Politics

Starmer expected to resign on Monday

On the other hand there’s a deffo whiff of his enemies saying this to the newspapers so as to force it.

So, you know.

White supremacists with links to banned neo-Nazi groups are helping to fund Restore Britain.
Rupert Lowe’s party could hold the balance of power in Thursday’s Makerfield by-election by splitting the Right-wing vote with Reform UK, clearing the way for Labour’s Andy Burnham to win.
Some of Restore’s supporters are so openly racist that Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, the far-Right activist detained last week under counter-terrorism laws, has questioned whether the party is too extremist.

But over and above that, the mimic that response Simon Hoggart got once. The country’s full of people like that and in a democracy they’ve every right to take part in politics, to gain representation.

Entirely missing from either story is the streets. Those rainy streets outside polling stations where on 23 June 2016 people queued up, many of them for the first time in years. The slim majority opting to leave did so not necessarily because they cared much about the EU, but as part of a giant vote against the establishment.

Not obvious that the feeling has gone away as yet either.

“If you are targeting people on the basis of the colour of their skin,” the Northern Ireland secretary, Hilary Benn, asked last week, “how else can you describe them? That is racist thuggery.” It is. But there is another way of describing the actions of the rioters burning people out of their homes in Belfast, though ministers somehow cannot bring themselves to say it. Terrorism.

The violence there clearly meets the government’s definition: “the use or threat” of actions designed to “intimidate the public” for the purpose of “advancing a political, religious, racial or ideological cause”. Among these actions are “serious violence against a person” and “serious damage to property”. I happen to believe that the property clause blurs the issue. But either way, in what possible world do the Belfast attacks not fit the definition?

But, d’ye see George, terrorism in Northern Ireland works. Gets you elected to the Commons, made joint or deputy First Minister and all that sort of malarkey.

How could anyone of our sort of age not notice this?

Ed Miliband is pushing to be made chancellor if Andy Burnham becomes prime minister, The Telegraph can reveal.

In a broader sense, too, Farage and Lowe make the same promise: that Britain’s supposed decline will be reversed through a population purge, tougher policing, the promotion of Christianity and traditional patriotism, the removal of red tape and environmental targets, and the elevation of self-reliant, entrepreneurial citizens.

I’ve not known Nige to say anything at all about Christianity, tbh.

But isn’t it lovely how Beckett just throws that in there as part of the list of sins?

We believe, really, we do:

With many Democratic voters hanging on to their ballots until the election’s final days and California’s notoriously thorough, but slow, processing time for ballots,

Unh hunh.

Reform UK support could plateau as it relies on socially conservative views, study finds

You know, as with Green Party support having an upper limit as there are only so many shrieking morons to be found in even in Britain?

But to turn away from truth telling and to whimsy. Support for a political party is limited by the number of supporters the political party might have? Rilly?

Espriella, who calls himself el Tigre (the Tiger), celebrated the result: “Compatriots, defenders of the homeland, more than 10 million Colombians placed their trust in el Tigre and joined the pack … In 21 days, we are going to change the history of Colombia forever,” he said in a video alongside his wife and children, all wearing shirts of the Colombian national football team.

Petro posted on X that “as president, I do not accept the preliminary results” released by the National Civil Registry, the independent public body responsible for organising Colombia’s elections.

Without showing any evidence, the president claimed the count included “800,000 additional people” and said he would only “consider and accept” the results of the official scrutiny process, during which the National Electoral Council reviews the physical tally sheets, a procedure that can take days or even weeks.

Nasty, horrible, right wing type comes first – but does not win, run off to come – an election. Left immediately comlpains about vote rigging.

Ho Well. Sometimes in foreign isn;t so different, eh?

Trump gains a stone but has ‘body of 65-year-old’

Which 65 year old has he nicked the body of?

Sir Tony Blair’s legacy is a country “run by HR” and governed by his worst ideas, Kemi Badenoch has said.

Works as a policy set to me.

Sturgeon: I’m the victim of my husband’s fraud

Quite:

Nicola Sturgeon said she “should not be held responsible for the wrongdoing of men” after Peter Murrell, her estranged husband, admitted to embezzling hundreds of thousands of pounds from the SNP this week.

The Big Boy did it and then he ran away.

American presidents don’t have a stellar record of transparency about their health problems.

After a polio diagnosis that caused paralysis of his lower body, Franklin Delano Roosevelt used a wheelchair to get around, but went to great lengths to conceal it from the public. John F Kennedy suffered debilitating back pain, but most Americans never had a clue, seeing only a vigorous and youthful politician.

And, more recently – and infamously – Joe Biden’s White House staff worked to conceal his age-related decline, until that was no longer possible. After a disastrous debate performance and belated press coverage, Biden called off his re-election bid in 2024.

But of course Trumpy is mad, senile and – ! – right wing. So, off w”im.

So transparent, eh?

A Reform UK plan to cut the size of the civil service would involve sacking more planning officers than exist

Given that what the country requires is negative planning this seems entirely sensible to me.

Public control must mean democratic public ownership of our utilities.

I never do understand why here. Better control? Well, OK. But this demand that it must be public, democratic…don’t get it.

Anyway:

But the left is a force that must be listened to, rather than swindled all over again.

No, swindle ’em. Then stomp ’em, obviously.

With one important exception, this life cycle is usually briefer for Labour governments, since they face more opposition from the media and powerful economic interests, and more suspicion from voters as a result.

Nowt to do with the fact that they and their policies are shite then…..

US southern states are rushing to redraw congressional maps to eliminate Democratic districts and dilute the influence of Black voters in electing candidates, a bare-knuckled blitz occurring even in some states where voting in congressional primaries has begun, and prompted by the US supreme court’s decision gutting section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

If the system was – hugely – biased in your favour and then bias is ruled as not being legal then yes, it’s going to be a bit of a shock as the system reverts to unbiased, isn’t it?

Louisiana, the state at the center of the supreme court’s Voting Rights Act decision, is on the verge of implementing a new map that would eliminate the seat of one of the state’s two Black Democrats in Congress.

Well, yes:

That is, more than a bit obviously, a fiddle, no?

But the greater factor in the past couple of months has been the UK’s painful exposure to higher oil and gas prices, and thus inflationary pressures. Britain imports 40% of its energy and already has some of the highest electricity prices in the western world.

What a wondrous energy policy we’ve had since 2008 and the Climate Change Act, eh?

A more fundamental weakness lies in the very essence of Reform as a rightwing populist party.

What if what you call right wing is in fact popular? Or, as it seems to be turning out, the working class that actyually works isn’t all that taken with the concerns of the metropolitan left?

Reform UK’s success has caused trepidation among many members of minority communities across the UK, with concerns there could now be a rise in hostile rhetoric.

Didn’t the people just have their say?