The long term favourite for the 2028 White House race may not even run – politicalbetting.com
The long term favourite for the 2028 White House race may not even run – politicalbetting.com
JD Vance, now the lone dove in Donald Trump's cabinet after Tulsi Gabbard's resignation, has been left more isolated than ever and is even considering abandoning a run for the presidency in 2028, multiple sources tell the Daily Mail.Vance's most senior non-interventionist ally… https://t.co/wfIdudN1rD
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If Trump were to have a stroke/die in office, then the Trump Crime Family's expected free run to keep their vast wealth will be robbed of the Presidential Pardon it will otherwise need to keep it from a veanguful Congress.
Vance could still give that - in exchange for the Trump family agreeing to leave the stage of domestic politics. (They would still be rich enough to go and buy Cuba...)
Rubio came out top, by some distance. Vance was rock bottom - though topped the ratings for attacks on political opponents. He is a singularly unappealing character even to his own side.
Unless Trump karks it, or is 25th-ed aside, Vance will never be nominee or president.
Because if so I think they've forgotten Trump himself.
..Dave Penman, who heads the FDA Union that also represents civil servants, told Sky News that any government with an electoral mandate can make changes to the size of the civil service and staff "must serve the government of the day or leave - it's simple"....
In other words, the Spectator story about "the blob" resistance is sheer bollocks.
Just look at how the DfE first slipped centralisation through with Gove's academies programmes and have managed to force through further academisation under Labour.
And they're not even particularly able, even by the standards of civil servants.
An abortive coup attempt would see him eviscerated by MAGA, and he probably cares little about a fractional improvement in his reputation with Democrats.
He has quite a lot to lose. It will take a big further deterioration in Trump's health to make it at all likely.
I think it fair to assume that Robert Kenyon will be a fairly typical example in terms of intellect and ability for the 350 odd MPs forming a Reform government. Knuckle dragging stupidity seasoned with racism and misogyny will be the rule rather than the exception.
It can't happen here? Just look across the pond to show that it can.
Every other day a new motorhome appears in my mother-in-law's drive and Neil hands me another bucket full of jewellery and cosmetics. I can only assume he's got himself a part time job I'm too busy to ask about.
Monday: Former SNP chief executive Peter Murrell jailed after stealing indyref2 donations.
Tuesday: SNP Government launches fresh push for indyref2.
"What Our Reporter Saw in Iowa During Vance’s Splashy, 2028-Coded Trip - The New York Times" https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/08/us/politics/jd-vance-iowa-2028.html
Given he leads all Republican primary polls hard not to see him running. As stated in the header not impossible he could have replaced Trump as president by then anyway
As reported by Yorkshire Live, Tracy Clayton, who won a seat representing Colne Valley West earlier this month, has been linked to an X account that allegedly shared memes targeting transgender women, AI-generated political imagery, and posts about Muslim communities.
One resurfaced image posted in March, just weeks before the local election, featured the slur-like addition of “pedosexual” to the LGBTQ+ acronym, echoing a long-running false trope used to associate queer people with child abuse.
The account, reportedly operating under the name “Tracy Clayton Reform UK,” also shared posts questioning climate change and reposted content critics described as racist and discriminatory. Clayton has so far declined to comment publicly, responding “no comment” when approached at a council meeting.
A post from the same account published on 11 May, after the backlash began, said: “All the people that have attacked me, your narrative is boring.”
Clayton is now the second Reform UK councillor elected in Colne Valley West to face scrutiny over alleged social media activity. Fellow newly-elected councillor Stefan Dransfield was recently criticised over a resurfaced 2020 Facebook post under his name showing an Asian man being punched with the caption “very satisfying.”
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/reform-councillor-faces-backlash-over-posts-mocking-trans-people-and-lgbtq-acronym/ar-AA23J7z1?apiversion=v2&domshim=1&noservercache=1&noservertelemetry=1&batchservertelemetry=1&renderwebcomponents=1&wcseo=1
Pence, because he has (weird) principles, actually had a few friends.
And Good Morning everyone. Still blue skies and a cooling, gentle breeze here, I'm pleased to report.
To be fair, how many times have we seen policies, from all parties, where the obvious reaction is “won’t people just… “
A symptom of announcement politics?
There is a handful of smart people in Trump's cabinet - alongside the Hegseths and RFK Jnrs.
There may even be a few in Congress.
The blob does exist.
I believe it's been tried elsewhere and failed for those reasons. There are dozens of ways to game it - and it's also seriously unfair to those who are unable to take advantage.
Ah, we're thinking about Reform here.
First, and briefly, as someone who worked in local Government for a time, you can't actively oppose a policy directive from the ruling administration but it doesn't work like that.
If the ruling group puts forward a policy, it's not your job to oppose it but it is your job to point out the "unintended consequences" of the policy which has often not been thought to a logical conclusion. The argument in a paper or report if you do A, it will lead to B and C is not discrediting the policy per se but pointing out the implications in other areas.
If the ruling group decides it wants to pursue the policy even in the light of these implications, then it's the job of Officers to see the policy implemented but Members can't then argue they weren't told or didn't know if they pursued A, B or C would happen.
It doesn't work like that either - usually, when the unintended consequences are spelt out, the policy is modified.
The one thing as an Officer you must never do is criticise the ruling group and its policy publicly - that's a hanging offence. Point out the imperfections privately, either in meeting or by report or paper. Very often, there are legal considerations which undermine some of the policy thinking and make it difficult if not impossible to implement.
