Today's hot offering from Rawnsley, obviously on topic:
It would be unwise to leap to the assumption that the King In The North will now sweep southwards to effortlessly seize the crown jewels of Downing Street.
For his devotees, this was a “proof-of-concept” byelection. Get on with it and put the messiah of Manchester in Downing Street. That will be the siren song of the Burnhamites. [But] Bar superglueing the front door of Number 10, the incumbent has done everything he can to indicate that he will only be dragged out of the building by his fingernails.
Sir Keir has already suggested that, if there is to be a contest for the top job, the battle should not be joined before the people of Greater Manchester have decided who will be their next mayor in the byelection for the vacancy which will now ensue. That can’t be resolved before the very end of July, which is surely one of the reasons for making this suggestion. Sir Keir buys himself more time at Number 10 while increasing the chance that some of the shine will come off his rival as Mr Burnham is subject to elevated scrutiny.
This presents Team Andy with a dilemma. Press on with a near-immediate challenge for Number 10 and his enemies will portray him as a man who is entirely self-centred and too consumed by personal ambition to care what happens to the city he was running five minutes ago.
Camp Burnham would much prefer Sir Keir to agree to set a departure date. It is widely believed that Mr Burnham will urge the prime minister to take this course when they have what will surely be an excruciatingly awkward conversation with each other. Quite a lot of the cabinet favour this way forward. If he continues to spurn that advice, the test...will be whether they are prepared to resign from the government, with all the chaos that would entail, to attempt to bend him to their will. Others in the cabinet fume in opposition to the idea that Mr Burnham should be simply gifted the top job without a proper contest.
[Makerfield voters] have propelled Andy Burnham in the direction of Number 10, but that is not in itself enough to get him over the threshold. What happens next will depend on the feverish calculations made down in Westminster by the most senior politicians in the land.
If Labour want to win the Mayoral election - they can't have SKS leading the campaign - they need Burnham sat in No 10..
The Manchester by election for Mayor is on Thursday 30th July.
So I stick with my forecast that Burnham will become PM on Thursday 17th July, the day before recess.
This allows Burnham to campaign in the Manchester by election as PM with no parliamentary business to distract him. The only date in his diary will be the EU Summit in Brussels on 22nd July.
It took six weeks for Brown to replace Blair in 2007, how do we think the party can truncate the process down to less than four weeks now?
If Burnham can get 330 nominations by Friday then nobody else can stand.
Brown was the same. There were five weeks between Brown having all of the nominations and him being formally elected leader.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Brown On 11 May 2007, after months of speculation, Brown formally announced his bid for the Labour leadership. He launched his campaign website the same day as formally announcing his bid for leadership, titled "Gordon Brown for Britain".[86] On 16 May, Channel 4 News announced that Andrew MacKinlay had nominated Brown, giving him 308 nominations—enough to avoid a leadership contest. A BBC report states that the decisive nomination was made by Tony Wright with MacKinlay yet to nominate at that point.[87] Brown replaced Blair as Leader of the Labour Party on 24 June 2007.
Because Blair set himself a fairly long resignation timetable, not because it needs to be that long.
Starmer will take matters into his own hands to avoid the challenge by resigning tomorrow and give himself long enough to hit his second anniversary, which Burnham will be OK with as it avoids any unpleasantness, but there's no need for it to take as long Blair/Brown took.
But there’s a process involving constituency parties and trade union affiliates.
I don’t see how the party can get what was a six-week process down to less than four weeks, with the added complication that Starmer has a right be included if he wishes to be, which triggers a full contest expected to take three months.
If Starmer decides to step down he's hardly likely to contest the election; if he contests the election he's clearly not 'stepping down'.
And if Starmer steps down I can't see anyone else reaching the required 81 MP nominations. Thus there is only one candidate.
Even the Labour Party can't make a contest out of a one-horse race
Today's hot offering from Rawnsley, obviously on topic:
It would be unwise to leap to the assumption that the King In The North will now sweep southwards to effortlessly seize the crown jewels of Downing Street.
For his devotees, this was a “proof-of-concept” byelection. Get on with it and put the messiah of Manchester in Downing Street. That will be the siren song of the Burnhamites. [But] Bar superglueing the front door of Number 10, the incumbent has done everything he can to indicate that he will only be dragged out of the building by his fingernails.
Sir Keir has already suggested that, if there is to be a contest for the top job, the battle should not be joined before the people of Greater Manchester have decided who will be their next mayor in the byelection for the vacancy which will now ensue. That can’t be resolved before the very end of July, which is surely one of the reasons for making this suggestion. Sir Keir buys himself more time at Number 10 while increasing the chance that some of the shine will come off his rival as Mr Burnham is subject to elevated scrutiny.
This presents Team Andy with a dilemma. Press on with a near-immediate challenge for Number 10 and his enemies will portray him as a man who is entirely self-centred and too consumed by personal ambition to care what happens to the city he was running five minutes ago.
Camp Burnham would much prefer Sir Keir to agree to set a departure date. It is widely believed that Mr Burnham will urge the prime minister to take this course when they have what will surely be an excruciatingly awkward conversation with each other. Quite a lot of the cabinet favour this way forward. If he continues to spurn that advice, the test...will be whether they are prepared to resign from the government, with all the chaos that would entail, to attempt to bend him to their will. Others in the cabinet fume in opposition to the idea that Mr Burnham should be simply gifted the top job without a proper contest.
[Makerfield voters] have propelled Andy Burnham in the direction of Number 10, but that is not in itself enough to get him over the threshold. What happens next will depend on the feverish calculations made down in Westminster by the most senior politicians in the land.
If Labour want to win the Mayoral election - they can't have SKS leading the campaign - they need Burnham sat in No 10..
The Manchester by election for Mayor is on Thursday 30th July.
So I stick with my forecast that Burnham will become PM on Thursday 17th July, the day before recess.
This allows Burnham to campaign in the Manchester by election as PM with no parliamentary business to distract him. The only date in his diary will be the EU Summit in Brussels on 22nd July.
It took six weeks for Brown to replace Blair in 2007, how do we think the party can truncate the process down to less than four weeks now?
If Burnham can get 330 nominations by Friday then nobody else can stand.
Brown was the same. There were five weeks between Brown having all of the nominations and him being formally elected leader.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Brown On 11 May 2007, after months of speculation, Brown formally announced his bid for the Labour leadership. He launched his campaign website the same day as formally announcing his bid for leadership, titled "Gordon Brown for Britain".[86] On 16 May, Channel 4 News announced that Andrew MacKinlay had nominated Brown, giving him 308 nominations—enough to avoid a leadership contest. A BBC report states that the decisive nomination was made by Tony Wright with MacKinlay yet to nominate at that point.[87] Brown replaced Blair as Leader of the Labour Party on 24 June 2007.
Because Blair set himself a fairly long resignation timetable, not because it needs to be that long.
Starmer will take matters into his own hands to avoid the challenge by resigning tomorrow and give himself long enough to hit his second anniversary, which Burnham will be OK with as it avoids any unpleasantness, but there's no need for it to take as long Blair/Brown took.
But there’s a process involving constituency parties and trade union affiliates.
I don’t see how the party can get what was a six-week process down to less than four weeks, with the added complication that Starmer has a right be included if he wishes to be, which triggers a full contest expected to take three months.
Today's hot offering from Rawnsley, obviously on topic:
It would be unwise to leap to the assumption that the King In The North will now sweep southwards to effortlessly seize the crown jewels of Downing Street.
For his devotees, this was a “proof-of-concept” byelection. Get on with it and put the messiah of Manchester in Downing Street. That will be the siren song of the Burnhamites. [But] Bar superglueing the front door of Number 10, the incumbent has done everything he can to indicate that he will only be dragged out of the building by his fingernails.
Sir Keir has already suggested that, if there is to be a contest for the top job, the battle should not be joined before the people of Greater Manchester have decided who will be their next mayor in the byelection for the vacancy which will now ensue. That can’t be resolved before the very end of July, which is surely one of the reasons for making this suggestion. Sir Keir buys himself more time at Number 10 while increasing the chance that some of the shine will come off his rival as Mr Burnham is subject to elevated scrutiny.
This presents Team Andy with a dilemma. Press on with a near-immediate challenge for Number 10 and his enemies will portray him as a man who is entirely self-centred and too consumed by personal ambition to care what happens to the city he was running five minutes ago.
Camp Burnham would much prefer Sir Keir to agree to set a departure date. It is widely believed that Mr Burnham will urge the prime minister to take this course when they have what will surely be an excruciatingly awkward conversation with each other. Quite a lot of the cabinet favour this way forward. If he continues to spurn that advice, the test...will be whether they are prepared to resign from the government, with all the chaos that would entail, to attempt to bend him to their will. Others in the cabinet fume in opposition to the idea that Mr Burnham should be simply gifted the top job without a proper contest.
[Makerfield voters] have propelled Andy Burnham in the direction of Number 10, but that is not in itself enough to get him over the threshold. What happens next will depend on the feverish calculations made down in Westminster by the most senior politicians in the land.
If Labour want to win the Mayoral election - they can't have SKS leading the campaign - they need Burnham sat in No 10..
The Manchester by election for Mayor is on Thursday 30th July.
So I stick with my forecast that Burnham will become PM on Thursday 17th July, the day before recess.
This allows Burnham to campaign in the Manchester by election as PM with no parliamentary business to distract him. The only date in his diary will be the EU Summit in Brussels on 22nd July.
It took six weeks for Brown to replace Blair in 2007, how do we think the party can truncate the process down to less than four weeks now?
If Burnham can get 330 nominations by Friday then nobody else can stand.
Brown was the same. There were five weeks between Brown having all of the nominations and him being formally elected leader.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Brown On 11 May 2007, after months of speculation, Brown formally announced his bid for the Labour leadership. He launched his campaign website the same day as formally announcing his bid for leadership, titled "Gordon Brown for Britain".[86] On 16 May, Channel 4 News announced that Andrew MacKinlay had nominated Brown, giving him 308 nominations—enough to avoid a leadership contest. A BBC report states that the decisive nomination was made by Tony Wright with MacKinlay yet to nominate at that point.[87] Brown replaced Blair as Leader of the Labour Party on 24 June 2007.
Because Blair set himself a fairly long resignation timetable, not because it needs to be that long.
Starmer will take matters into his own hands to avoid the challenge by resigning tomorrow and give himself long enough to hit his second anniversary, which Burnham will be OK with as it avoids any unpleasantness, but there's no need for it to take as long Blair/Brown took.
But there’s a process involving constituency parties and trade union affiliates.
I don’t see how the party can get what was a six-week process down to less than four weeks, with the added complication that Starmer has a right be included if he wishes to be, which triggers a full contest expected to take three months.
If Starmer chooses to stand the NEC do have options to speed up the process:
Fast-Track Nominations: Drastically shortening the MP nomination window. For example, candidates could be given just 48 hours to secure the backing of 81 MPs. Digital Voting: Bypassing lengthy postal ballot windows in favor of rapid, secure online voting open to members and affiliated supporters for a strictly limited period, such as one week. Accelerated Campaigning: Curtailing the traditional weeks-long tour of national hustings, holding a streamlined series of virtual debates to allow an immediate vote.
The NEC can do this. It is in everyone's interest that it is a quick and non disruptive process.
But I don't think Starmer will stand in which case it can be over very quickly. Whatever the two of them agree.
Today's hot offering from Rawnsley, obviously on topic:
It would be unwise to leap to the assumption that the King In The North will now sweep southwards to effortlessly seize the crown jewels of Downing Street.
For his devotees, this was a “proof-of-concept” byelection. Get on with it and put the messiah of Manchester in Downing Street. That will be the siren song of the Burnhamites. [But] Bar superglueing the front door of Number 10, the incumbent has done everything he can to indicate that he will only be dragged out of the building by his fingernails.
Sir Keir has already suggested that, if there is to be a contest for the top job, the battle should not be joined before the people of Greater Manchester have decided who will be their next mayor in the byelection for the vacancy which will now ensue. That can’t be resolved before the very end of July, which is surely one of the reasons for making this suggestion. Sir Keir buys himself more time at Number 10 while increasing the chance that some of the shine will come off his rival as Mr Burnham is subject to elevated scrutiny.
This presents Team Andy with a dilemma. Press on with a near-immediate challenge for Number 10 and his enemies will portray him as a man who is entirely self-centred and too consumed by personal ambition to care what happens to the city he was running five minutes ago.
Camp Burnham would much prefer Sir Keir to agree to set a departure date. It is widely believed that Mr Burnham will urge the prime minister to take this course when they have what will surely be an excruciatingly awkward conversation with each other. Quite a lot of the cabinet favour this way forward. If he continues to spurn that advice, the test...will be whether they are prepared to resign from the government, with all the chaos that would entail, to attempt to bend him to their will. Others in the cabinet fume in opposition to the idea that Mr Burnham should be simply gifted the top job without a proper contest.
[Makerfield voters] have propelled Andy Burnham in the direction of Number 10, but that is not in itself enough to get him over the threshold. What happens next will depend on the feverish calculations made down in Westminster by the most senior politicians in the land.
If Labour want to win the Mayoral election - they can't have SKS leading the campaign - they need Burnham sat in No 10..
The Manchester by election for Mayor is on Thursday 30th July.
So I stick with my forecast that Burnham will become PM on Thursday 17th July, the day before recess.
This allows Burnham to campaign in the Manchester by election as PM with no parliamentary business to distract him. The only date in his diary will be the EU Summit in Brussels on 22nd July.
It took six weeks for Brown to replace Blair in 2007, how do we think the party can truncate the process down to less than four weeks now?
If Burnham can get 330 nominations by Friday then nobody else can stand.
Brown was the same. There were five weeks between Brown having all of the nominations and him being formally elected leader.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Brown On 11 May 2007, after months of speculation, Brown formally announced his bid for the Labour leadership. He launched his campaign website the same day as formally announcing his bid for leadership, titled "Gordon Brown for Britain".[86] On 16 May, Channel 4 News announced that Andrew MacKinlay had nominated Brown, giving him 308 nominations—enough to avoid a leadership contest. A BBC report states that the decisive nomination was made by Tony Wright with MacKinlay yet to nominate at that point.[87] Brown replaced Blair as Leader of the Labour Party on 24 June 2007.
Because Blair set himself a fairly long resignation timetable, not because it needs to be that long.
Starmer will take matters into his own hands to avoid the challenge by resigning tomorrow and give himself long enough to hit his second anniversary, which Burnham will be OK with as it avoids any unpleasantness, but there's no need for it to take as long Blair/Brown took.
But there’s a process involving constituency parties and trade union affiliates.
