing.
I might add that getting our borrowing rates down to ECB levels would undoubtedly be by far the biggest single gain from rejoining. It would make some sense economically.
Joining the Euro is a process that takes time. We would not have to join right away, because it’s not practical for anyone to join right away.
I never want to join the Euro. Ever.
I find it fascinating how europhiles think they can mollify eurosceptics just by saying it "takes time" and "not right away". See also "two-speed Europe". Exactly the same people who'd then shrug their shoulders a few years down the line when European politics or its treaties demanded we adopt a law, regulation or commitment despite domestic opposition.
Being disingenuous is baked in. It's calculated deception.
We've been here before, and that's precisely why we left.
The promises made for what Brexit would deliver have all turned out to be disingenuous, which is why the polling shows a large majority see Brexit as a mistake and a small majority support rejoin.
Ah, whatabouttery.
When you dig into the polling beneath the headlines, you see strong polling against the idea laws & regulations or trade deals shouldn't be made here and little desire to return to free movement (and that's before you get to the money, yet alone the currency)
That small majority that you think supports Rejoin would disappear in a flash as soon as this came into focus.
My faith in our ability to govern ourselves has been shaken by Thursday. As a country we are simply not being serious about our challenges, our choices and the consequences of those choices. Membership of the Euro removes huge areas of governance from our elected politicians, from any form of democratic oversight really. I used to believe that was a bad thing. But I am beginning to wonder.
Woah there, range rider. I never thought I'd be arguing this contra case, but here we go:
You can't automaticize politics. Politics is a battle over what is right and what is wrong, and the concepts of "right" and "wrong" change over time and place. Those things are decided at the nation-state level by the demos, and the EU is too big for a single demos (at least not yet[1]). Taking the politics out of politics is not a sufficient reason[2] to rejoin the EU.
[1] Heath thought one would develop and should, Powell thought one wouldn't develop and shouldn't. Ironically the growth of transnational affinity groups and our EU departure may have pushed things in a Heathite direction. [2] There are other reasons for rejoining, but removing the politics from politics isn't one of them.
What if, while the Rejoiners are asking us to Rejoin, a country like Germany elects a governing party like the AfD?
Because that is very possible in coming years. Especially with OFFICIAL data like this
🇩🇪 Germany 2025 Crime Stats dropped and it’s jaw-dropping:
Algerian nationals are committing crimes at 18x the rate of native Germans… and nearly 100x the rate of Japanese nationals.
The breakdowns are even wilder:
- Murder: Tunisians at 27x the German rate - Rape & Sexual Assault: Guinea 21x, Gambia 19x, Algeria 16x - Robbery: Algeria 111x, Libya 50x the German rate
We're talking about official numbers here.
The disparities are INSANE
Source: German Federal Crime Statistics (PKS 2025)“
To anybody vaguely numerate, those figures look extremely misleading. I'm struggling to find the actual source of the data, but it's immediately noticeable that the nationalities mentioned are not very common in Germany. Why no mention of Syrians or Turks, for example? Given that the crime rate in Germany is relatively low, you'd probably only need say one incident of murder by a Tunisian to achieve "27x the German rate". There are lies, damned lies...
Apparently, there are 60K Tunisians born people in Germany
Murder rate in Germany - 770 or so killings a year (murder and manslaughter) - 0.91 per 100K population
So claim is that the Tunisians are doing 14 a year (or so), rather than about 0.546 of a killing.
Comments
In Scotland and Wales the SNP and Plaid only won most seats being reasonably centrist not hard left
I suspect they will be in for a nasty surprise and then turn on mass to the next party that offers then hope that doesn’t exist
It will be an interesting exercise to see what difference (if any) having the most inexperience set of councillors in living memory makes, in local authorities where there was a wholesale clear out of the incumbents.
But then Labour swept back in Scotland in 2024, even if they blew it again.
https://x.com/europeelects/status/2053068620570182015?s=61&t=LYVEHh2mqFy1oUJAdCfe-Q
I've oft repeated this old adage when it comes to elections - "it's never as good as you hope or as bad as you fear". For each of the five parties, the elections in London offered plenty of positives and negatives.
Labour took a beating as most predicted but perhaps not quite as severe as some hoped (or feared). They still hold 9 Boroughs and might yet continue to run the administration in others. Inner East and South London was a nightmare but the West not so bad. Arguably, Merton was one of the party's best performances in the whole country.
The Conservatives ended up with a small net gain of Councillors but took a pounding in Havering and south west London. They easily held off Reform in Bromley and Bexley and captured Westminster but just failed in Enfield and Barnet but are now only on 22 Boroughs.
The Liberal Democrats further strengthened their hold on the "golden triangle" but made little progress in Merton, their main target. However, they did make small gains in other boroughs and are now back on more councils (15 in all).