On to other things and you can tell summer is coming when I start sneezing (not yet), my Derby hope is still rounding Tattenham Corner as the winner crosses the line (to come) and we start getting reports of large numbers of migrants crossing the Channel on small boats. Oddly enough, for what I thought would have been perfect conditions to make a Channel crossing, I've seen no mention of numbers. I'd have thought there would easily have been 1,000 crossing yesterday or, whisper it quietly, perhaps the Starmer Government'spolicy is working.
"The Japanese government has pledged to suspend an 8% sales tax on food but says it is being thwarted by an unexpected opponent – uncooperative cash registers.
According to the devices’ manufacturers, the systems at big retail chains that process everything from cash to cardless transactions were never designed to calculate a tax rate of zero and so they require a major overhaul that could take up to a year."
Just seems wide open for dodgy tax avoidance.
How much tax would he pay on his £5m?
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2026/05/26/energy-bills-to-rise-by-75-to-cover-debts/
The rest of us are the reason the country has gone to the dogs.
If the bills were uncapped and rose to £4-5k averages*, millions would be unable to pay. Seeing that millions werent paying, another couple of million more would then refuse to pay. The suppliers can't cut them off, there isn't enough court time to deal with the cases even where people could pay. The suppliers still have to supply and pay for energy themselves and would go bankrupt creating chaos that would bring down a government faster than we already do.
* Would have been the case during the initial Ukraine crisis, not the case today.
Evil bitch
Trump decided as part of his latest peace plan to try to get Israrel's neighbours to sign a friendship accord with them! None of the commentators in the US nor the UK seem very attuned to what's going on. They see it a bit like our ex-pat in Dubai. That is to say blindfolded.
Anyway amidst the fog this guy is about as accurate as it gets and he reckons the Trump plan is going nowhere.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqWs6JjRVB8
There is a civil war raging in the hard right. And with the Reform candidate increasingly exposed as an brave choice it only pushes Burnham's majority up.
If Farage can't win this - a constituency his lot swept in the locals - then what's the point in him? This is where Restore are really stepping up, and good for them.
Reform were clearly palatable for a chunk of voters, but open fascists won't be.
hairmotorhomes?At age 16, the rate of education participation in the UK is similar to low-Neet countries, but rapidly falls behind by age 18. Just 66 per cent of British 18-year-olds are in education compared with almost 84 per cent across Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands [...]
The issue is not because too few in the UK go to university. Rather, it is because the UK has a much weaker vocational education system compared with the low-Neet countries, hollowed out in part by Britain’s spending cuts to further education over the past two decades. And teachers in FE colleges are typically paid less than teachers in schools.
Kirklees is the warning. £462m budget, a majority Reform group elected off the street literally too thick to understand the basics of what the council is and how it works, but still demanding the keys to the services and the budgets.
Voters want things to change for the better. Grifters, chancers and idiots do not help the cause. Nor does I'm a gas fitter look at my brand new van and never used tools and half an hour old company and women are slags who shouldn't be allowed to drive but must vote for me unless they love muslims.
Its all falling apart for Farage and his £5m.
Or are EDF just trying to get on the front foot after British Gas admitted falsifying court paperwork to obtain warrants to force fit prepayment meters without lawful reason in case they are also hit with a more or less nominal fine and unspecified compensation that they'll conveniently forget to pay?
I was thinking the same thing last night. Cornyn must be sorely tempted if he loses today given Trump's late intervention in support of Paxton. Backing a candidate with a proven history of corruption who has been impeached against a senior sitting Republican is going to piss off a lot of GOP voters in Texas and the Democratic candidate cannot possibly be characterised as a "loony radical lefty"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sore_loser_law
But even in those circumstances, you can still run a write in campaign...
Alaskan voters spell Murkowski W-I-N-N-E-R
https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/alaskan-voters-spell-murkowski-w-i-n-n-e-r/
For me the Rayner housebuilding target was a case in point. Who was going to build 1.5m houses? We don't have enough trained people as it is, never mind to allow a vast expansion of construction. So a joined up plan to open the colleges to train the people to build the houses was needed, not a couple of photocalls with her in hi-vis.
Aberdeen could be the most southerly Tory seat left.
Clearly a paper candidate, then.
As for Farage, he's £5 million up and less likely to have the ballsache of being Prime Minister. The important bit of any grift is the exit strategy.
Cornyn would be hated by core Maga types but they are a diminishing minority and he wouldn't care.
He'd need to hire an armed guard though.
If she'd paid every household a lump sum equal to their previous year's electricity bill, in cash terms it would have resulted in a very similar distribution of cash, but households could have opted to reduce consumption and save money as well, thus reducing system demand.
Alternatively, they could have given every household in the country £2k cash, then let the electricity price float free. That would benefit the poor more, most of them don't pay that much for electricity all year round, whilst the owners of heated outdoor swimming pools and the like would have been left to fend for themselves.
Both of these options would have been vast improvements on the stupidity they actually deployed of straight up government price fixing.
I’d suggest he needs to sooner rather than later
An energy voucher might have worked.
I’ll bet ol’ Nigel is thinking “£10 million next time…”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z46zT1tGhs4
BBC's Steve Rosenberg reviews the Russian papers in 4½ minutes.
This wheeze of Reforms reminds me of Blair’s ‘Fallacy of Popular Policies’. It would be a perfect fit for it.
I imagine in an NOC environment it can be very different though NOC shouldn't mean anarchy - it simply means no one party has a majority. That doesn't stop an administration existing whether a minority or a coalition and it certainly shouldn't mean the Officers run the show.
I did see instances of Officers wanting to be Members and set the strategic political direction and Members wanting to be Officers and getting involved in the minutiae of implementation and that's not how it should be. A clear Member-Officer protocol should exist defining everyone's rolesand responsibilties. Problems start when Officers and Members blur the lines, set up informal groups and try to take decisions outside the usual channels.