I don’t see how the party can get what was a six-week process down to less than four weeks, with the added complication that Starmer has a right be included if he wishes to be, which triggers a full contest expected to take three months.
If Starmer decides to step down he's hardly likely to contest the election; if he contests the election he's clearly not 'stepping down'.
And if Starmer steps down I can't see anyone else reaching the required 81 MP nominations. Thus there is only one candidate.
Even the Labour Party can't make a contest out of a one-horse race
They can, and did for Brown.
Which satisfied the egos of both Brown and Blair, so it worked.
FOX & FRIENDS: Do you have any immediate plans to join Jared and Steve?
JD VANCE: It's always a delicate coordination dance with the diplomatic protocols. I've gotta be honest with you -- I don't really understand these things https://x.com/atrupar/status/2068342163650339019
"AI risks triggering ‘catastrophic’ phone network blackouts Ofcom raises alarm over risks linked to use of automation technology for monitoring networks" (£)
Today's hot offering from Rawnsley, obviously on topic:
It would be unwise to leap to the assumption that the King In The North will now sweep southwards to effortlessly seize the crown jewels of Downing Street.
For his devotees, this was a “proof-of-concept” byelection. Get on with it and put the messiah of Manchester in Downing Street. That will be the siren song of the Burnhamites. [But] Bar superglueing the front door of Number 10, the incumbent has done everything he can to indicate that he will only be dragged out of the building by his fingernails.
Sir Keir has already suggested that, if there is to be a contest for the top job, the battle should not be joined before the people of Greater Manchester have decided who will be their next mayor in the byelection for the vacancy which will now ensue. That can’t be resolved before the very end of July, which is surely one of the reasons for making this suggestion. Sir Keir buys himself more time at Number 10 while increasing the chance that some of the shine will come off his rival as Mr Burnham is subject to elevated scrutiny.
This presents Team Andy with a dilemma. Press on with a near-immediate challenge for Number 10 and his enemies will portray him as a man who is entirely self-centred and too consumed by personal ambition to care what happens to the city he was running five minutes ago.
Camp Burnham would much prefer Sir Keir to agree to set a departure date. It is widely believed that Mr Burnham will urge the prime minister to take this course when they have what will surely be an excruciatingly awkward conversation with each other. Quite a lot of the cabinet favour this way forward. If he continues to spurn that advice, the test...will be whether they are prepared to resign from the government, with all the chaos that would entail, to attempt to bend him to their will. Others in the cabinet fume in opposition to the idea that Mr Burnham should be simply gifted the top job without a proper contest.
[Makerfield voters] have propelled Andy Burnham in the direction of Number 10, but that is not in itself enough to get him over the threshold. What happens next will depend on the feverish calculations made down in Westminster by the most senior politicians in the land.
If Labour want to win the Mayoral election - they can't have SKS leading the campaign - they need Burnham sat in No 10..
The Manchester by election for Mayor is on Thursday 30th July.
So I stick with my forecast that Burnham will become PM on Thursday 17th July, the day before recess.
This allows Burnham to campaign in the Manchester by election as PM with no parliamentary business to distract him. The only date in his diary will be the EU Summit in Brussels on 22nd July.
It took six weeks for Brown to replace Blair in 2007, how do we think the party can truncate the process down to less than four weeks now?
If Burnham can get 330 nominations by Friday then nobody else can stand.
Brown was the same. There were five weeks between Brown having all of the nominations and him being formally elected leader.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Brown On 11 May 2007, after months of speculation, Brown formally announced his bid for the Labour leadership. He launched his campaign website the same day as formally announcing his bid for leadership, titled "Gordon Brown for Britain".[86] On 16 May, Channel 4 News announced that Andrew MacKinlay had nominated Brown, giving him 308 nominations—enough to avoid a leadership contest. A BBC report states that the decisive nomination was made by Tony Wright with MacKinlay yet to nominate at that point.[87] Brown replaced Blair as Leader of the Labour Party on 24 June 2007.
Because Blair set himself a fairly long resignation timetable, not because it needs to be that long.
Starmer will take matters into his own hands to avoid the challenge by resigning tomorrow and give himself long enough to hit his second anniversary, which Burnham will be OK with as it avoids any unpleasantness, but there's no need for it to take as long Blair/Brown took.
But there’s a process involving constituency parties and trade union affiliates.
I don’t see how the party can get what was a six-week process down to less than four weeks, with the added complication that Starmer has a right be included if he wishes to be, which triggers a full contest expected to take three months.
If Starmer decides to step down he's hardly likely to contest the election; if he contests the election he's clearly not 'stepping down'.
And if Starmer steps down I can't see anyone else reaching the required 81 MP nominations. Thus there is only one candidate.
Even the Labour Party can't make a contest out of a one-horse race
They can, and did for Brown.
Which satisfied the egos of both Brown and Blair, so it worked.
They don't need to though.
Not really:
On 10 May, Blair announced to the Sedgefield Labour Party that he would stand down as prime minister on 27 June 2007, and that he would be requesting Labour's NEC to seek a new party leader.
Only Gordon Brown attained over 45 nominations and was thus elected unopposed.
Tony Blair tendered his resignation as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom after ten years, to Queen Elizabeth II on 27 June 2007 and Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown was asked by The Queen to form a new government.
The frustrating thing for Starmer is part of the reason for dithering is internal opposition, and yet I bet MPs will be more accomodating for Burnham, early on at least.
Such is realty when people like you more.
Starmer has nobody but himself to blame for that though, he has shown no leadership.
Nature abhors a vacuum, if you fail to show leadership you can't blame your MPs for deciding for themselves which was to pull - and it won't all be in the same direction.
"AI risks triggering ‘catastrophic’ phone network blackouts Ofcom raises alarm over risks linked to use of automation technology for monitoring networks" (£)
Today's hot offering from Rawnsley, obviously on topic:
It would be unwise to leap to the assumption that the King In The North will now sweep southwards to effortlessly seize the crown jewels of Downing Street.
For his devotees, this was a “proof-of-concept” byelection. Get on with it and put the messiah of Manchester in Downing Street. That will be the siren song of the Burnhamites. [But] Bar superglueing the front door of Number 10, the incumbent has done everything he can to indicate that he will only be dragged out of the building by his fingernails.
Sir Keir has already suggested that, if there is to be a contest for the top job, the battle should not be joined before the people of Greater Manchester have decided who will be their next mayor in the byelection for the vacancy which will now ensue. That can’t be resolved before the very end of July, which is surely one of the reasons for making this suggestion. Sir Keir buys himself more time at Number 10 while increasing the chance that some of the shine will come off his rival as Mr Burnham is subject to elevated scrutiny.
This presents Team Andy with a dilemma. Press on with a near-immediate challenge for Number 10 and his enemies will portray him as a man who is entirely self-centred and too consumed by personal ambition to care what happens to the city he was running five minutes ago.
Camp Burnham would much prefer Sir Keir to agree to set a departure date. It is widely believed that Mr Burnham will urge the prime minister to take this course when they have what will surely be an excruciatingly awkward conversation with each other. Quite a lot of the cabinet favour this way forward. If he continues to spurn that advice, the test...will be whether they are prepared to resign from the government, with all the chaos that would entail, to attempt to bend him to their will. Others in the cabinet fume in opposition to the idea that Mr Burnham should be simply gifted the top job without a proper contest.
[Makerfield voters] have propelled Andy Burnham in the direction of Number 10, but that is not in itself enough to get him over the threshold. What happens next will depend on the feverish calculations made down in Westminster by the most senior politicians in the land.
If Labour want to win the Mayoral election - they can't have SKS leading the campaign - they need Burnham sat in No 10..
The Manchester by election for Mayor is on Thursday 30th July.
So I stick with my forecast that Burnham will become PM on Thursday 17th July, the day before recess.
This allows Burnham to campaign in the Manchester by election as PM with no parliamentary business to distract him. The only date in his diary will be the EU Summit in Brussels on 22nd July.
It took six weeks for Brown to replace Blair in 2007, how do we think the party can truncate the process down to less than four weeks now?
If Burnham can get 330 nominations by Friday then nobody else can stand.
Brown was the same. There were five weeks between Brown having all of the nominations and him being formally elected leader.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Brown On 11 May 2007, after months of speculation, Brown formally announced his bid for the Labour leadership. He launched his campaign website the same day as formally announcing his bid for leadership, titled "Gordon Brown for Britain".[86] On 16 May, Channel 4 News announced that Andrew MacKinlay had nominated Brown, giving him 308 nominations—enough to avoid a leadership contest. A BBC report states that the decisive nomination was made by Tony Wright with MacKinlay yet to nominate at that point.[87] Brown replaced Blair as Leader of the Labour Party on 24 June 2007.
Because Blair set himself a fairly long resignation timetable, not because it needs to be that long.
Starmer will take matters into his own hands to avoid the challenge by resigning tomorrow and give himself long enough to hit his second anniversary, which Burnham will be OK with as it avoids any unpleasantness, but there's no need for it to take as long Blair/Brown took.
But there’s a process involving constituency parties and trade union affiliates.
I don’t see how the party can get what was a six-week process down to less than four weeks, with the added complication that Starmer has a right be included if he wishes to be, which triggers a full contest expected to take three months.
It can be very quick if there's only one candidate.
Regarding Starmer's departure date, if I were him I would push for an exit plan with Burnham taking over sometime between the end of July and early September. That way, on the outside chance that England win the World Cup he'd have the enjoyable honour of welcoming the team back. It may seem a petty thing but Starmer is a committed genuine football fan, I think it would mean a lot to him.
If I were Burnham, I'd let Starmer have the honour, and focus during July on developing a big impacting plan for my Premiership, to hit the ground running.
Why would Burnham let Starmer do the World Cup thing if England won? Burnham is a big genuine football fan and also comes across a being quite vain and would love to bathe in the glow of victory and have photos taken as PM with the team and World Cup in Downing Street and love on in posterity as PM when England finally won the World Cup again.
Anyway, we are getting well ahead of ourselves even thinking of victory just yet.
Burnham leads Starmer on “is an experienced leader”, which is clearly nonsense given their respective CVs. Which shows you how much vibes matter.
It's the dirty secret (or one of them) of politics. Vibes win. Beyond a certain point, the don't help once you've won, but that's a problem for another day.
See Boris driving a JCB through that styrofoam wall in 2019.
If people think there's a problem, you have a problem is a big thing in politics. There's no doubt people think Starmer is bad. But a prime minister has an actual job to do. While I would say Starmer has a mixed record and not as effective as I was expecting, I don't think he's done as badly as people think he has - importantly no worse than his predecessors or likely successor.
Yes, Keir Starmer's government has a defensible and in some areas good record. The trouble is people's instinctive, visceral dislike of the man. I cannot put my finger on its cause but nonetheless, it is real and has been widely reported. It may be unfair but as the Greek philosopher wrote: them's the breaks.
Today's hot offering from Rawnsley, obviously on topic:
It would be unwise to leap to the assumption that the King In The North will now sweep southwards to effortlessly seize the crown jewels of Downing Street.
For his devotees, this was a “proof-of-concept” byelection. Get on with it and put the messiah of Manchester in Downing Street. That will be the siren song of the Burnhamites. [But] Bar superglueing the front door of Number 10, the incumbent has done everything he can to indicate that he will only be dragged out of the building by his fingernails.
Sir Keir has already suggested that, if there is to be a contest for the top job, the battle should not be joined before the people of Greater Manchester have decided who will be their next mayor in the byelection for the vacancy which will now ensue. That can’t be resolved before the very end of July, which is surely one of the reasons for making this suggestion. Sir Keir buys himself more time at Number 10 while increasing the chance that some of the shine will come off his rival as Mr Burnham is subject to elevated scrutiny.
This presents Team Andy with a dilemma. Press on with a near-immediate challenge for Number 10 and his enemies will portray him as a man who is entirely self-centred and too consumed by personal ambition to care what happens to the city he was running five minutes ago.
Camp Burnham would much prefer Sir Keir to agree to set a departure date. It is widely believed that Mr Burnham will urge the prime minister to take this course when they have what will surely be an excruciatingly awkward conversation with each other. Quite a lot of the cabinet favour this way forward. If he continues to spurn that advice, the test...will be whether they are prepared to resign from the government, with all the chaos that would entail, to attempt to bend him to their will. Others in the cabinet fume in opposition to the idea that Mr Burnham should be simply gifted the top job without a proper contest.
[Makerfield voters] have propelled Andy Burnham in the direction of Number 10, but that is not in itself enough to get him over the threshold. What happens next will depend on the feverish calculations made down in Westminster by the most senior politicians in the land.
If Labour want to win the Mayoral election - they can't have SKS leading the campaign - they need Burnham sat in No 10..
The Manchester by election for Mayor is on Thursday 30th July.
So I stick with my forecast that Burnham will become PM on Thursday 17th July, the day before recess.
This allows Burnham to campaign in the Manchester by election as PM with no parliamentary business to distract him. The only date in his diary will be the EU Summit in Brussels on 22nd July.
It took six weeks for Brown to replace Blair in 2007, how do we think the party can truncate the process down to less than four weeks now?
If Burnham can get 330 nominations by Friday then nobody else can stand.
Brown was the same. There were five weeks between Brown having all of the nominations and him being formally elected leader.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Brown On 11 May 2007, after months of speculation, Brown formally announced his bid for the Labour leadership. He launched his campaign website the same day as formally announcing his bid for leadership, titled "Gordon Brown for Britain".[86] On 16 May, Channel 4 News announced that Andrew MacKinlay had nominated Brown, giving him 308 nominations—enough to avoid a leadership contest. A BBC report states that the decisive nomination was made by Tony Wright with MacKinlay yet to nominate at that point.[87] Brown replaced Blair as Leader of the Labour Party on 24 June 2007.
Because Blair set himself a fairly long resignation timetable, not because it needs to be that long.
Starmer will take matters into his own hands to avoid the challenge by resigning tomorrow and give himself long enough to hit his second anniversary, which Burnham will be OK with as it avoids any unpleasantness, but there's no need for it to take as long Blair/Brown took.
But there’s a process involving constituency parties and trade union affiliates.
I don’t see how the party can get what was a six-week process down to less than four weeks, with the added complication that Starmer has a right be included if he wishes to be, which triggers a full contest expected to take three months.
It can be very quick if there's only one candidate.
My point was that there was only one candidate in 2007, and that took six weeks.
Today's hot offering from Rawnsley, obviously on topic:
It would be unwise to leap to the assumption that the King In The North will now sweep southwards to effortlessly seize the crown jewels of Downing Street.
