British Politics
Been on holiday for a few weeks, surprised to find no general discussion of British politics so though I'd kick one off.
Surely now is the time for European countries outside the EU to forge closer ties with the rest of the continent.
Reform is a very well-chosen name.
It not only means to mend, or fix something; it also means to reconstitute something(s) that broke up, in this case the NF and BNP.
Still, when you need enough 'talent' to form a whole Cabinet... Then again I'm not sure they could do so much worse than this lot. Or Reform might fade and under-perform in real polls rather than opinion polls and if there's no clear winner the nightmare scenario of a Labour-Green coalition rears its hideous head, like SNP-Green in Scotland. Wall-to-wall idiotic luxury-belief bluehair Tarquin-and-Coriander elitism. Hardly bears thinking about.
I still think it will be labour winning at the next election.
Quite possible still under KS although
Former Labour minister Andrew Gwynne is on the brink of standing down as an MP, ministers and party officials believe.
The move could potentially pave a way for Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham to return to the Commons and make a leadership challenge against Sir Keir Starmer.
Gwynne was elected as a Labour MP, but was suspended in 2025 after a newspaper reported offensive messages he sent in a WhatsApp Group.
His departure from the House of Commons would trigger a by-election in his Greater Manchester constituency of Gorton and Denton, which Labour won at the last election with a majority of 13,000. Gwynne has been contacted for comment.
Interesting. Starmer will be on the board of the Gazan Reformstion company or whatever it will be called, alongside Blair and other evil mfers by then
Labour available to back at 3.6
I think Starmer's declined the invitation.
so what will starmer do about Burnham
if he blocks him from running and they lose the byelection then will his obvious lying about it not being him who blocked him, save him?
will he do some blairite pact. will Burnham pretend to believe him.
These questions and many more ...
Starmer has to let Burnham run otherwise he's no better than any other despot who doesn't allow candidates that have a chance of beating them enter an election.
Will Polanski run in the election to split the left vote and effectively keep Starmer in power? Would The Tories not field a candidate to give reform a better chance?
What a tangled web...
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/art...
-Interesting article on the Chagos deal, which if nothing else, explains why Starmer is doing this in the first place, which he hasn't done a very good job of communicating himself. Cliffs.
1. This deal was secretly in the works by the British Foreign Office pre Starmer. It was dumped on him, and he rushed it for political reasons; to try to get it finalized while Biden was in office.
2. From the Foreign Offices perspective this deal was good for Britain, as it resolved the murky sovereignty of the islands while still allowing the US/Britain to keep control of Diego Garcia with a "100 year lease." Although it doesn't seem like anyone really had a plan for what they would do if Mauritius "leased" other islands to China (there are 60 of them)and they militarized them too, which seems likely, given they are friendly with China and dont really have anything else to do with them, given they dont even have a Navy.
3. Trump originally "ok'd" the deal, although this is Trump, so at the time he probably wasn't interested and didn't even know what he was "ok'ing"
4. It doesn't seem like anyone really thought about how the deal would play politically, coming from a deeply unpopular Starmer. And it went about as well as one would expect, and even Trump has now publicly turned against it.
5. This is Trump, so he still probably isn't interested and doesn't understand the implications, but decided to use it to grandstand anyway.
As I understand it, Trump/US had a veto on this when the deal was agreed as it is a joint US/UK base. If the US had put the kybosh on it at the time, it wouldn't have gone ahead.
Starmer has to let Burnham run otherwise he's no better than any other despot who doesn't allow candidates that have a chance of beating them enter an election.
Will Polanski run in the election to split the left vote and effectively keep Starmer in power? Would The Tories not field a candidate to give reform a better chance?
What a tangled web...
It's not the same as a despot. He cant stop Burnham running. It's just whether he can run as the labour candidate which is a completely legitimate thing for the labour party to decide.
starmer is just trapped between his cowardice and his cowardice.
Tories starting to look electable
This is warming up.
"There are some people who are MPs because they care about their communities and want to deliver a better country. There are others who do it for their personal ambition," the Tory party spokesman added.
The party's initial statement also said: "The Conservatives did all we could to look after Suella's mental health, but she was clearly very unhappy."
They later issued a corrected statement which removed the sentence, saying the original lines were "a draft version" which had been "sent out in error".
Braverman said the reference to her mental health was "a bit pathetic" and "more signs of a bitter and desperate party that seems to be in free-fall".
Could've been the UK too.
The European Union and India have announced a landmark trade deal after nearly two decades of on-off talks, as both sides aim to deepen ties amid tensions with the US.
"We did it, we delivered the mother of all deals," European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said at a media briefing in Delhi. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi called the pact "historic".
It will allow free trade of goods between the bloc of 27 European states and the world's most populous country, which together make up nearly 25% of global gross domestic product and a market of two billion people.
The deal will see a number of huge tariff cuts across a range of goods and services, and a joint security partnership.
Von der Leyen and European Council President António Costa are in Delhi, where they met Modi at a bilateral summit.
The European Commission said the agreement, external would eliminate tariffs on most exports of chemicals, machinery and electrical equipment, as well as aircraft and spacecraft, following phased reductions. Significantly, duties on motor vehicles, currently as high as 110%, would be cut to 10% under a quota of 250,000 vehicles. That is six times larger than the 37,000-unit quota India granted to the UK in a deal signed last July, Bloomberg reported, external.
India will also cut tariffs on wine, beer and olive oil from the EU. Brussels said the agreement would support investment flows, improve access to European markets and deepen supply-chain integration.
OMG if only we'd be in the EU we'd have a trade deal with India by now!
Oh wait, we got one in January 2022
If we'd stayed in the EU, we'd only have been 4 years later.
I’ve only briefly compared the terms of both deals, but do you really believe that India offered better net terms to a country of 65M people than an economic bloc of 450M?
Have you ever shopped in CostCo?
Journalism in this country must be at an all time low. Peston getting a good kicking at last, even if only on social media.
