Rob Ford

Catastrophic Success: Why Foreign-Imposed Regime Change Goes Wrong (Cornell Studies in Security Affairs) Catastrophic Success: Why Foreign-Imposed Regime Change Goes Wrong (Cornell Studies in Security Affairs) [Downes, Alexander B.] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Catastrophic Success: Why Foreign-Imposed Regime Change Goes Wrong (Cornell Studies in Security Affairs)

In sum, FIRC is sold to the public as a quick path to stability.

Yet, 120 cases across two centuries suggest it is one of the most reliable ***generators*** of instability outside of interstate war.

amazon.com/dp/1501761145

Yeah that makes sense in terms of group psychology but as you not it’s terrible comms strategy in a multi-party context

Even the evidence point is superfluous. This is such an obviously stupid conflation that I cannot understand why senior people keep making it with a straight face. They aren’t the same. They just aren’t. This isn’t hard.

There’s something deeply odd about how “the Greens are just the same as Reform” is treated as obviously true by so many within Labour when no one else believes this - and evidence no one believes this is not hard to find

“Let’s not panic and abandon a strategy which has worked so well in the past 18 months as all the polls and election results show.”

Well, no, they’re not just as wrong. The bigger error is not seeing that “trying to win over voters from a party on the opposite end of the spectrum, whose values your core voters oppose” is not same as “chasing voters from party on same side ideologically whose values your core voters like.”

This is what I find so frustrating about longtermism and Effective Altruism becoming obsessed with tail risks where the answer is just “don’t do this”.

And Matt Goodwin who DID NOT win

It is weird to cite Green 2024 voter views of asylum, or even Muslim views of asylum, to challenge the idea that the retrospective application of the settlement reforms is obvs creating so much anxiety among those directly affected, before sympathy from others, (or support for doing this to them)

Indefinite Leave to Remain - Hansard - UK Parliament Hansard record of the item : 'Indefinite Leave to Remain' on Monday 2 February 2026.

The Westminster Hall debate has dozens of MPs explaining why those affected feel the changes are not fair when applied retrospectively: these include contributions from Doncaster & Grimsby & Kent, as well as inner city seats. The government sounds in denial

hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2026...

When 232,000 people and 107,000 people signed two petitions about the settlement reforms - against principle of retrospective application- and over 150,000 people responded to the consultation, it came up on the Denton & Gorton doorstep because its obvs a big issue in a hundred constituencies

The Green surge is coming for Keir Starmer - Politics.co.uk The Gorton and Denton by-election is historic by any measure. The result marks the first time that the Green Party of England and Wales, which has existed in one form or another since 1973, has won a ...

“The contest represents the first by-election in Great Britain since the 1945 Combined Scottish Universities election in which neither of the two best-performing candidates came from the Conservative Party, Labour, or Liberal Democrats…”
www.politics.co.uk/news-feature...

As a professional military strategist, I just wanted to make sure everyone has a full understanding of the American strategy in Iran, thank you for your attention to this matter

It won’t be. Reform will do well (Tories won’t)

Yes and Reform of course. Whose appeal will be dented not one jot by Labour’s efforts to make themselves unacceptable on the left

Putting aside that Mahmood is confusing two different things here (asylum and broader net migration)...

... this proposals are incredibly ill thought out and will not get through the PLP. She is picking a very painful fight here that she will lose.

Suspect May is going to be a happy time to be Green. Or Plaid. Or SNP. Or LD. Or anyone on the left except Labour really

It’s a running joke in academia that Matt Goodwin is bad at maths.

This sort of thing is why: the combined Labour/Green vote could have split in any way possible and Goodwin would have finished 2nd or 3rd. He did not lose because progressives coordinated. He lost *in spite of them not doing so*.

If the Muslims were integrated, they would have…voted for a more socially conservative candidate? As ever “Want to get stupider? Try Racism (TM)” never fails.

And same mistake they have been making in Wales - and will likely pay a heavy price for in May

Such a great thread that frankly provides far more insight than people like me spamming polling numbers!

Think this is right and it is a big part of the major dysfunctions of our politics the extent to which it attracts men who think shouting at things makes them heroic fixers and the job of women is to get out of the way.

There is a reasonably sized Muslim electorate in Gorton and Denton, but after swinging from talk about a 24k/79k electorate in Denton who were going to deliver Goodwin the seat, now it's the 30% Muslim population (probably less of the electorate) who apparently got the Greens 40% of the vote

Spencer’s victory speech an object lesson in grace while Reform’s man rages | John Crace Matt Goodwin claimed cheating, Labour’s Gorton candidate quickly fled, Keir was tin-eared and Kemi brought the comedy

www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

guys, these are the people you’re supposed to be *winning back to Labour*, I don’t think saying “oh they’re all either rubes or reactionaries” is a great play

Spot on Lewis. Pretending Polanski is Galloway is a great way for Labour to increase his appeal and reduce theirs. Pure madness.

... but there are limits. And when actual voters in a core seat - who weren't enamoured of the 2024 offer in the first place - flip like this, perhaps take it seriously. This isn't Galloway in 2012 or 2024 so perhaps use a different script.

A social democratic party can punch hippies a bit, it's part of the way this stuff works and the soft left is probably the bit of the political spectrum that is most often mellow - or let's be real, depressed - enough to accept what it's given...

I can see a future in which Downing Street is picketed by political scientists waving placards that say this sort of thing even more bluntly. Not out of partisanship, but out of the existential pain of witnessing stupidity on this scale.