For his devotees, this was a “proof-of-concept” byelection. Get on with it and put the messiah of Manchester in Downing Street. That will be the siren song of the Burnhamites. [But] Bar superglueing the front door of Number 10, the incumbent has done everything he can to indicate that he will only be dragged out of the building by his fingernails.
Sir Keir has already suggested that, if there is to be a contest for the top job, the battle should not be joined before the people of Greater Manchester have decided who will be their next mayor in the byelection for the vacancy which will now ensue. That can’t be resolved before the very end of July, which is surely one of the reasons for making this suggestion. Sir Keir buys himself more time at Number 10 while increasing the chance that some of the shine will come off his rival as Mr Burnham is subject to elevated scrutiny.
This presents Team Andy with a dilemma. Press on with a near-immediate challenge for Number 10 and his enemies will portray him as a man who is entirely self-centred and too consumed by personal ambition to care what happens to the city he was running five minutes ago.
Camp Burnham would much prefer Sir Keir to agree to set a departure date. It is widely believed that Mr Burnham will urge the prime minister to take this course when they have what will surely be an excruciatingly awkward conversation with each other. Quite a lot of the cabinet favour this way forward. If he continues to spurn that advice, the test...will be whether they are prepared to resign from the government, with all the chaos that would entail, to attempt to bend him to their will. Others in the cabinet fume in opposition to the idea that Mr Burnham should be simply gifted the top job without a proper contest.
[Makerfield voters] have propelled Andy Burnham in the direction of Number 10, but that is not in itself enough to get him over the threshold. What happens next will depend on the feverish calculations made down in Westminster by the most senior politicians in the land.
If Labour want to win the Mayoral election - they can't have SKS leading the campaign - they need Burnham sat in No 10..
The Manchester by election for Mayor is on Thursday 30th July.
So I stick with my forecast that Burnham will become PM on Thursday 17th July, the day before recess.
This allows Burnham to campaign in the Manchester by election as PM with no parliamentary business to distract him. The only date in his diary will be the EU Summit in Brussels on 22nd July.
It took six weeks for Brown to replace Blair in 2007, how do we think the party can truncate the process down to less than four weeks now?
If Burnham can get 330 nominations by Friday then nobody else can stand.
Brown was the same. There were five weeks between Brown having all of the nominations and him being formally elected leader.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Brown On 11 May 2007, after months of speculation, Brown formally announced his bid for the Labour leadership. He launched his campaign website the same day as formally announcing his bid for leadership, titled "Gordon Brown for Britain".[86] On 16 May, Channel 4 News announced that Andrew MacKinlay had nominated Brown, giving him 308 nominations—enough to avoid a leadership contest. A BBC report states that the decisive nomination was made by Tony Wright with MacKinlay yet to nominate at that point.[87] Brown replaced Blair as Leader of the Labour Party on 24 June 2007.
Because Blair set himself a fairly long resignation timetable, not because it needs to be that long.
Starmer will take matters into his own hands to avoid the challenge by resigning tomorrow and give himself long enough to hit his second anniversary, which Burnham will be OK with as it avoids any unpleasantness, but there's no need for it to take as long Blair/Brown took.
But there’s a process involving constituency parties and trade union affiliates.
I don’t see how the party can get what was a six-week process down to less than four weeks, with the added complication that Starmer has a right be included if he wishes to be, which triggers a full contest expected to take three months.
If Starmer decides to step down he's hardly likely to contest the election; if he contests the election he's clearly not 'stepping down'.
And if Starmer steps down I can't see anyone else reaching the required 81 MP nominations. Thus there is only one candidate.
Even the Labour Party can't make a contest out of a one-horse race
Rightly or wrongly the party in parliament want Burnham. Nobody can get 81 to stand against him. Starmer won't stand. So it will be Burnham unopposed. No contest. Timing and transition logistics to be agreed between Burnham and Starmer. Could be quick or less quick. Backstop, must be done by party conference in Sept.
Today's hot offering from Rawnsley, obviously on topic:
It would be unwise to leap to the assumption that the King In The North will now sweep southwards to effortlessly seize the crown jewels of Downing Street.
For his devotees, this was a “proof-of-concept” byelection. Get on with it and put the messiah of Manchester in Downing Street. That will be the siren song of the Burnhamites. [But] Bar superglueing the front door of Number 10, the incumbent has done everything he can to indicate that he will only be dragged out of the building by his fingernails.
Sir Keir has already suggested that, if there is to be a contest for the top job, the battle should not be joined before the people of Greater Manchester have decided who will be their next mayor in the byelection for the vacancy which will now ensue. That can’t be resolved before the very end of July, which is surely one of the reasons for making this suggestion. Sir Keir buys himself more time at Number 10 while increasing the chance that some of the shine will come off his rival as Mr Burnham is subject to elevated scrutiny.
This presents Team Andy with a dilemma. Press on with a near-immediate challenge for Number 10 and his enemies will portray him as a man who is entirely self-centred and too consumed by personal ambition to care what happens to the city he was running five minutes ago.
Camp Burnham would much prefer Sir Keir to agree to set a departure date. It is widely believed that Mr Burnham will urge the prime minister to take this course when they have what will surely be an excruciatingly awkward conversation with each other. Quite a lot of the cabinet favour this way forward. If he continues to spurn that advice, the test...will be whether they are prepared to resign from the government, with all the chaos that would entail, to attempt to bend him to their will. Others in the cabinet fume in opposition to the idea that Mr Burnham should be simply gifted the top job without a proper contest.
[Makerfield voters] have propelled Andy Burnham in the direction of Number 10, but that is not in itself enough to get him over the threshold. What happens next will depend on the feverish calculations made down in Westminster by the most senior politicians in the land.
If Labour want to win the Mayoral election - they can't have SKS leading the campaign - they need Burnham sat in No 10..
The Manchester by election for Mayor is on Thursday 30th July.
So I stick with my forecast that Burnham will become PM on Thursday 17th July, the day before recess.
This allows Burnham to campaign in the Manchester by election as PM with no parliamentary business to distract him. The only date in his diary will be the EU Summit in Brussels on 22nd July.
It took six weeks for Brown to replace Blair in 2007, how do we think the party can truncate the process down to less than four weeks now?
If Burnham can get 330 nominations by Friday then nobody else can stand.
Brown was the same. There were five weeks between Brown having all of the nominations and him being formally elected leader.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Brown On 11 May 2007, after months of speculation, Brown formally announced his bid for the Labour leadership. He launched his campaign website the same day as formally announcing his bid for leadership, titled "Gordon Brown for Britain".[86] On 16 May, Channel 4 News announced that Andrew MacKinlay had nominated Brown, giving him 308 nominations—enough to avoid a leadership contest. A BBC report states that the decisive nomination was made by Tony Wright with MacKinlay yet to nominate at that point.[87] Brown replaced Blair as Leader of the Labour Party on 24 June 2007.
Because Blair set himself a fairly long resignation timetable, not because it needs to be that long.
Starmer will take matters into his own hands to avoid the challenge by resigning tomorrow and give himself long enough to hit his second anniversary, which Burnham will be OK with as it avoids any unpleasantness, but there's no need for it to take as long Blair/Brown took.
But there’s a process involving constituency parties and trade union affiliates.
I don’t see how the party can get what was a six-week process down to less than four weeks, with the added complication that Starmer has a right be included if he wishes to be, which triggers a full contest expected to take three months.
If Starmer decides to step down he's hardly likely to contest the election; if he contests the election he's clearly not 'stepping down'.
And if Starmer steps down I can't see anyone else reaching the required 81 MP nominations. Thus there is only one candidate.
Even the Labour Party can't make a contest out of a one-horse race
They can, and did for Brown.
Which satisfied the egos of both Brown and Blair, so it worked.
They don't need to though.
Not really:
On 10 May, Blair announced to the Sedgefield Labour Party that he would stand down as prime minister on 27 June 2007, and that he would be requesting Labour's NEC to seek a new party leader.
Only Gordon Brown attained over 45 nominations and was thus elected unopposed.
Tony Blair tendered his resignation as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom after ten years, to Queen Elizabeth II on 27 June 2007 and Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown was asked by The Queen to form a new government.
Precisely my point, you've not quoted the entire text there.
Nominations closed on 17 May, with Brown as the only candidate.
Labour then proceeded to hold hustings, which Brown attended as the sole candidate.
After a campaign including hustings with Brown as sole candidate, he became leader on 24 June, over a month after close of nominations.
The campaign and hustings for Brown were entirely unnecessary, but it satisfied both Brown and Blair's egos.
Today's hot offering from Rawnsley, obviously on topic:
It would be unwise to leap to the assumption that the King In The North will now sweep southwards to effortlessly seize the crown jewels of Downing Street.
For his devotees, this was a “proof-of-concept” byelection. Get on with it and put the messiah of Manchester in Downing Street. That will be the siren song of the Burnhamites. [But] Bar superglueing the front door of Number 10, the incumbent has done everything he can to indicate that he will only be dragged out of the building by his fingernails.
Sir Keir has already suggested that, if there is to be a contest for the top job, the battle should not be joined before the people of Greater Manchester have decided who will be their next mayor in the byelection for the vacancy which will now ensue. That can’t be resolved before the very end of July, which is surely one of the reasons for making this suggestion. Sir Keir buys himself more time at Number 10 while increasing the chance that some of the shine will come off his rival as Mr Burnham is subject to elevated scrutiny.
This presents Team Andy with a dilemma. Press on with a near-immediate challenge for Number 10 and his enemies will portray him as a man who is entirely self-centred and too consumed by personal ambition to care what happens to the city he was running five minutes ago.
Camp Burnham would much prefer Sir Keir to agree to set a departure date. It is widely believed that Mr Burnham will urge the prime minister to take this course when they have what will surely be an excruciatingly awkward conversation with each other. Quite a lot of the cabinet favour this way forward. If he continues to spurn that advice, the test...will be whether they are prepared to resign from the government, with all the chaos that would entail, to attempt to bend him to their will. Others in the cabinet fume in opposition to the idea that Mr Burnham should be simply gifted the top job without a proper contest.
[Makerfield voters] have propelled Andy Burnham in the direction of Number 10, but that is not in itself enough to get him over the threshold. What happens next will depend on the feverish calculations made down in Westminster by the most senior politicians in the land.
If Labour want to win the Mayoral election - they can't have SKS leading the campaign - they need Burnham sat in No 10..
The Manchester by election for Mayor is on Thursday 30th July.
So I stick with my forecast that Burnham will become PM on Thursday 17th July, the day before recess.
This allows Burnham to campaign in the Manchester by election as PM with no parliamentary business to distract him. The only date in his diary will be the EU Summit in Brussels on 22nd July.
It took six weeks for Brown to replace Blair in 2007, how do we think the party can truncate the process down to less than four weeks now?
If Burnham can get 330 nominations by Friday then nobody else can stand.
Brown was the same. There were five weeks between Brown having all of the nominations and him being formally elected leader.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Brown On 11 May 2007, after months of speculation, Brown formally announced his bid for the Labour leadership. He launched his campaign website the same day as formally announcing his bid for leadership, titled "Gordon Brown for Britain".[86] On 16 May, Channel 4 News announced that Andrew MacKinlay had nominated Brown, giving him 308 nominations—enough to avoid a leadership contest. A BBC report states that the decisive nomination was made by Tony Wright with MacKinlay yet to nominate at that point.[87] Brown replaced Blair as Leader of the Labour Party on 24 June 2007.
Because Blair set himself a fairly long resignation timetable, not because it needs to be that long.
Starmer will take matters into his own hands to avoid the challenge by resigning tomorrow and give himself long enough to hit his second anniversary, which Burnham will be OK with as it avoids any unpleasantness, but there's no need for it to take as long Blair/Brown took.
But there’s a process involving constituency parties and trade union affiliates.
I don’t see how the party can get what was a six-week process down to less than four weeks, with the added complication that Starmer has a right be included if he wishes to be, which triggers a full contest expected to take three months.
It can be very quick if there's only one candidate.
My point was that there was only one candidate in 2007, and that took six weeks.
Because Blair and Brown wanted it to take that long, not because it had to take that long.
it was also under an entirely different rulebook, remember Ed changed the rules completely.
A Labour source says Keir Starmer feels "betrayed"
"He gave everything to Labour, including sacrificing much of his children's teenage years to help make the party electable. He feels deeply betrayed, especially by those he believed were loyal to him"
Starmer became PM because the Tories totally imploded.
If he'd become Labour leader in 2015, or even 2017 I don't think he'd have ever made it - even as it was he almost bombed out during 2021 anyway.
It is interesting to reflect though, despite Labour's reputation for lacking ruthlessness, he's actually the third longest serving Labour leader of the last 50 years.
A Labour source says Keir Starmer feels "betrayed"
"He gave everything to Labour, including sacrificing much of his children's teenage years to help make the party electable. He feels deeply betrayed, especially by those he believed were loyal to him"
By election in Old Holborn and St Pancras incoming?
The frustrating thing for Starmer is part of the reason for dithering is internal opposition, and yet I bet MPs will be more accomodating for Burnham, early on at least.
Starmer became PM because the Tories totally imploded.
If he'd become Labour leader in 2015, or even 2017 I don't think he'd have ever made it - even as it was he almost bombed out during 2021 anyway.
It is interesting to reflect though, despite Labour's reputation for lacking ruthlessness, he's actually the third longest serving Labour leader of the last 50 years.
Starmer became PM because the Tories totally imploded.
If he'd become Labour leader in 2015, or even 2017 I don't think he'd have ever made it - even as it was he almost bombed out during 2021 anyway.
It is interesting to reflect though, despite Labour's reputation for lacking ruthlessness, he's actually the third longest serving Labour leader of the last 50 years.
A Labour source says Keir Starmer feels "betrayed"
"He gave everything to Labour, including sacrificing much of his children's teenage years to help make the party electable. He feels deeply betrayed, especially by those he believed were loyal to him"
So he still doesn't understand politics, which has always been about the constant possibility of being betrayed by your political colleagues.
Starmer became PM because the Tories totally imploded.
If he'd become Labour leader in 2015, or even 2017 I don't think he'd have ever made it - even as it was he almost bombed out during 2021 anyway.
It is interesting to reflect though, despite Labour's reputation for lacking ruthlessness, he's actually the third longest serving Labour leader of the last 50 years.
A Labour source says Keir Starmer feels "betrayed"
"He gave everything to Labour, including sacrificing much of his children's teenage years to help make the party electable. He feels deeply betrayed, especially by those he believed were loyal to him"
By election in Old Holborn and St Pancras incoming?
Yes, there is. It’s because the Greens had someone elected who was ineligible to be a councillor. It’s in the Regent’s Park ward. I’m standing as the LibDem candidate as it’s the ward I work in.
