Rayvin

Yeah but as much as Putin is trying to paint himself as the saviour of the developing world there, it's not like he has widespread and fervent support for this even amongst such nations. I disagree with the assertion of the guy making that twitter thread - that this was the obvious and apparent strategy from day one. It's been far too haphazard throughout from Russia for that to be true. While I don't doubt that the issue of Western hegemony is a longstanding grievance of Putin's, and a backdrop to a lot of his commentary, I struggle with the idea that this alone and above all else was the reason he kicked this off - it would have been far more centralised in the narrative up until now if it had been. This is the pivot, the attempt to re-cast what is happening. The reality is that 20 years ago Russia would have been more than happy to join up to Western structures if it could have been done in a way wherein Putin could have maintained power throughout - he decided against this because his central aim is ensuring his own power, and now towards the end of his life, his own legacy. I do think it quite likely he will order nuclear strikes because he really has gone all in on this now though. He won't survive this if Russia is repelled, he has to win. So yes Tom, I agree, we are in trouble now. How many lives about to be lost at the whim of a psychopath. And he is a psychopath - that has been as clear as day for years. There was never any excuse.

We would, so you're likely right. That said I am starting to wonder if that's where this is heading either way. Putin annexing regions into Russia is his opportunity to claim Ukraine is breaching Russian sovereignty in those places, and gives him his pretext for a nuclear response. If that happens then IMO NATO is in there no matter what.

Aye so that she can give the rich a payrise, the benefit of which will trickle down to you. Just typing this logic out again it dawns on me once more how ludicrous all of this is.

Truss answered this man, keep up - you get a better paying job.

I have to admit, this is quiet staggering Tories at 21%...

@Renton I just think you're expecting them to panic at this whereas history has shown us that the Tories are more than capable of riding out the storm because they know there are effectively no consequences to them as long as they get it together in time for the GE. You're right in everything you're saying about the pressures that will be upon people, but when they hold Johnson up against Starmer - Johnson who will be painted as a firefighter, a man who steps up to tackle the big issues, a leader in moments of turmoil (which is very Churchill btw, and entirely what he's leaned into himself in terms of his political character), will the public think "fuck that cretin, he created most of this mess with his Brexit and general incompetence" or will they think "Yeah I mean there was Partygate and he doesn't tell the truth all the time, but he got the big calls right, he was a leader in the Ukraine situation, and he did get Brexit over the line - what we need right now is a leader for a time of crisis" In other words, will people remember the politics that got us here, or will they remember the personalities. If it's the latter, and I think the Tories might gamble on that, then Labour will not have it so easy.

IMO they'll ride this out until they're about a year out from the election and then if the polling is broadly the same, bin her in favour of returning Johnson to power. He comes riding back in as a saviour to the country in difficult times (Churchillian), has his past magically purged clean thanks to the intermittent period of Trussonomics and resultant castastrophes, and hits the ground running with a bounce big enough to take them up towards Labour. Then the full unbridled fury of the Daily Heil will be turned against Starmer and Labour, and we'll be fighting for our lives again. If they bin her now, its too soon for Johnson to come back, and would give him too long in office to make the most of the bounce he'd get (i.e. he'd mess things up and remind everyone how useless he was, the longer he's in office before the GE). And while the longer she's in power, the more damaging it becomes for the country... the good of the country has never stopped the Tories from committing to a particular action in the past. As we all know, we are in this particular dystopian nightmare because resolving an internal conflict within the party was more important to David Cameron than what was right for the country. The party comes first, always. They will let Truss happen.

And Toontastic makes some more predictions about the imminent collapse of a Tory government Maybe you're right. You definitely should be right. But genuinely, I will believe it when I see it - I think they'll give her more than enough rope to ruin the country before they get rid of her.

Less than the dollar... And you guys all thought crypto was volatile. My crypto holdings are soaring in value against the £ atm

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2022/sep/28/uk-house-prices-predicted-fall-mortgage-interest-rate House prices predicted to drop 10%. That would be a silver lining for me if I could actually get anyone to give me a mortgage - but since I'm self employed I rather imagine that I'll be priced out by considerations other than actual house price.