The Greens duly swept Inner East and South London taking Hackney, Lewisham and Walton Forest and winning 16 seats in Newham but performances in other areas were more muted. Nonetheless, they now have more councillors than the Liberal Democrats in London and are arguably the winners of the night in the capital but still only represented on 20 of the 32 Boroughs.
Reform won Havering but failed miserably in Bromley, Bexley and Hillingdon against entrenched Conservatives. They remain largely irrelevant in much of the capital with representation on only 11 Boroughs for all their performance in the rest of England says otherwise.
https://bsky.app/profile/supertanskiiii.bsky.social/post/3mlg3mvqfj224
so much for "protecting our women".
https://yougov.com/en-gb/trackers/voting-intention?crossBreak=1824
Which are horrendous in Hampshire.
This is where Reform get it right.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/69931706ceeaa48d377f6bd5/Benefit-and-pension-rates-2026-2027.pdf
Note that this only applies to polygamous wives married abroad. These extra benefits only go to foreigners breaking the law of the UK, not to British people
However more to gain for the Conservatives by going further right and racist.
The winner is likely to be party with the most uneven spread of their vote.
The BBC model goes further and tries to adjust, using historical voting patterns, for such factors, working from a standardised model built up over years so that the translation from the partial set of local election voters is better interpreted as an indicator of national voting intentions.
The BBC's is, I suggest, the better approach. In my ward I had neither LibDem nor Green candidate, so the BBC would have used historical patterns to put my vote into those columns whereas Sky would simply have ignored the partial choice I was offered.
Reform however want to deport law abiding people because they’ve moved onto the next scapegoat. Net migration is falling rapidly so they’ve decided to move onto the next target . And after that it will be someone else . Reform survive by just keeping people angry and finding another group to attack .
This may now continue for another 2 years or more.
I have sympathy with the view there are a large number of people who are here, who shouldn't be, who qualified solely on a technicality, who should have temporary cover only and then politely made to leave.
As for deporting the law abiding, if they have no legal right to be in the UK, and they are not making a vital contribution, why would they not be deported? That is how a country with borders works.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/may/09/tyrone-scott-hackney-council-greens-paper-candidate
Sarah Ferguson had ‘friends with benefits’ relationship with disgraced rapper Diddy
https://x.com/metrouk/status/2053006106788560967?s=61&t=LYVEHh2mqFy1oUJAdCfe-Q
I hold no candle for Reform but the SNP have shown that you can dine off political identity in office for an awfully long time.
Leaving didn’t solve any problems.
How will joining.
*These are girls my daughter knows through football: they're a mixed bunch, socially, but my daughter is very much in a minority in growing up in an owner-occupied house.
NEW THREAD
Labour offers less than nothing to the white working classes. It actively insults them. It won’t even give them benefits for their polygamous wives, you only get that if you’re Muslim from abroad
I don’t believe in retrospective changes . By all means put new rules in but at least people know what to expect if they come here .
You can see from PB that so many people despise not just the Reform voters but these communities as a whole.
At least Reform talk to and listen to them. They may fail, they may not.
Wakefield and Calderdale have swung from commanding Labour majority to Reform majority (in the first case, nearly every seat).
Bradford and Kirklees went NOC, with Reform pluralities, both composed of almost all first time councillors.
Only Leeds (with just a third of seats up for election) hasn't seen huge change - though Reform and the Greens picked up most seats.
What are the other regions with quite so big a turnover of councillors ?
Reform's USPs here were fear of foreigners, returning speed limits to 70, the M4 relief, and fear of foreigners.
The Tory Party goes one of two ways. It throws it's lot in with Reform, jettisons the "Wets" and wins handsomely. Alternatively more right wingers leave to Reform and Restore and the Conservative Party of Butler returns. This takes a long, long time, unless Reform and Restore implode which is not unlikely.
It is more vexing to determine how Labour come out of this alive. I think the only way forward is a Wilsonian mixed economy socialism, which is where Rayner and Burnham come in. The New Labour, Blue Tory experiment I fear is dead.
It’s not changed my life.
I thought he had it in him, but I was very wrong.
You can't automaticize politics. Politics is a battle over what is right and what is wrong, and the concepts of "right" and "wrong" change over time and place. Those things are decided at the nation-state level by the demos, and the EU is too big for a single demos (at least not yet[1]). Taking the politics out of politics is not a sufficient reason[2] to rejoin the EU.
[1] Heath thought one would develop and should, Powell thought one wouldn't develop and shouldn't. Ironically the growth of transnational affinity groups and our EU departure may have pushed things in a Heathite direction.
[2] There are other reasons for rejoining, but removing the politics from politics isn't one of them.
Murder rate in Germany - 770 or so killings a year (murder and manslaughter) - 0.91 per 100K population
So claim is that the Tunisians are doing 14 a year (or so), rather than about 0.546 of a killing.