"AI risks triggering ‘catastrophic’ phone network blackouts Ofcom raises alarm over risks linked to use of automation technology for monitoring networks" (£)
There are two main concerns with AI. One is that it can be used to find bugs in the code that can be exploited by hostile states, terrorists or criminals. Last week, the US Government blocked the export (or any use by foreigners) of Anthropic's latest models on these grounds. Effectively, the US Government is treating these AI models as weapons and regulating them accordingly.
The other concern is about cock-ups rather than conspiracies. If AI is used in routine maintenance of networks and spots a fault, it might take actions to rectify the situation faster than any human could react, and thus keep the network up so no-one notices the problem. The fear is that AI might apply the wrong fix and crash the whole network. You may recall seeing examples from other industries where production databases have been deleted or millions of dollars of trading losses.
It has to be the absolute peak of Trump Derangement Syndrome, that people are now vandalising national monuments in Washington because they don’t like the man in the big White House who’s trying to clean up the city for the 250th celebrations, egged on by a mainstream media who think that it’s the biggest news story in the world this week.
I can't see any corroboration of Trump's claims of vandalism, just the arrest of an innocent cyclist. It has to be absolute peak of embarrassment to mindlessly repeat Trump's lies and propaganda.
As I said, peak TDS, people totally losing their minds because they don’t like the guy who’s trying to clean up the city.
This is how the fake news spreads. That picture of the reflecting pool full of algae is from 2022.
The other pictures show the ballroom construction that’s ongoing, and the teardown from the UFC event last week, that the UFC paid for entirely and includes restoration of the grass in their budget.
This pool has been a nightmare for decades, it’s not a new thing, just people starting with OrangeManBad and working backwards. The pool workers now need to have police protection from the idiots trying to cause disruption.
the difference is your man is the only president who is having a melt down over it
He’s mad because people are vandalising a pool that just got renovated, just because they don’t like him.
Everyone used to agree that cleaning up a city is a good thing, now there’s thousands of people who would prefer it dirty because they don’t like the president.
I'm not sure that they can stand that up ie "vandalism" and "tools". Here's the photo. AIUI bits of the swimming pool lining have been breaking off and floating around.
To me this looks like normal Trump overreach, and he will run away as soon as challenged on it, as per usual.
Professional swimming pool types are not impressed. This is Swimming Pool Steve. The problem is suggested as being inadequate surface prep, which sounds a very Trumpish thing to do. Like not prepping a floor properly before you tile or paint it.
..Asked a contractor pal about the $13M paint job peeling off the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.
Him: I knew that'd happen. Me: How? Him: You can't rush that kind of job. The pool bottom has to be really dry or it'll exude water. And you have to clean it like a mofo first... https://x.com/CharlesCMann/status/2068491523017110000
And Sandpit is going with Trump's midnight ravings.
In the greater scheme of this administrations crimes and blunders, this is comparatively trivial, but it's also a clear illustration of a movement in denial.
In the UK the classic place where the same problem occurs is external fibreglass eg on a roof, lining a secret gutter etc. If it is dry it will last for 30 years without a tremor; if moisture gets in you are probably f*cked.
Most people I see are treating it as a small, satirical, example of what Trump does on a far larger scale elsewhere.
TL:DR the Russians are Donald Ducked, they no longer control the major supply routes to the occupied territories, and Crimea is now an island bar the Kerch Bridge which is closed to heavy traffic. It could all unravel very quickly from here.
It truly is astonishing that just one year and eleven months after winning a historic landslide, Starmer is terminally damaged and has only days left.
This is just a consequent ripple following the astonishing experience of Liz Truss as PM. It will take time for that to work its way out of the political system.
Had Liz Truss not been PM then there's very little chance that Starmer would have become PM, certainly not with a landslide. Nobody liked him enough to make him PM.
We are yet to see whether Burnham has the ability to bring normality back (my guess is no, but I have my moments of hope).
It follows then that we should expect future astonishing events - such as Farage becoming PM when going into the election with only a handful of MPs.
A Labour source says Keir Starmer feels "betrayed"
"He gave everything to Labour, including sacrificing much of his children's teenage years to help make the party electable. He feels deeply betrayed, especially by those he believed were loyal to him"
By election in Old Holborn and St Pancras incoming?
Yes, there is. It’s because the Greens had someone elected who was ineligible to be a councillor. It’s in the Regent’s Park ward. I’m standing as the LibDem candidate as it’s the ward I work in.
Good luck!
We can agree on very little, but I’ll always support those who put their head above the parapet and actually stand for office.
Again she's ruling out a pact, but AFAICS she's not ruling out putting Nigel Farage in power.
Ruling out putting Farage in power would be equivalent to committing to forming a 'coalition of chaos' even if Reform have 300+ MPs. Her position is the only politically sensible one.
No it’s not.
There’s other options.
Such as let Reform run a minority government or have another election.
Kemi telling Tory MPs to abstain in a confidence vote in a hung Parliament is neither making Farage PM nor keeping Labour in office. So her position is correct
After that vote, the Prime Minister would either be NF or AN Other. To not participate would still be to make an implicit choice.
“If you choose not to decide You still have made a choice”
"AI risks triggering ‘catastrophic’ phone network blackouts Ofcom raises alarm over risks linked to use of automation technology for monitoring networks" (£)
There are two main concerns with AI. One is that it can be used to find bugs in the code that can be exploited by hostile states, terrorists or criminals. Last week, the US Government blocked the export (or any use by foreigners) of Anthropic's latest models on these grounds. Effectively, the US Government is treating these AI models as weapons and regulating them accordingly.
The other concern is about cock-ups rather than conspiracies. If AI is used in routine maintenance of networks and spots a fault, it might take actions to rectify the situation faster than any human could react, and thus keep the network up so no-one notices the problem. The fear is that AI might apply the wrong fix and crash the whole network. You may recall seeing examples from other industries where production databases have been deleted or millions of dollars of trading losses.
The latest Anthropic AI, “Mythos” or “Fable 5”, allegedly managed to crack a whole load of US defence systems within hours, which is what led to the export ban and the company pulling the model from production.
A Labour source says Keir Starmer feels "betrayed"
"He gave everything to Labour, including sacrificing much of his children's teenage years to help make the party electable. He feels deeply betrayed, especially by those he believed were loyal to him"
By election in Old Holborn and St Pancras incoming?
Yes, there is. It’s because the Greens had someone elected who was ineligible to be a councillor. It’s in the Regent’s Park ward. I’m standing as the LibDem candidate as it’s the ward I work in.
Today's hot offering from Rawnsley, obviously on topic:
It would be unwise to leap to the assumption that the King In The North will now sweep southwards to effortlessly seize the crown jewels of Downing Street.
For his devotees, this was a “proof-of-concept” byelection. Get on with it and put the messiah of Manchester in Downing Street. That will be the siren song of the Burnhamites. [But] Bar superglueing the front door of Number 10, the incumbent has done everything he can to indicate that he will only be dragged out of the building by his fingernails.
Sir Keir has already suggested that, if there is to be a contest for the top job, the battle should not be joined before the people of Greater Manchester have decided who will be their next mayor in the byelection for the vacancy which will now ensue. That can’t be resolved before the very end of July, which is surely one of the reasons for making this suggestion. Sir Keir buys himself more time at Number 10 while increasing the chance that some of the shine will come off his rival as Mr Burnham is subject to elevated scrutiny.
This presents Team Andy with a dilemma. Press on with a near-immediate challenge for Number 10 and his enemies will portray him as a man who is entirely self-centred and too consumed by personal ambition to care what happens to the city he was running five minutes ago.
Camp Burnham would much prefer Sir Keir to agree to set a departure date. It is widely believed that Mr Burnham will urge the prime minister to take this course when they have what will surely be an excruciatingly awkward conversation with each other. Quite a lot of the cabinet favour this way forward. If he continues to spurn that advice, the test...will be whether they are prepared to resign from the government, with all the chaos that would entail, to attempt to bend him to their will. Others in the cabinet fume in opposition to the idea that Mr Burnham should be simply gifted the top job without a proper contest.
[Makerfield voters] have propelled Andy Burnham in the direction of Number 10, but that is not in itself enough to get him over the threshold. What happens next will depend on the feverish calculations made down in Westminster by the most senior politicians in the land.
If Labour want to win the Mayoral election - they can't have SKS leading the campaign - they need Burnham sat in No 10..
The Manchester by election for Mayor is on Thursday 30th July.
So I stick with my forecast that Burnham will become PM on Thursday 17th July, the day before recess.
This allows Burnham to campaign in the Manchester by election as PM with no parliamentary business to distract him. The only date in his diary will be the EU Summit in Brussels on 22nd July.
It took six weeks for Brown to replace Blair in 2007, how do we think the party can truncate the process down to less than four weeks now?
If Burnham can get 330 nominations by Friday then nobody else can stand.
Brown was the same. There were five weeks between Brown having all of the nominations and him being formally elected leader.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Brown On 11 May 2007, after months of speculation, Brown formally announced his bid for the Labour leadership. He launched his campaign website the same day as formally announcing his bid for leadership, titled "Gordon Brown for Britain".[86] On 16 May, Channel 4 News announced that Andrew MacKinlay had nominated Brown, giving him 308 nominations—enough to avoid a leadership contest. A BBC report states that the decisive nomination was made by Tony Wright with MacKinlay yet to nominate at that point.[87] Brown replaced Blair as Leader of the Labour Party on 24 June 2007.
Because Blair set himself a fairly long resignation timetable, not because it needs to be that long.
Starmer will take matters into his own hands to avoid the challenge by resigning tomorrow and give himself long enough to hit his second anniversary, which Burnham will be OK with as it avoids any unpleasantness, but there's no need for it to take as long Blair/Brown took.
But there’s a process involving constituency parties and trade union affiliates.
I don’t see how the party can get what was a six-week process down to less than four weeks, with the added complication that Starmer has a right be included if he wishes to be, which triggers a full contest expected to take three months.
It can be very quick if there's only one candidate.
My point was that there was only one candidate in 2007, and that took six weeks.
The point is that with a coronation rather than a contest it *can* be quick. But it doesn't have to be. I'd put the range between 1 week and 10 weeks. It depends on Starmer and Burnham really. They both have to be ok with it.
The summer recess is 16 July.That makes the 15 July the last PMQ before September. Assuming Starmer steps down would he still be wanting to do PMQs until then? Alternatively, would Burnham want to do a couple before the recess?
A minor point, no doubt, but it interests me: Will Victoria have to give back all those clothes, if (when?) her husband leaves office? And, if so, who gets them?
TL:DR the Russians are Donald Ducked, they no longer control the major supply routes to the occupied territories, and Crimea is now an island bar the Kerch Bridge which is closed to heavy traffic. It could all unravel very quickly from here.
Let’s hope so!
Surely if it's this bad Putin has to risk upsetting his public and draft more in? Not the only issue, but throwing Russian bodies into the maw slows things, historically.
Today's hot offering from Rawnsley, obviously on topic:
It would be unwise to leap to the assumption that the King In The North will now sweep southwards to effortlessly seize the crown jewels of Downing Street.
For his devotees, this was a “proof-of-concept” byelection. Get on with it and put the messiah of Manchester in Downing Street. That will be the siren song of the Burnhamites. [But] Bar superglueing the front door of Number 10, the incumbent has done everything he can to indicate that he will only be dragged out of the building by his fingernails.
Sir Keir has already suggested that, if there is to be a contest for the top job, the battle should not be joined before the people of Greater Manchester have decided who will be their next mayor in the byelection for the vacancy which will now ensue. That can’t be resolved before the very end of July, which is surely one of the reasons for making this suggestion. Sir Keir buys himself more time at Number 10 while increasing the chance that some of the shine will come off his rival as Mr Burnham is subject to elevated scrutiny.
This presents Team Andy with a dilemma. Press on with a near-immediate challenge for Number 10 and his enemies will portray him as a man who is entirely self-centred and too consumed by personal ambition to care what happens to the city he was running five minutes ago.
Camp Burnham would much prefer Sir Keir to agree to set a departure date. It is widely believed that Mr Burnham will urge the prime minister to take this course when they have what will surely be an excruciatingly awkward conversation with each other. Quite a lot of the cabinet favour this way forward. If he continues to spurn that advice, the test...will be whether they are prepared to resign from the government, with all the chaos that would entail, to attempt to bend him to their will. Others in the cabinet fume in opposition to the idea that Mr Burnham should be simply gifted the top job without a proper contest.
[Makerfield voters] have propelled Andy Burnham in the direction of Number 10, but that is not in itself enough to get him over the threshold. What happens next will depend on the feverish calculations made down in Westminster by the most senior politicians in the land.
If Labour want to win the Mayoral election - they can't have SKS leading the campaign - they need Burnham sat in No 10..
The Manchester by election for Mayor is on Thursday 30th July.
So I stick with my forecast that Burnham will become PM on Thursday 17th July, the day before recess.
This allows Burnham to campaign in the Manchester by election as PM with no parliamentary business to distract him. The only date in his diary will be the EU Summit in Brussels on 22nd July.
It took six weeks for Brown to replace Blair in 2007, how do we think the party can truncate the process down to less than four weeks now?
If Burnham can get 330 nominations by Friday then nobody else can stand.
Brown was the same. There were five weeks between Brown having all of the nominations and him being formally elected leader.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Brown On 11 May 2007, after months of speculation, Brown formally announced his bid for the Labour leadership. He launched his campaign website the same day as formally announcing his bid for leadership, titled "Gordon Brown for Britain".[86] On 16 May, Channel 4 News announced that Andrew MacKinlay had nominated Brown, giving him 308 nominations—enough to avoid a leadership contest. A BBC report states that the decisive nomination was made by Tony Wright with MacKinlay yet to nominate at that point.[87] Brown replaced Blair as Leader of the Labour Party on 24 June 2007.
Because Blair set himself a fairly long resignation timetable, not because it needs to be that long.
Starmer will take matters into his own hands to avoid the challenge by resigning tomorrow and give himself long enough to hit his second anniversary, which Burnham will be OK with as it avoids any unpleasantness, but there's no need for it to take as long Blair/Brown took.
But there’s a process involving constituency parties and trade union affiliates.
I don’t see how the party can get what was a six-week process down to less than four weeks, with the added complication that Starmer has a right be included if he wishes to be, which triggers a full contest expected to take three months.
It can be very quick if there's only one candidate.
My point was that there was only one candidate in 2007, and that took six weeks.
The point is that with a coronation rather than a contest it *can* be quick. But it doesn't have to be. I'd put the range between 1 week and 10 weeks. It depends on Starmer and Burnham really. They both have to be ok with it.
