Pawel Swidlicki

I was shocked when I visited my sister in NY and experienced the quality/range to cost ratio in shops compared to the UK. Lots of good restaurants though.

Yeah Trump's concern for the freedom and well being of the Iranian people is up there with Paul Nuttall's opposition to migration from Bulgaria and Romania on the basis of his sincere concern that this was detrimental to their local economies (which it wasn't anyway but that's another matter)

Also 'riding high' in this case is being on 22% in the polls, down from 27.5% at the last election which would constitute the SDs lowest level of support in a national election since 1903.

"World's most evil regime", OK, show us your working.

bsky.app/profile/dant...

Nothing better illustrates the difference between our two countries than fact that our version involved people making few quid on timing of an election, in the US it's about making millions from starting an intercontinental war

I don’t even really think this is fair. Iraq was heavily debated publicly, and there was a plan. It was a stupid and delusional plan based on unrealistic assumptions, but it was known publicly and voted on by Congress.

There was no public debate or Congressional authorization in this instance.

There is that, but any Reform government would soon get into major beef with Dublin over whole range of issues.

And quite relaxed about all long-term residents regardless of nationality getting right to vote in local elections.

Commonwealth voting is an anomaly and I think it would be fine to stop this from applying to new entrants, but that's obviously not to say there is anything wrong with people availing themselves of the rights they have.

Aside from everything else, a helpful reminder that the photo ID to vote requirement introduced by the last government was complete bullshit which hasn't, contrary to stated intentions, 'reinforced public confidence in the integrity of UK elections'.

Just missing something about house prices

What I find particularly funny is how a lot of people whose politics are primarily defined by anti-immigrant/anti-Muslim sentiment are also Dubai appreciators.

This is exactly where the Tories ended up during their death spiral. 'Move right! No, move to the Centre!' At some point all the shuffling around is its own problem.

I think that while positioning on specific issues does matter, it matters less than overarching clarity, consistency and credibility. Starmer went from taking the knee in 2020 to adopting Reform-adjecent language and policies thus pissing everyone off and coming across as flaky/cynical to boot.

Got as far as "our magnificent Deputy Leader Lucy Powell".

I've always had the impression that the relationship with Israel is ultimately downstream of that with the US where pro-Israeli sentiment is incredibly strong (like that Congressman who rocks up in IDF garb) so tread carefully is the guiding principle here.

Very clear that for Starmer, 'sectarian voting' is when British Muslims don't vote Labour, and for many others, it is just when British Muslims vote.

* Insofar as anything is permanent

But the deal represented a defeat for them, i.e. the withdrawal of their forces from Kosovo, a move that they correctly anticipated would lead to its permanent* loss. They obviously wouldn't have agreed to this absent the bombing campaign.

Clearly the situation is still far from ideal though better than the counterfactual I think. As regards the brokered deal, the air strikes did still provide a strong incentive to come to the table?

(Not that this is anything like Yugoslavia obviously)

Isn't Yugoslavia an exception to that? Not that the bombing brought down the government immediately, but the bombing campaign achieved its stated objectives and weakened the regime which was then toppled internally soon after.

Yanis Varoufakis calls prosecution after admitting taking ecstasy 40 years ago ‘ridiculous’ Greek leftwing intellectual and former minister says his indictment is indicative of far-right turn in western politics

Hope Michael Gove isn't planning on taking a holiday to Greece anytime soon www.theguardian.com/world/2026/f...

Yeah, I think there's also a difference between re-calibrating your approach to emphasise 'blue Labour' themes a bit more (which is what Starmer's team initially in opposition) vs the more hardline and actively antagonistic 'island of strangers' approach

It's striking that the learning from the referendum and its aftermath appears to be 'in order to win back a minority of our core vote, we should alienate the remaining majority'

Not that I disagree with the underlying premise as such, but please, how many voters in G&D or nationwide would necessarily know those things about Zach? I only learned the first part of this relatively recently and I consume more political content than is advisable.

I think it fails to understand the coalition of voters that just voted Green, and why. And as usual you won’t get very far by implicitly slagging off the voters. The Green voter coalition was your coalition five minutes ago.

A consistent recurring theme of Farage byelection losses over a decade - Oldham 2015 with Ukip, Peterborough 2019 with Brexit Party, Gorton & Denton 2026 - is to talk loudly about electoral challenges about minority voters. But never to actually put the case to authorities. Media should spot pattern

Essentially do we think UK politics is going to be better or worse if parties increasingly (not naive about extent to which already happens) make pitches not based on policies or universalist values but more ethnic, racial, religious grounds?