While in full agreement of the overall thrust of this point, I would like to note that being published is a requirement for PhDs in most places and certainly very normal. It seems to have been published by Cambridge themselves which is again, fairly normal. It does however mean that no commercial publisher that I can see picked it up, and so I would expect that it was published as a formality once they determined to grant him his degree. As such, being published as a book here isn't noteworthy in terms of how academically poignant the work is (although the PhD itself would be). I note that the PhD is about the debasement of currency in the 1600s. Maybe that's where he's planning to take us back to.

Don't think the IMF realise who they're messing with here tbh. We're a fully sovereign nation, newly independent from the economic shackles of the EU. Britannia is unchained, we have boundless potential. To quote a famous Tory wordsmith, the IMF need to shut up and go away.

Superb article - the EU is stronger than us because of their internationalist nature, the ECB is more able to respond to what is going on than the BoE because it is simply more powerful. Long may the glorious truth rain down upon the bullshit of Brexit and it's damnable acolytes.

Could be any number of potential bad faith actors tbh.

I agree Starmer was absolutely right to kill this dead before it had legs to run with. We can't afford this nonsense, the country is utterly fucked for quite possibly the rest of our lives if we do not remove these dangerous cretins from office.

It is a ridiculous statement for her to have made - the left really need to understand that this is more about class than it is about race or gender. Class has always been the common denominator and the founding principle of inequality. Obviously that doesn't mean everything is peachy with the other areas but come on. Moreover, class is the one thing we could actually unite around properly!

It means she considers economics to be primarily racial rather than class based - therefore Kwarteng is a race traitor who is primarily keeping down other black people.

But under PR, would it ever have come to that in the first place? May wouldn't have been able to pursue her hardline approach to Brexit, it would have been a Norway style model, everyone would have been able to accept that, the nation could have healed.

Ok I accept now that this is another one of those arguments where we all agree on everything but furiously debate it anyway

It's the one thing I'd support bringing back the death penalty for. Lying while in office. Too extreme? The Tories have killed hundreds of thousands with their policies over the years - this should not be shrugged off if they're doing it off the back of lies and corruption. In both of those opportunities, the majority voted against the ruling party, voted against it's main manifesto promises, and yet have had to accept the most extreme, hardline policies. We had a 52:48 Brexit referendum that resulted in the most furiously right wing Brexit imaginable. Johnson's 2019 victory saw Remain parties receive more votes than Brexit parties. This is not democratic. Yes there was more than just one issue on the ballot and yes that is the system we have that everyone votes within, but what we are saying here is that not only do we have a period of 5 years of absolute, unchecked power - tyranny - we have it given to a party that best plays a flawed voting system that doesn't actually even reflect the desires of the majority of the people of the country, all of whom go entirely without representation in policy-making every time this happens. It is ludicrous.

IMO we live in a dictatorship with a 5 year reset. We have absolute tyranny for 5 years where politics runs roughshod over everyone who didn't vote for the prevailing party, where leaders and manifestos can be changed and altered without recourse multiple times within that window, and where authoritarian control seeks to bend reality and information as it sees fit. Nothing about the way government has been run since 2016 has felt remotely democratic. It's been a coup d'etat by hardline nutjobs with the right wing press giving them the same sort of cover that Putin relies on in Russia to get his 'electoral victories'.

And it would work.

This does not bode well for me, although I suppose the last thing I'm going to want to do is lock in at the high end. Maybe I should start backing the government here, they keep pushing it up and deliver that housing crash, I might even benefit from it. I'm not actually callous enough to wish that on everyone who has homes though, so I hope it doesn't happen. But fucking hell, I don't know what chance I've really got on the property front at this point Might just go on holiday instead.

I think we get one chance to avert this - the next GE has to be a Labour win, and it has to bring in PR. Labour winning with no PR means a further decade of the Tories after that term - Labour failing to win means there'll be nothing left to save.

This is it though isn't it, this is what proves that the people voting Tory almost to a man IMO, don't actually have the slightest fucking clue what they're voting for or what it means in reality.