Yes, in 2007 both Blair and Brown were content with a long contest.
Blair wanted a long goodbye. Brown was happy to take a victory lap of hustings knowing he'd be PM at the end of it.
None of it served a purpose, but it fluffed both their egos so it happened.
The question in 2026 is how much of a hurry is Burnham in - and how much once he's resigned has Starmer simply had enough of it all.
The summer recess is 16 July.That makes the 15 July the last PMQ before September. Assuming Starmer steps down would he still be wanting to do PMQs until then? Alternatively, would Burnham want to do a couple before the recess?
TL:DR the Russians are Donald Ducked, they no longer control the major supply routes to the occupied territories, and Crimea is now an island bar the Kerch Bridge which is closed to heavy traffic. It could all unravel very quickly from here.
Let’s hope so!
Surely if it's this bad Putin has to risk upsetting his public and draft more in? Not the only issue, but throwing Russian bodies into the maw slows things, historically.
Perhaps, and let us remember the toll in the Great Patriotic War was far higher, but we should also assume that Russia will be developing its own drone-based weapons for use against Ukraine. This pointless and destructive SMO could drag on for years yet.
Today's hot offering from Rawnsley, obviously on topic:
It would be unwise to leap to the assumption that the King In The North will now sweep southwards to effortlessly seize the crown jewels of Downing Street.
For his devotees, this was a “proof-of-concept” byelection. Get on with it and put the messiah of Manchester in Downing Street. That will be the siren song of the Burnhamites. [But] Bar superglueing the front door of Number 10, the incumbent has done everything he can to indicate that he will only be dragged out of the building by his fingernails.
Sir Keir has already suggested that, if there is to be a contest for the top job, the battle should not be joined before the people of Greater Manchester have decided who will be their next mayor in the byelection for the vacancy which will now ensue. That can’t be resolved before the very end of July, which is surely one of the reasons for making this suggestion. Sir Keir buys himself more time at Number 10 while increasing the chance that some of the shine will come off his rival as Mr Burnham is subject to elevated scrutiny.
This presents Team Andy with a dilemma. Press on with a near-immediate challenge for Number 10 and his enemies will portray him as a man who is entirely self-centred and too consumed by personal ambition to care what happens to the city he was running five minutes ago.
Camp Burnham would much prefer Sir Keir to agree to set a departure date. It is widely believed that Mr Burnham will urge the prime minister to take this course when they have what will surely be an excruciatingly awkward conversation with each other. Quite a lot of the cabinet favour this way forward. If he continues to spurn that advice, the test...will be whether they are prepared to resign from the government, with all the chaos that would entail, to attempt to bend him to their will. Others in the cabinet fume in opposition to the idea that Mr Burnham should be simply gifted the top job without a proper contest.
[Makerfield voters] have propelled Andy Burnham in the direction of Number 10, but that is not in itself enough to get him over the threshold. What happens next will depend on the feverish calculations made down in Westminster by the most senior politicians in the land.
If Labour want to win the Mayoral election - they can't have SKS leading the campaign - they need Burnham sat in No 10..
The Manchester by election for Mayor is on Thursday 30th July.
So I stick with my forecast that Burnham will become PM on Thursday 17th July, the day before recess.
This allows Burnham to campaign in the Manchester by election as PM with no parliamentary business to distract him. The only date in his diary will be the EU Summit in Brussels on 22nd July.
It took six weeks for Brown to replace Blair in 2007, how do we think the party can truncate the process down to less than four weeks now?
If Burnham can get 330 nominations by Friday then nobody else can stand.
Brown was the same. There were five weeks between Brown having all of the nominations and him being formally elected leader.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Brown On 11 May 2007, after months of speculation, Brown formally announced his bid for the Labour leadership. He launched his campaign website the same day as formally announcing his bid for leadership, titled "Gordon Brown for Britain".[86] On 16 May, Channel 4 News announced that Andrew MacKinlay had nominated Brown, giving him 308 nominations—enough to avoid a leadership contest. A BBC report states that the decisive nomination was made by Tony Wright with MacKinlay yet to nominate at that point.[87] Brown replaced Blair as Leader of the Labour Party on 24 June 2007.
Because Blair set himself a fairly long resignation timetable, not because it needs to be that long.
Starmer will take matters into his own hands to avoid the challenge by resigning tomorrow and give himself long enough to hit his second anniversary, which Burnham will be OK with as it avoids any unpleasantness, but there's no need for it to take as long Blair/Brown took.
But there’s a process involving constituency parties and trade union affiliates.
I don’t see how the party can get what was a six-week process down to less than four weeks, with the added complication that Starmer has a right be included if he wishes to be, which triggers a full contest expected to take three months.
It can be very quick if there's only one candidate.
My point was that there was only one candidate in 2007, and that took six weeks.
The point is that with a coronation rather than a contest it *can* be quick. But it doesn't have to be. I'd put the range between 1 week and 10 weeks. It depends on Starmer and Burnham really. They both have to be ok with it.
Yes, in 2007 both Blair and Brown were content with a long contest.
Blair wanted a long goodbye. Brown was happy to take a victory lap of hustings knowing he'd be PM at the end of it.
None of it served a purpose, but it fluffed both their egos so it happened.
The question in 2026 is how much of a hurry is Burnham in - and how much once he's resigned has Starmer simply had enough of it all.
Was one of these the hustings with the Elvis impersonator?
The summer recess is 16 July.That makes the 15 July the last PMQ before September. Assuming Starmer steps down would he still be wanting to do PMQs until then? Alternatively, would Burnham want to do a couple before the recess?
Why not? Starmer more and more stonewalls in any case, and final PMQs are often good-natured affairs.
TL:DR the Russians are Donald Ducked, they no longer control the major supply routes to the occupied territories, and Crimea is now an island bar the Kerch Bridge which is closed to heavy traffic. It could all unravel very quickly from here.
Let’s hope so!
Surely if it's this bad Putin has to risk upsetting his public and draft more in? Not the only issue, but throwing Russian bodies into the maw slows things, historically.
Perhaps, and let us remember the toll in the Great Patriotic War was far higher, but we should also assume that Russia will be developing its own drone-based weapons for use against Ukraine. This pointless and destructive SMO could drag on for years yet.
I'm not so sure - I dont' think your typical Putin supporting Russian is going to cope with an economy crashing and a lack of fuel..
TL:DR the Russians are Donald Ducked, they no longer control the major supply routes to the occupied territories, and Crimea is now an island bar the Kerch Bridge which is closed to heavy traffic. It could all unravel very quickly from here.
Let’s hope so!
Surely if it's this bad Putin has to risk upsetting his public and draft more in? Not the only issue, but throwing Russian bodies into the maw slows things, historically.
Perhaps, and let us remember the toll in the Great Patriotic War was far higher, but we should also assume that Russia will be developing its own drone-based weapons for use against Ukraine. This pointless and destructive SMO could drag on for years yet.
We should remember that in the Great Patriotic War that approximately a quarter of the toll were Ukrainians and approximately another quarter of the toll were other non-Russians.
Ironically Russia had the lowest death toll of the major USSR nations, Ukraine suffered a significantly higher proportionate toll as it was their land predominantly being invaded then, as now. So they gave more fighting to protect their land, then as now.
It truly is astonishing that just one year and eleven months after winning a historic landslide, Starmer is terminally damaged and has only days left.
Labour are simply repeating the same mistake with Burnham. No policies, no idea of what he stands for, jelly fish principles.
It's a re-run of Starmer getting elected because he's not Sunak. Now it's Burnham in the chair because he's not Starmer.
Burnham has policies, increases additional rate of income tax, a land tax, nationalisations etc. He would likely be the most leftwing UK PM since Wilson. Just Labour did not win on that manifesto
Again she's ruling out a pact, but AFAICS she's not ruling out putting Nigel Farage in power.
Ruling out putting Farage in power would be equivalent to committing to forming a 'coalition of chaos' even if Reform have 300+ MPs. Her position is the only politically sensible one.
No it’s not.
There’s other options.
Such as let Reform run a minority government or have another election.
Kemi telling Tory MPs to abstain in a confidence vote in a hung Parliament is neither making Farage PM nor keeping Labour in office. So her position is correct
How is abstaining in a VoC when everyone else votes against not "making Farage PM?"
As it isn’t voting to make Farage PM anymore than it is voting to make Starmer or Burnham PM
TL:DR the Russians are Donald Ducked, they no longer control the major supply routes to the occupied territories, and Crimea is now an island bar the Kerch Bridge which is closed to heavy traffic. It could all unravel very quickly from here.
Let’s hope so!
I think that overstates things a bit. Russia has temporary bridges up into northern Crimea to replace those damaged, and the bridges there are only damaged, not destroyed entirely.
I also think it's a bit negative on Ukrainian offensive capability. The Ukrainians have had three years to think about how to advance through minefields while under drone attack - it's not impossible they will have some innovations in that area.
And the more that Russian logistics are damaged the less offensive capability is required to overcome defences. A defensive line cannot be held without deliveries of ammunition.
TL:DR the Russians are Donald Ducked, they no longer control the major supply routes to the occupied territories, and Crimea is now an island bar the Kerch Bridge which is closed to heavy traffic. It could all unravel very quickly from here.
Let’s hope so!
Surely if it's this bad Putin has to risk upsetting his public and draft more in? Not the only issue, but throwing Russian bodies into the maw slows things, historically.
Perhaps, and let us remember the toll in the Great Patriotic War was far higher, but we should also assume that Russia will be developing its own drone-based weapons for use against Ukraine. This pointless and destructive SMO could drag on for years yet.
I expect so. The russians aren't totally dumb and tech parity has been regained before. They aren't falling back in disarray yet.
But how things are going might impact potential deals, reducing what they demand (backed by Trump).
TL:DR the Russians are Donald Ducked, they no longer control the major supply routes to the occupied territories, and Crimea is now an island bar the Kerch Bridge which is closed to heavy traffic. It could all unravel very quickly from here.
Let’s hope so!
Surely if it's this bad Putin has to risk upsetting his public and draft more in? Not the only issue, but throwing Russian bodies into the maw slows things, historically.
There’s been some reports in the last few days of debtors and criminals being forcibly recruited by snatch squads, but the average life expectancy of a soldier on the front lines is about a week at the moment. They’re throwing them in with little training, into what’s a duck shoot for the Ukranian UAV community. Last three months casualties have outnumbered recruitment.
Putin clearly doesn’t want to start conscription from the big cities, but he’s close to being out of options.
It’s said that logistics wins wars, and right now it’s looking like they don’t even have enough fuel to get the new recruits to the front lines.
Meanwhile, Moscow and St.Petersberg have long queues for petrol that are affecting the middle classes.
Again she's ruling out a pact, but AFAICS she's not ruling out putting Nigel Farage in power.
Ruling out putting Farage in power would be equivalent to committing to forming a 'coalition of chaos' even if Reform have 300+ MPs. Her position is the only politically sensible one.
No it’s not.
There’s other options.
Such as let Reform run a minority government or have another election.
Kemi telling Tory MPs to abstain in a confidence vote in a hung Parliament is neither making Farage PM nor keeping Labour in office. So her position is correct
How is abstaining in a VoC when everyone else votes against not "making Farage PM?"
As it isn’t voting to make Farage PM anymore than it is voting to make Starmer or Burnham PM
Let's test this - if an opponent tried the same line would you accept the same logic and not criticise them for 'allowing' it?
"AI risks triggering ‘catastrophic’ phone network blackouts Ofcom raises alarm over risks linked to use of automation technology for monitoring networks" (£)
There are two main concerns with AI. One is that it can be used to find bugs in the code that can be exploited by hostile states, terrorists or criminals. Last week, the US Government blocked the export (or any use by foreigners) of Anthropic's latest models on these grounds. Effectively, the US Government is treating these AI models as weapons and regulating them accordingly.
The other concern is about cock-ups rather than conspiracies. If AI is used in routine maintenance of networks and spots a fault, it might take actions to rectify the situation faster than any human could react, and thus keep the network up so no-one notices the problem. The fear is that AI might apply the wrong fix and crash the whole network. You may recall seeing examples from other industries where production databases have been deleted or millions of dollars of trading losses.
The latest Anthropic AI, “Mythos” or “Fable 5”, allegedly managed to crack a whole load of US defence systems within hours, which is what led to the export ban and the company pulling the model from production.
Incidentally, the fact that the US Government can block exports of and access to AI models shows how fatuous are British claims to AI leadership. As is our wont with frontier research, British academics are underfunded and British companies sold, including what is now Google Deep Mind. All the AI action is now in America and China.
A Labour source says Keir Starmer feels "betrayed"
"He gave everything to Labour, including sacrificing much of his children's teenage years to help make the party electable. He feels deeply betrayed, especially by those he believed were loyal to him"
By election in Old Holborn and St Pancras incoming?
Yes, there is. It’s because the Greens had someone elected who was ineligible to be a councillor. It’s in the Regent’s Park ward. I’m standing as the LibDem candidate as it’s the ward I work in.
The Greens could be favourite to win the seat, although it'll be interesting to see if Andrew Feinstein stands again. 7,312 votes was impressive last time.
Again she's ruling out a pact, but AFAICS she's not ruling out putting Nigel Farage in power.
Ruling out putting Farage in power would be equivalent to committing to forming a 'coalition of chaos' even if Reform have 300+ MPs. Her position is the only politically sensible one.
No it’s not.
There’s other options.
Such as let Reform run a minority government or have another election.
Kemi telling Tory MPs to abstain in a confidence vote in a hung Parliament is neither making Farage PM nor keeping Labour in office. So her position is correct
How is abstaining in a VoC when everyone else votes against not "making Farage PM?"
As it isn’t voting to make Farage PM anymore than it is voting to make Starmer or Burnham PM
Let's test this - if an opponent tried the same line would you accept the same logic and not criticise them for 'allowing' it?
No. A positive vote for Burnham or Starmer is a vote for a Labour government, a positive vote for Farage is a vote for a Reform government, abstaining is a vote for neither only a Kemi led government
TL:DR the Russians are Donald Ducked, they no longer control the major supply routes to the occupied territories, and Crimea is now an island bar the Kerch Bridge which is closed to heavy traffic. It could all unravel very quickly from here.
Let’s hope so!
I think that overstates things a bit. Russia has temporary bridges up into northern Crimea to replace those damaged, and the bridges there are only damaged, not destroyed entirely.
I also think it's a bit negative on Ukrainian offensive capability. The Ukrainians have had three years to think about how to advance through minefields while under drone attack - it's not impossible they will have some innovations in that area.
And the more that Russian logistics are damaged the less offensive capability is required to overcome defences. A defensive line cannot be held without deliveries of ammunition.
