Pawel Swidlicki

Do you know who else is over-represented in ads? Supermodels and professional sportspeople. Almost like they're not actually supposed to be 'a reflection of society'

Don't think that ground is a helpful analogy because issues fluctuate, what I think he really means is 'appealing to the median voter' which fair enough to some extent but in era of fragmentation you also need to look after your base

That is a terrible take, feels like his antipathy towards Starmer has seriously degraded his analysis. Their policy towards the EU would be the same? Farage as PM would have recognised Palestine? The Chagos deal?

Yep fair point

Its for people whose work is politics adjacent but who themselves are not necessarily hardcore political types, think corporate roles

What I don't understand is why those kinds of unhinged comments were deemed beyond the pale but the stuff Trump comes out with isn't?

one of them literally led to an independence referendum which was existential to the existence of the UK what the fuck are you talking about BBC

Reeves should say this in her budget speech

On a related note, Labour's 2014 European Parliament election campaign video which featured zero references to Europe and instead claimed Cameron and Clegg were going to privatise the NHS

Corbyn couldn't address anti-Semitism because he either couldn't, or just didn't want to, recognise it as a prima facie issue on its own terms (at best he'd pivot to all racism is bad) whereas it appears that Mamdani does, even if sometimes it is also used as a bad faith cudgel

The cruelty is the point

The best part is that the left has now painted itself into a corner with Nazi iconography, because they can no longer quite articulate why it's bad, since killing Jews is neutral to admirable. Here's a popular leftist commentator trying to explain why Platner's Nazi symbol is bad:

The take on Graham Platner's Nazi tattoo from the publication run by CBS News editor in chief Bari Weiss is that the "the left has now painted itself into a corner with Nazi iconography." Their supposed logic for this is histrionic insane garbage that the left does not oppose "killing Jews."

Exactly this

Ed Luce watching democracy die in the United States of America

I yield to no one when it comes to lack of interest in this story. But if means what it is said to mean, then that would be objectively very funny.

Its also funny because this was a hallmark of the last Tory government

The Mandelson scandal was also about trying to be too clever - a maverick appointment to try to game the Trump administration... no it doesn't work like that.

Speculation about the timing of the next election - go early or play it long - will be upon us soon enough

IDK, anti-incumbency is so potent that even governments that have overseen more than a 'small amount of GDP growth' have been booted out. And tax rises will erase any disposable income increases from said growth.

This is why local elections in the next few years are crucial, as if the local signal is strong enough then the tactical voting that propped Labour up in 2024 becomes the tactical voting that knocks them out in 2029.

Death by a hundred “only Lib Dems/Greens/Plaid can beat Reform here” bar charts

Yeah, this was actually the Corbynite experience, particularly with regard to handling Brexit between 2017-19. Oh we'll just run on an imaginary version of Brexit that can unite our entire electoral coalition...

This was such a problem in 2010 - an arrogant assumption that *obviously* the Lib Dems would bail them out, despite the disdain the party was shown. There does need to be some wooing.

Yeah, I remember lots of anecdata in 2015 about how lots of Lib Dem voters wanted to punish the party for coalition/choices made in the coalition and were subsequently horrified that the party was reduced to 8 MPs and Tories had standalone majority... still took them a decade to recover from that

Sure, though question is whether a) this will cut through enough to individual voters and b) it will counter the strategic messaging from No 10 which is a mix of non-existent, inconsistent, actively counter-productive

What Reagan actually meant that trade wars are good and easy to win

If you want people to tactically vote for you, you have to give them reasons to do so beyond disliking your opponents, the Tories found this out last year.

Cartel bosses, well known for the high value they place on the lives of people working across their supply chains

It also makes no sense on it's own terms, calling out certain cultural practices or values inherently involves labelling

To be clear I think you can get nativism sans racism/sectarianism but well, the overlap on the venn diagram is quite substantial

Reform’s only Black branch chair quits over ‘harmful’ migration debate Exclusive: Neville Watson leaves amid concerns about weaponisation of religion and erosion of community relations

What kind of organisation did he think he was joining? www.theguardian.com/politics/202...