It’s an optimistic take, sure, but the logistics breakdown does appear to be real.
Ukranian drones have fire control on the main roads through occupied Donbass, and have been taking out military and fuel supply vehicles seemingly at will for a couple of weeks now.
It truly is astonishing that just one year and eleven months after winning a historic landslide, Starmer is terminally damaged and has only days left.
Labour are simply repeating the same mistake with Burnham. No policies, no idea of what he stands for, jelly fish principles.
It's a re-run of Starmer getting elected because he's not Sunak. Now it's Burnham in the chair because he's not Starmer.
Burnham has policies, increases additional rate of income tax, a land tax, nationalisations etc. He would likely be the most leftwing UK PM since Wilson. Just Labour did not win on that manifesto
It truly is astonishing that just one year and eleven months after winning a historic landslide, Starmer is terminally damaged and has only days left.
Labour are simply repeating the same mistake with Burnham. No policies, no idea of what he stands for, jelly fish principles.
It's a re-run of Starmer getting elected because he's not Sunak. Now it's Burnham in the chair because he's not Starmer.
Burnham has policies, increases additional rate of income tax, a land tax, nationalisations etc. He would likely be the most leftwing UK PM since Wilson. Just Labour did not win on that manifesto
Communication is key
Communicating policy the centre and centre left will vote for even if it means higher taxes to explain the benefits for the majority is key.
The Right, especially The Tories can bleat, they trashed the economy with highest taxes in history on those least able to pay.
Communication too that welfare must be for those in genuine need and not lazy scroats.
The Tories have the sum total of zero to offer, least of all an apology. All the Shadow Cabinet complicit in the destruction of the UK
Farage offers racism and unfunded pipulism no more.
If Burnham or Streeting better still Burnham and Streeting do what they do best, they can communicate their way to power for the rest of this decade and all the next.
Again she's ruling out a pact, but AFAICS she's not ruling out putting Nigel Farage in power.
Ruling out putting Farage in power would be equivalent to committing to forming a 'coalition of chaos' even if Reform have 300+ MPs. Her position is the only politically sensible one.
No it’s not.
There’s other options.
Such as let Reform run a minority government or have another election.
Kemi telling Tory MPs to abstain in a confidence vote in a hung Parliament is neither making Farage PM nor keeping Labour in office. So her position is correct
How is abstaining in a VoC when everyone else votes against not "making Farage PM?"
As it isn’t voting to make Farage PM anymore than it is voting to make Starmer or Burnham PM
Let's test this - if an opponent tried the same line would you accept the same logic and not criticise them for 'allowing' it?
No. A positive vote for Burnham or Starmer is a vote for a Labour government, a positive vote for Farage is a vote for a Reform government, abstaining is a vote for neither only a Kemi led government
As expected you ignored the question (about a scenario which was the same) to answer your own (still on this scenario). As close to an admission that you only hold it because its the official position we'll get.
Party lines are tough things on consistency when parties change their stances. See also calls for early elections.
If all was equal, everything bar the names the same, the response should be the same. You'd change based on the names.
TL:DR the Russians are Donald Ducked, they no longer control the major supply routes to the occupied territories, and Crimea is now an island bar the Kerch Bridge which is closed to heavy traffic. It could all unravel very quickly from here.
Let’s hope so!
Surely if it's this bad Putin has to risk upsetting his public and draft more in? Not the only issue, but throwing Russian bodies into the maw slows things, historically.
Perhaps, and let us remember the toll in the Great Patriotic War was far higher, but we should also assume that Russia will be developing its own drone-based weapons for use against Ukraine. This pointless and destructive SMO could drag on for years yet.
The main Russian problem is not so much a lack of weapons, but poor target priority.
They choose to go after civilian and cultural targets - such as the famous cathedral recently - because they believe this will break the will of the Ukrainians to resist. If they had a campaign more focused on Ukrainian railway infrastructure (for example) they might have more success.
In principle that's a solvable problem for Russia.
We also know that Russia has been trying to copy Ukraine's interceptor drones. If they were to make progress on that then they might be able to defend against the Ukrainian drones that are currently causing so much trouble for Russian logistics.
So there are certainly plenty of ways that the war could change direction.
But then, Ukraine will be adding ballistic missile capability to its arsenal soon, so current trends might also intensify.
Lol how many times have we heard from one person here the war in Ukraine was about to end
I disagree with @Sandpit on many things but I can't criticise his hopeful reports on the the Ukraine war. We all have a natural tendency to lap up and pass on reports that match our hope - I certainly do.
And he's surely not wrong that things look bleak for Russia, which has been led into a terrible disaster with Putin's adventure? Imminent surrender of Crimea? Maybe not, but their hold is beginning to look more tenuous.
Again she's ruling out a pact, but AFAICS she's not ruling out putting Nigel Farage in power.
Ruling out putting Farage in power would be equivalent to committing to forming a 'coalition of chaos' even if Reform have 300+ MPs. Her position is the only politically sensible one.
No it’s not.
There’s other options.
Such as let Reform run a minority government or have another election.
Kemi telling Tory MPs to abstain in a confidence vote in a hung Parliament is neither making Farage PM nor keeping Labour in office. So her position is correct
How is abstaining in a VoC when everyone else votes against not "making Farage PM?"
As it isn’t voting to make Farage PM anymore than it is voting to make Starmer or Burnham PM
Let's test this - if an opponent tried the same line would you accept the same logic and not criticise them for 'allowing' it?
No. A positive vote for Burnham or Starmer is a vote for a Labour government, a positive vote for Farage is a vote for a Reform government, abstaining is a vote for neither only a Kemi led government
Kemi's in no position to form a government,
She could be in a position to join a coalition but then who with She;s falling straight in to the CDU trap.
Starmer became PM because the Tories totally imploded.
If he'd become Labour leader in 2015, or even 2017 I don't think he'd have ever made it - even as it was he almost bombed out during 2021 anyway.
It is interesting to reflect though, despite Labour's reputation for lacking ruthlessness, he's actually the third longest serving Labour leader of the last 50 years.
Betrayal is part of politics ! Most politicians are backstabbing ungrateful bxstards!
I do though have some sympathy for Starmer because polling wise Labour aren’t miles behind Reform and the party has done some good things .
They have had a relentless almost daily attacks from the media , I don’t think I’ve seen such a hostile press and even the Guardian was laying the boot in .
And who exactly would have been leader if Starmer hadn’t have put his name forward . Even with the Tories imploding there still needed to be an alternative that wouldn’t frighten the horses .
Again she's ruling out a pact, but AFAICS she's not ruling out putting Nigel Farage in power.
Ruling out putting Farage in power would be equivalent to committing to forming a 'coalition of chaos' even if Reform have 300+ MPs. Her position is the only politically sensible one.
No it’s not.
There’s other options.
Such as let Reform run a minority government or have another election.
Kemi telling Tory MPs to abstain in a confidence vote in a hung Parliament is neither making Farage PM nor keeping Labour in office. So her position is correct
How is abstaining in a VoC when everyone else votes against not "making Farage PM?"
As it isn’t voting to make Farage PM anymore than it is voting to make Starmer or Burnham PM
Let's test this - if an opponent tried the same line would you accept the same logic and not criticise them for 'allowing' it?
No. A positive vote for Burnham or Starmer is a vote for a Labour government, a positive vote for Farage is a vote for a Reform government, abstaining is a vote for neither only a Kemi led government
Kemi's in no position to form a government,
She could be in a position to join a coalition but then who with She;s falling straight in to the CDU trap.
No she isn’t, the CDU have gone into coalition with the SPD. Kemi has ruled out a deal with Labour or Reform
Burnham has policies, increases additional rate of income tax, a land tax, nationalisations etc. He would likely be the most leftwing UK PM since Wilson. Just Labour did not win on that manifesto
Again she's ruling out a pact, but AFAICS she's not ruling out putting Nigel Farage in power.
Ruling out putting Farage in power would be equivalent to committing to forming a 'coalition of chaos' even if Reform have 300+ MPs. Her position is the only politically sensible one.
No it’s not.
There’s other options.
Such as let Reform run a minority government or have another election.
Kemi telling Tory MPs to abstain in a confidence vote in a hung Parliament is neither making Farage PM nor keeping Labour in office. So her position is correct
How is abstaining in a VoC when everyone else votes against not "making Farage PM?"
As it isn’t voting to make Farage PM anymore than it is voting to make Starmer or Burnham PM
Let's test this - if an opponent tried the same line would you accept the same logic and not criticise them for 'allowing' it?
No. A positive vote for Burnham or Starmer is a vote for a Labour government, a positive vote for Farage is a vote for a Reform government, abstaining is a vote for neither only a Kemi led government
Kemi's in no position to form a government,
She could be in a position to join a coalition but then who with She;s falling straight in to the CDU trap.
No she isn’t, the CDU have gone into coalition with the SPD. Kemi has ruled out a deal with Labour or Reform
Then she's just opting to be the opposition, Or is she going to merge with the LDs ?
It truly is astonishing that just one year and eleven months after winning a historic landslide, Starmer is terminally damaged and has only days left.
Labour are simply repeating the same mistake with Burnham. No policies, no idea of what he stands for, jelly fish principles.
It's a re-run of Starmer getting elected because he's not Sunak. Now it's Burnham in the chair because he's not Starmer.
Burnham has policies, increases additional rate of income tax, a land tax, nationalisations etc. He would likely be the most leftwing UK PM since Wilson. Just Labour did not win on that manifesto
It truly is astonishing that just one year and eleven months after winning a historic landslide, Starmer is terminally damaged and has only days left.
Labour are simply repeating the same mistake with Burnham. No policies, no idea of what he stands for, jelly fish principles.
It's a re-run of Starmer getting elected because he's not Sunak. Now it's Burnham in the chair because he's not Starmer.
Burnham has policies, increases additional rate of income tax, a land tax, nationalisations etc. He would likely be the most leftwing UK PM since Wilson. Just Labour did not win on that manifesto
Communication is key
Communicating policy the centre and centre left will vote for even if it means higher taxes to explain the benefits for the majority is key.
The Right, especially The Tories can bleat, they trashed the economy with highest taxes in history on those least able to pay.
Communication too that welfare must be for those in genuine need and not lazy scroats.
The Tories have the sum total of zero to offer, least of all an apology. All the Shadow Cabinet complicit in the destruction of the UK
Farage offers racism and unfunded pipulism no more.
If Burnham or Streeting better still Burnham and Streeting do what they do best, they can communicate their way to power for the rest of this decade and all the next.
There is no credible option
They can communicate as well as they want but if they put up taxes hitting growth and voters wallets there will be a pushback from some voters. The Tories took the lowest earners out of income tax
A Labour source says Keir Starmer feels "betrayed"
"He gave everything to Labour, including sacrificing much of his children's teenage years to help make the party electable. He feels deeply betrayed, especially by those he believed were loyal to him"
By election in Old Holborn and St Pancras incoming?
Yes, there is. It’s because the Greens had someone elected who was ineligible to be a councillor. It’s in the Regent’s Park ward. I’m standing as the LibDem candidate as it’s the ward I work in.
The Greens could be favourite to win the seat, although it'll be interesting to see if Andrew Feinstein stands again. 7,312 votes was impressive last time.
The Greens are favourite to win the council ward by-election. If the Westminster seat becomes vacant, it will be interesting to see what happens. At the council elections, the Greens and Feinstein’s lot had a non-aggression pact where they didn’t stand against each other: would they do that again? I can’t see Polanski agreeing to it. Feinstein got 19% in second and the Greens got 10% in third, so a joint candidate would be well placed to win a by-election.
The frustrating thing for Starmer is part of the reason for dithering is internal opposition, and yet I bet MPs will be more accomodating for Burnham, early on at least.
Such is realty when people like you more.
Yes but. Starmer made a virtue of picking a fight with the Left and kicking them out. As indeed did Boris. That was their choice. In the end though it just makes others wonder if they are next?
Again she's ruling out a pact, but AFAICS she's not ruling out putting Nigel Farage in power.
Ruling out putting Farage in power would be equivalent to committing to forming a 'coalition of chaos' even if Reform have 300+ MPs. Her position is the only politically sensible one.
No it’s not.
There’s other options.
Such as let Reform run a minority government or have another election.
Kemi telling Tory MPs to abstain in a confidence vote in a hung Parliament is neither making Farage PM nor keeping Labour in office. So her position is correct
How is abstaining in a VoC when everyone else votes against not "making Farage PM?"
As it isn’t voting to make Farage PM anymore than it is voting to make Starmer or Burnham PM
Let's test this - if an opponent tried the same line would you accept the same logic and not criticise them for 'allowing' it?
No. A positive vote for Burnham or Starmer is a vote for a Labour government, a positive vote for Farage is a vote for a Reform government, abstaining is a vote for neither only a Kemi led government
Kemi's in no position to form a government,
She could be in a position to join a coalition but then who with She;s falling straight in to the CDU trap.
No she isn’t, the CDU have gone into coalition with the SPD. Kemi has ruled out a deal with Labour or Reform
Then she's just opting to be the opposition, Or is she going to merge with the LDs ?
The Tories are in an impossible situation - a large section of their never Labour vote has gone to Reform - it's not exactly easy to get it back.
Worse they don't want to lose any chance of getting some never Reform votes so they have to rule out supporting Reform.
It leaves Kemi and the Tory party a very fine line that they have to navigate in the hope / until the political landscape changes to their favour..
"AI risks triggering ‘catastrophic’ phone network blackouts Ofcom raises alarm over risks linked to use of automation technology for monitoring networks" (£)
There are two main concerns with AI. One is that it can be used to find bugs in the code that can be exploited by hostile states, terrorists or criminals. Last week, the US Government blocked the export (or any use by foreigners) of Anthropic's latest models on these grounds. Effectively, the US Government is treating these AI models as weapons and regulating them accordingly.
The other concern is about cock-ups rather than conspiracies. If AI is used in routine maintenance of networks and spots a fault, it might take actions to rectify the situation faster than any human could react, and thus keep the network up so no-one notices the problem. The fear is that AI might apply the wrong fix and crash the whole network. You may recall seeing examples from other industries where production databases have been deleted or millions of dollars of trading losses.
The latest Anthropic AI, “Mythos” or “Fable 5”, allegedly managed to crack a whole load of US defence systems within hours, which is what led to the export ban and the company pulling the model from production.
Incidentally, the fact that the US Government can block exports of and access to AI models shows how fatuous are British claims to AI leadership. As is our wont with frontier research, British academics are underfunded and British companies sold, including what is now Google Deep Mind. All the AI action is now in America and China.
Yup. A massive opportunity lost with the DeepMind sale, and a chance to cement a Brexit benefit outside the strangulating EU AI regulation.
The US now has most of the West over a barrel, at a time when most of them really don’t like the orange man in the white house.
It truly is astonishing that just one year and eleven months after winning a historic landslide, Starmer is terminally damaged and has only days left.
This is just a consequent ripple following the astonishing experience of Liz Truss as PM. It will take time for that to work its way out of the political system.
Had Liz Truss not been PM then there's very little chance that Starmer would have become PM, certainly not with a landslide. Nobody liked him enough to make him PM.
We are yet to see whether Burnham has the ability to bring normality back (my guess is no, but I have my moments of hope).
It follows then that we should expect future astonishing events - such as Farage becoming PM when going into the election with only a handful of MPs.
Sorry for being boring, but Truss' polling nadir was 19% in October '22. When he came in, Sunak received a grown ups in the room bounce and got to 26%. If he had built on that percentage, and add in the swingback we saw, he could have held Starmer off. Instead he chose to be the Dismal Decline Manager and he got the Tories down to 18%. Lower than Truss.
PB shrewdies just like Sunak so they airbrush his polling trajectory from history.
It truly is astonishing that just one year and eleven months after winning a historic landslide, Starmer is terminally damaged and has only days left.
This is just a consequent ripple following the astonishing experience of Liz Truss as PM. It will take time for that to work its way out of the political system.
Had Liz Truss not been PM then there's very little chance that Starmer would have become PM, certainly not with a landslide. Nobody liked him enough to make him PM.
We are yet to see whether Burnham has the ability to bring normality back (my guess is no, but I have my moments of hope).
It follows then that we should expect future astonishing events - such as Farage becoming PM when going into the election with only a handful of MPs.
Sorry for being boring, but Truss' polling nadir was 19% in October '22. When he came in, Sunak received a grown ups in the room bounce and got to 26%. If he had built on that percentage, and add in the swingback we saw, he could have held Starmer off. Instead he chose to be the Dismal Decline Manager and he got the Tories down to 18%. Lower than Truss.
PB shrewdies just like Sunak so they airbrush his polling trajectory from history.
They knocked 4% off employee NI, possibly the biggest tax reduction average working people got over any Parliament - and yet even that didn't do Rishi any favours.
I think the reality was there was nothing Rishi could do to stem the decline..
Edit - also we don't know the depths Truss could have hit if she had remained in no 10 for even just a few more weeks. I suspect she could easily have hit Kemi's lowest polling and gone even lower.
Lol how many times have we heard from one person here the war in Ukraine was about to end
I disagree with @Sandpit on many things but I can't criticise his hopeful reports on the the Ukraine war. We all have a natural tendency to lap up and pass on reports that match our hope - I certainly do.
And he's surely not wrong that things look bleak for Russia, which has been led into a terrible disaster with Putin's adventure? Imminent surrender of Crimea? Maybe not, but their hold is beginning to look more tenuous.
I’m generally a positive and hopeful guy, willing that the best of humanity prevails.
If you can’t celebrate Moscow being on fire this week, Crimea being totally isolated, and Ukranian drones running up and down the logistics corridor into the Donbass, then when can you smile? Hell, they sent a Flamingo over 2,000km last night, over the Urals and into a refinery in Siberia.
Oh, and I have a trip to Ukraine booked for August. War being over by then would be awesome, but I think that’s too optimistic even for me!
Again she's ruling out a pact, but AFAICS she's not ruling out putting Nigel Farage in power.
Ruling out putting Farage in power would be equivalent to committing to forming a 'coalition of chaos' even if Reform have 300+ MPs. Her position is the only politically sensible one.
No it’s not.
There’s other options.
Such as let Reform run a minority government or have another election.
Kemi telling Tory MPs to abstain in a confidence vote in a hung Parliament is neither making Farage PM nor keeping Labour in office. So her position is correct
How is abstaining in a VoC when everyone else votes against not "making Farage PM?"
As it isn’t voting to make Farage PM anymore than it is voting to make Starmer or Burnham PM
Let's test this - if an opponent tried the same line would you accept the same logic and not criticise them for 'allowing' it?
No. A positive vote for Burnham or Starmer is a vote for a Labour government, a positive vote for Farage is a vote for a Reform government, abstaining is a vote for neither only a Kemi led government
Kemi's in no position to form a government,
She could be in a position to join a coalition but then who with She;s falling straight in to the CDU trap.
No she isn’t, the CDU have gone into coalition with the SPD. Kemi has ruled out a deal with Labour or Reform
Then she's just opting to be the opposition, Or is she going to merge with the LDs ?
The Tories are in an impossible situation - a large section of their never Labour vote has gone to Reform - it's not exactly easy to get it back.
Worse they don't want to lose any chance of getting some never Reform votes so they have to rule out supporting Reform.
It leaves Kemi and the Tory party a very fine line that they have to navigate in the hope / until the political landscape changes to their favour..
I think the bigger problem for the Tories is trying to recover some credibility. They have been behind some of the worst policy decisions this country has seen. They struggle to take HMG to task as it quite often is just continuing what they started,
"AI risks triggering ‘catastrophic’ phone network blackouts Ofcom raises alarm over risks linked to use of automation technology for monitoring networks" (£)
There are two main concerns with AI. One is that it can be used to find bugs in the code that can be exploited by hostile states, terrorists or criminals. Last week, the US Government blocked the export (or any use by foreigners) of Anthropic's latest models on these grounds. Effectively, the US Government is treating these AI models as weapons and regulating them accordingly.
The other concern is about cock-ups rather than conspiracies. If AI is used in routine maintenance of networks and spots a fault, it might take actions to rectify the situation faster than any human could react, and thus keep the network up so no-one notices the problem. The fear is that AI might apply the wrong fix and crash the whole network. You may recall seeing examples from other industries where production databases have been deleted or millions of dollars of trading losses.
The latest Anthropic AI, “Mythos” or “Fable 5”, allegedly managed to crack a whole load of US defence systems within hours, which is what led to the export ban and the company pulling the model from production.
Incidentally, the fact that the US Government can block exports of and access to AI models shows how fatuous are British claims to AI leadership. As is our wont with frontier research, British academics are underfunded and British companies sold, including what is now Google Deep Mind. All the AI action is now in America and China.
Yup. A massive opportunity lost with the DeepMind sale, and a chance to cement a Brexit benefit outside the strangulating EU AI regulation.
The US now has most of the West over a barrel, at a time when most of them really don’t like the orange man in the white house.
Labour also shut down the Heriot Watt AI research project when they came in, inexplicably. I think at the request of the American big guys - it could just be rank incompetence, but they sprayed money at everything else, so why not this?
A proper Government will reinstate the project. Barriers to access seem low - I see no reason why the UK can't do a 'Deep Seek' on a comparatively low budget.
A Labour source says Keir Starmer feels "betrayed"
"He gave everything to Labour, including sacrificing much of his children's teenage years to help make the party electable. He feels deeply betrayed, especially by those he believed were loyal to him"
Hmm. Having won the election, and struggled, he could have thought "maybe I'm not up to this" and looked for a way to continue the Labour government under a better leader.
Instead, he's done a Biden. At least it won't lead to the imminent likelihood of a Farage premiership.
Betrayal is part of politics ! Most politicians are backstabbing ungrateful bxstards!
I do though have some sympathy for Starmer because polling wise Labour aren’t miles behind Reform and the party has done some good things .
They have had a relentless almost daily attacks from the media , I don’t think I’ve seen such a hostile press and even the Guardian was laying the boot in .
And who exactly would have been leader if Starmer hadn’t have put his name forward . Even with the Tories imploding there still needed to be an alternative that wouldn’t frighten the horses .
Presumably Lisa Nandy, who would have been even more timorous about Europe and has achieved SFA at whatever the Ministry of Fun is called these days.
TL:DR the Russians are Donald Ducked, they no longer control the major supply routes to the occupied territories, and Crimea is now an island bar the Kerch Bridge which is closed to heavy traffic. It could all unravel very quickly from here.
Let’s hope so!
I think that overstates things a bit. Russia has temporary bridges up into northern Crimea to replace those damaged, and the bridges there are only damaged, not destroyed entirely.
I also think it's a bit negative on Ukrainian offensive capability. The Ukrainians have had three years to think about how to advance through minefields while under drone attack - it's not impossible they will have some innovations in that area.
And the more that Russian logistics are damaged the less offensive capability is required to overcome defences. A defensive line cannot be held without deliveries of ammunition.
It’s an optimistic take, sure, but the logistics breakdown does appear to be real.
Ukranian drones have fire control on the main roads through occupied Donbass, and have been taking out military and fuel supply vehicles seemingly at will for a couple of weeks now.
May was apparently the first month in more than 2 years where Ukraine won back more territory than it lost. The balance of power has changed radically in the last few months and not in Russia's favour. I think a collapse of their control of Crimea is looking inevitable. They simply cannot supply their units or even the domestic population there. The political consequences of such a development would surely be fatal for Putin.
It truly is astonishing that just one year and eleven months after winning a historic landslide, Starmer is terminally damaged and has only days left.
This is just a consequent ripple following the astonishing experience of Liz Truss as PM. It will take time for that to work its way out of the political system.
Had Liz Truss not been PM then there's very little chance that Starmer would have become PM, certainly not with a landslide. Nobody liked him enough to make him PM.
We are yet to see whether Burnham has the ability to bring normality back (my guess is no, but I have my moments of hope).
It follows then that we should expect future astonishing events - such as Farage becoming PM when going into the election with only a handful of MPs.
Sorry for being boring, but Truss' polling nadir was 19% in October '22. When he came in, Sunak received a grown ups in the room bounce and got to 26%. If he had built on that percentage, and add in the swingback we saw, he could have held Starmer off. Instead he chose to be the Dismal Decline Manager and he got the Tories down to 18%. Lower than Truss.
PB shrewdies just like Sunak so they airbrush his polling trajectory from history.
I didn't mention Sunak because he's irrelevant to what happened.
Again she's ruling out a pact, but AFAICS she's not ruling out putting Nigel Farage in power.
Ruling out putting Farage in power would be equivalent to committing to forming a 'coalition of chaos' even if Reform have 300+ MPs. Her position is the only politically sensible one.
No it’s not.
There’s other options.
Such as let Reform run a minority government or have another election.
Kemi telling Tory MPs to abstain in a confidence vote in a hung Parliament is neither making Farage PM nor keeping Labour in office. So her position is correct
How is abstaining in a VoC when everyone else votes against not "making Farage PM?"
As it isn’t voting to make Farage PM anymore than it is voting to make Starmer or Burnham PM
Let's test this - if an opponent tried the same line would you accept the same logic and not criticise them for 'allowing' it?
No. A positive vote for Burnham or Starmer is a vote for a Labour government, a positive vote for Farage is a vote for a Reform government, abstaining is a vote for neither only a Kemi led government
Kemi's in no position to form a government,
She could be in a position to join a coalition but then who with She;s falling straight in to the CDU trap.
No she isn’t, the CDU have gone into coalition with the SPD. Kemi has ruled out a deal with Labour or Reform
Then she's just opting to be the opposition, Or is she going to merge with the LDs ?
No she backs Brexit on current terms so is not going to do any deals with the LDs. Kemi is fine with a Millwall ‘no other parties like us and we don’t care’ approach for the Conservatives at present. The Conservatives are an alternative to Labour, the LDs and Greens and Reform and Restore not a crutch to prop them up in failing governments
Again she's ruling out a pact, but AFAICS she's not ruling out putting Nigel Farage in power.
Ruling out putting Farage in power would be equivalent to committing to forming a 'coalition of chaos' even if Reform have 300+ MPs. Her position is the only politically sensible one.
No it’s not.
There’s other options.
Such as let Reform run a minority government or have another election.
Kemi telling Tory MPs to abstain in a confidence vote in a hung Parliament is neither making Farage PM nor keeping Labour in office. So her position is correct
How is abstaining in a VoC when everyone else votes against not "making Farage PM?"
As it isn’t voting to make Farage PM anymore than it is voting to make Starmer or Burnham PM
Let's test this - if an opponent tried the same line would you accept the same logic and not criticise them for 'allowing' it?
No. A positive vote for Burnham or Starmer is a vote for a Labour government, a positive vote for Farage is a vote for a Reform government, abstaining is a vote for neither only a Kemi led government
Kemi's in no position to form a government,
She could be in a position to join a coalition but then who with She;s falling straight in to the CDU trap.
No she isn’t, the CDU have gone into coalition with the SPD. Kemi has ruled out a deal with Labour or Reform
Then she's just opting to be the opposition, Or is she going to merge with the LDs ?
The Tories are in an impossible situation - a large section of their never Labour vote has gone to Reform - it's not exactly easy to get it back.
Worse they don't want to lose any chance of getting some never Reform votes so they have to rule out supporting Reform.
It leaves Kemi and the Tory party a very fine line that they have to navigate in the hope / until the political landscape changes to their favour..
I think the bigger problem for the Tories is trying to recover some credibility. They have been behind some of the worst policy decisions this country has seen. They struggles to take HMG to task as it quite often is just continuing what they started,
I think that's part of the problem with being in power for 10+ years, it takes a long time for those who remember things to forgot why they currently don't vote for you..
Kemi has to get through the next election with at least the same seats so she has something that can be built from.
"AI risks triggering ‘catastrophic’ phone network blackouts Ofcom raises alarm over risks linked to use of automation technology for monitoring networks" (£)
There are two main concerns with AI. One is that it can be used to find bugs in the code that can be exploited by hostile states, terrorists or criminals. Last week, the US Government blocked the export (or any use by foreigners) of Anthropic's latest models on these grounds. Effectively, the US Government is treating these AI models as weapons and regulating them accordingly.
The other concern is about cock-ups rather than conspiracies. If AI is used in routine maintenance of networks and spots a fault, it might take actions to rectify the situation faster than any human could react, and thus keep the network up so no-one notices the problem. The fear is that AI might apply the wrong fix and crash the whole network. You may recall seeing examples from other industries where production databases have been deleted or millions of dollars of trading losses.
The latest Anthropic AI, “Mythos” or “Fable 5”, allegedly managed to crack a whole load of US defence systems within hours, which is what led to the export ban and the company pulling the model from production.
Incidentally, the fact that the US Government can block exports of and access to AI models shows how fatuous are British claims to AI leadership. As is our wont with frontier research, British academics are underfunded and British companies sold, including what is now Google Deep Mind. All the AI action is now in America and China.
Yup. A massive opportunity lost with the DeepMind sale, and a chance to cement a Brexit benefit outside the strangulating EU AI regulation.
The US now has most of the West over a barrel, at a time when most of them really don’t like the orange man in the white house.
Peak Trump Denial Syndrome - Sandpit in DENIAL that Trump is far more pro-Putin than pro-Zelenskyy!
"AI risks triggering ‘catastrophic’ phone network blackouts Ofcom raises alarm over risks linked to use of automation technology for monitoring networks" (£)
There are two main concerns with AI. One is that it can be used to find bugs in the code that can be exploited by hostile states, terrorists or criminals. Last week, the US Government blocked the export (or any use by foreigners) of Anthropic's latest models on these grounds. Effectively, the US Government is treating these AI models as weapons and regulating them accordingly.
The other concern is about cock-ups rather than conspiracies. If AI is used in routine maintenance of networks and spots a fault, it might take actions to rectify the situation faster than any human could react, and thus keep the network up so no-one notices the problem. The fear is that AI might apply the wrong fix and crash the whole network. You may recall seeing examples from other industries where production databases have been deleted or millions of dollars of trading losses.
The latest Anthropic AI, “Mythos” or “Fable 5”, allegedly managed to crack a whole load of US defence systems within hours, which is what led to the export ban and the company pulling the model from production.
Incidentally, the fact that the US Government can block exports of and access to AI models shows how fatuous are British claims to AI leadership. As is our wont with frontier research, British academics are underfunded and British companies sold, including what is now Google Deep Mind. All the AI action is now in America and China.
Yup. A massive opportunity lost with the DeepMind sale, and a chance to cement a Brexit benefit outside the strangulating EU AI regulation.
The US now has most of the West over a barrel, at a time when most of them really don’t like the orange man in the white house.
Peak Trump Denial Syndrome - Sandpit in DENIAL that Trump is far more pro-Putin than pro-Zelenskyy!
"AI risks triggering ‘catastrophic’ phone network blackouts Ofcom raises alarm over risks linked to use of automation technology for monitoring networks" (£)
There are two main concerns with AI. One is that it can be used to find bugs in the code that can be exploited by hostile states, terrorists or criminals. Last week, the US Government blocked the export (or any use by foreigners) of Anthropic's latest models on these grounds. Effectively, the US Government is treating these AI models as weapons and regulating them accordingly.
The other concern is about cock-ups rather than conspiracies. If AI is used in routine maintenance of networks and spots a fault, it might take actions to rectify the situation faster than any human could react, and thus keep the network up so no-one notices the problem. The fear is that AI might apply the wrong fix and crash the whole network. You may recall seeing examples from other industries where production databases have been deleted or millions of dollars of trading losses.
The latest Anthropic AI, “Mythos” or “Fable 5”, allegedly managed to crack a whole load of US defence systems within hours, which is what led to the export ban and the company pulling the model from production.
Incidentally, the fact that the US Government can block exports of and access to AI models shows how fatuous are British claims to AI leadership. As is our wont with frontier research, British academics are underfunded and British companies sold, including what is now Google Deep Mind. All the AI action is now in America and China.
Yup. A massive opportunity lost with the DeepMind sale, and a chance to cement a Brexit benefit outside the strangulating EU AI regulation.
The US now has most of the West over a barrel, at a time when most of them really don’t like the orange man in the white house.
Peak Trump Denial Syndrome - Sandpit in DENIAL that Trump is far more pro-Putin than pro-Zelenskyy!
Sandpit was talking about AI and the fact the UK sold it's largest specialist for not that much - not sure what that's got to do with Ukraine..
"AI risks triggering ‘catastrophic’ phone network blackouts Ofcom raises alarm over risks linked to use of automation technology for monitoring networks" (£)
There are two main concerns with AI. One is that it can be used to find bugs in the code that can be exploited by hostile states, terrorists or criminals. Last week, the US Government blocked the export (or any use by foreigners) of Anthropic's latest models on these grounds. Effectively, the US Government is treating these AI models as weapons and regulating them accordingly.
The other concern is about cock-ups rather than conspiracies. If AI is used in routine maintenance of networks and spots a fault, it might take actions to rectify the situation faster than any human could react, and thus keep the network up so no-one notices the problem. The fear is that AI might apply the wrong fix and crash the whole network. You may recall seeing examples from other industries where production databases have been deleted or millions of dollars of trading losses.
The latest Anthropic AI, “Mythos” or “Fable 5”, allegedly managed to crack a whole load of US defence systems within hours, which is what led to the export ban and the company pulling the model from production.
Incidentally, the fact that the US Government can block exports of and access to AI models shows how fatuous are British claims to AI leadership. As is our wont with frontier research, British academics are underfunded and British companies sold, including what is now Google Deep Mind. All the AI action is now in America and China.
Yup. A massive opportunity lost with the DeepMind sale, and a chance to cement a Brexit benefit outside the strangulating EU AI regulation.
The US now has most of the West over a barrel, at a time when most of them really don’t like the orange man in the white house.
Peak Trump Denial Syndrome - Sandpit in DENIAL that Trump is far more pro-Putin than pro-Zelenskyy!
Sandpit was talking about AI and the fact the UK sold it's largest specialist for not that much - not sure what that's got to do with Ukraine..
He keeps bangin' on about Trump Derangement Syndrome, when he has Trump DENIAL Syndrome
Comments
And if Starmer steps down I can't see anyone else reaching the required 81 MP nominations. Thus there is only one candidate.
Even the Labour Party can't make a contest out of a one-horse race
Fast-Track Nominations: Drastically shortening the MP nomination window. For example, candidates could be given just 48 hours to secure the backing of 81 MPs.
Digital Voting: Bypassing lengthy postal ballot windows in favor of rapid, secure online voting open to members and affiliated supporters for a strictly limited period, such as one week.
Accelerated Campaigning: Curtailing the traditional weeks-long tour of national hustings, holding a streamlined series of virtual debates to allow an immediate vote.
The NEC can do this. It is in everyone's interest that it is a quick and non disruptive process.
But I don't think Starmer will stand in which case it can be over very quickly.
Whatever the two of them agree.
Which satisfied the egos of both Brown and Blair, so it worked.
They don't need to though.
FOX & FRIENDS: Do you have any immediate plans to join Jared and Steve?
JD VANCE: It's always a delicate coordination dance with the diplomatic protocols. I've gotta be honest with you -- I don't really understand these things
https://x.com/atrupar/status/2068342163650339019
"AI risks triggering ‘catastrophic’ phone network blackouts
Ofcom raises alarm over risks linked to use of automation technology for monitoring networks" (£)
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2026/06/21/ai-risks-triggering-catastrophic-phone-network-failure/
On 10 May, Blair announced to the Sedgefield Labour Party that he would stand down as prime minister on 27 June 2007, and that he would be requesting Labour's NEC to seek a new party leader.
Only Gordon Brown attained over 45 nominations and was thus elected unopposed.
Tony Blair tendered his resignation as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom after ten years, to Queen Elizabeth II on 27 June 2007 and Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown was asked by The Queen to form a new government.
Nature abhors a vacuum, if you fail to show leadership you can't blame your MPs for deciding for themselves which was to pull - and it won't all be in the same direction.
Anyway, we are getting well ahead of ourselves even thinking of victory just yet.
Nominations closed on 17 May, with Brown as the only candidate.
Labour then proceeded to hold hustings, which Brown attended as the sole candidate.
After a campaign including hustings with Brown as sole candidate, he became leader on 24 June, over a month after close of nominations.
The campaign and hustings for Brown were entirely unnecessary, but it satisfied both Brown and Blair's egos.
If he'd become Labour leader in 2015, or even 2017 I don't think he'd have ever made it - even as it was he almost bombed out during 2021 anyway.
it was also under an entirely different rulebook, remember Ed changed the rules completely.
A Labour source says Keir Starmer feels "betrayed"
"He gave everything to Labour, including sacrificing much of his children's teenage years to help make the party electable. He feels deeply betrayed, especially by those he believed were loyal to him"
The order runs
Blair (13 years)
Kinnock (9 years)
Starmer (6 years)
Miliband (5 years)
Corbyn (4 years)
Callaghan (4 years)
Foot (3 years)
Brown (3 years)
Smith (2 years).
The country can't afford even a 4 week process. The outgoing government would have no authority. Everything would just grind to a halt.
Get it sorted this week.
The other concern is about cock-ups rather than conspiracies. If AI is used in routine maintenance of networks and spots a fault, it might take actions to rectify the situation faster than any human could react, and thus keep the network up so no-one notices the problem. The fear is that AI might apply the wrong fix and crash the whole network. You may recall seeing examples from other industries where production databases have been deleted or millions of dollars of trading losses.
Most people I see are treating it as a small, satirical, example of what Trump does on a far larger scale elsewhere.
https://x.com/mbohnert/status/2068643473062805672
TL:DR the Russians are Donald Ducked, they no longer control the major supply routes to the occupied territories, and Crimea is now an island bar the Kerch Bridge which is closed to heavy traffic. It could all unravel very quickly from here.
Let’s hope so!
It's a re-run of Starmer getting elected because he's not Sunak. Now it's Burnham in the chair because he's not Starmer.
Had Liz Truss not been PM then there's very little chance that Starmer would have become PM, certainly not with a landslide. Nobody liked him enough to make him PM.
We are yet to see whether Burnham has the ability to bring normality back (my guess is no, but I have my moments of hope).
It follows then that we should expect future astonishing events - such as Farage becoming PM when going into the election with only a handful of MPs.
We can agree on very little, but I’ll always support those who put their head above the parapet and actually stand for office.
They’ve arrested more people for touching the peeling paint at the Reflecting Pool than they’ve arrested from the Epstein files.
(Cliff Richard iirc)
https://x.com/kimmonismus/status/2068605229965234238
You can extend the series back further though: Sunak elected because he's not Truss; Truss - not Johnson; Johnson - not May... etc.
Johnson tbf did have a plan: complete Brexit come what may. But beyond that he had neither a plan, nor more crucially the work ethic to succeed.
Truss had a plan but unfortunately it was a bonkers unfunded plan the nearly trashed the economy.
We probably get the leaders we deserve.
Blair wanted a long goodbye.
Brown was happy to take a victory lap of hustings knowing he'd be PM at the end of it.
None of it served a purpose, but it fluffed both their egos so it happened.
The question in 2026 is how much of a hurry is Burnham in - and how much once he's resigned has Starmer simply had enough of it all.
Ironically Russia had the lowest death toll of the major USSR nations, Ukraine suffered a significantly higher proportionate toll as it was their land predominantly being invaded then, as now. So they gave more fighting to protect their land, then as now.
I also think it's a bit negative on Ukrainian offensive capability. The Ukrainians have had three years to think about how to advance through minefields while under drone attack - it's not impossible they will have some innovations in that area.
And the more that Russian logistics are damaged the less offensive capability is required to overcome defences. A defensive line cannot be held without deliveries of ammunition.
But how things are going might impact potential deals, reducing what they demand (backed by Trump).
Putin clearly doesn’t want to start conscription from the big cities, but he’s close to being out of options.
It’s said that logistics wins wars, and right now it’s looking like they don’t even have enough fuel to get the new recruits to the front lines.
Meanwhile, Moscow and St.Petersberg have long queues for petrol that are affecting the middle classes.
Pretty pathetic the way s/he never learned from mistakes.
Ukranian drones have fire control on the main roads through occupied Donbass, and have been taking out military and fuel supply vehicles seemingly at will for a couple of weeks now.
Communicating policy the centre and centre left will vote for even if it means higher taxes to explain the benefits for the majority is key.
The Right, especially The Tories can bleat, they trashed the economy with highest taxes in history on those least able to pay.
Communication too that welfare must be for those in genuine need and not lazy scroats.
The Tories have the sum total of zero to offer, least of all an apology. All the Shadow Cabinet complicit in the destruction of the UK
Farage offers racism and unfunded pipulism no more.
If Burnham or Streeting better still Burnham and Streeting do what they do best, they can communicate their way to power for the rest of this decade and all the next.
There is no credible option
Party lines are tough things on consistency when parties change their stances. See also calls for early elections.
If all was equal, everything bar the names the same, the response should be the same. You'd change based on the names.
They choose to go after civilian and cultural targets - such as the famous cathedral recently - because they believe this will break the will of the Ukrainians to resist. If they had a campaign more focused on Ukrainian railway infrastructure (for example) they might have more success.
In principle that's a solvable problem for Russia.
We also know that Russia has been trying to copy Ukraine's interceptor drones. If they were to make progress on that then they might be able to defend against the Ukrainian drones that are currently causing so much trouble for Russian logistics.
So there are certainly plenty of ways that the war could change direction.
But then, Ukraine will be adding ballistic missile capability to its arsenal soon, so current trends might also intensify.
And he's surely not wrong that things look bleak for Russia, which has been led into a terrible disaster with Putin's adventure? Imminent surrender of Crimea? Maybe not, but their hold is beginning to look more tenuous.
She could be in a position to join a coalition but then who with She;s falling straight in to the CDU trap.
I do though have some sympathy for Starmer because polling wise Labour aren’t miles behind Reform and the party has done some good things .
They have had a relentless almost daily attacks from the media , I don’t think I’ve seen such a hostile press and even the Guardian was laying the boot in .
And who exactly would have been leader if Starmer hadn’t have put his name forward . Even with the Tories imploding there still needed to be an alternative that wouldn’t frighten the horses .
That was their choice.
In the end though it just makes others wonder if they are next?
Worse they don't want to lose any chance of getting some never Reform votes so they have to rule out supporting Reform.
It leaves Kemi and the Tory party a very fine line that they have to navigate in the hope / until the political landscape changes to their favour..
The US now has most of the West over a barrel, at a time when most of them really don’t like the orange man in the white house.
PB shrewdies just like Sunak so they airbrush his polling trajectory from history.
I think the reality was there was nothing Rishi could do to stem the decline..
Edit - also we don't know the depths Truss could have hit if she had remained in no 10 for even just a few more weeks. I suspect she could easily have hit Kemi's lowest polling and gone even lower.
If you can’t celebrate Moscow being on fire this week, Crimea being totally isolated, and Ukranian drones running up and down the logistics corridor into the Donbass, then when can you smile? Hell, they sent a Flamingo over 2,000km last night, over the Urals and into a refinery in Siberia.
Oh, and I have a trip to Ukraine booked for August. War being over by then would be awesome, but I think that’s too optimistic even for me!
A proper Government will reinstate the project. Barriers to access seem low - I see no reason why the UK can't do a 'Deep Seek' on a comparatively low budget.
Instead, he's done a Biden. At least it won't lead to the imminent likelihood of a Farage premiership.
Kemi has to get through the next election with at least the same seats so she has something that can be built from.