Robert Thomson

How did Farage handle his grilling about Epstein, Bannon, Thiel and Reform’s funding today?

NEW: Understand Scott Bessent and Nigel Farage discussed Diego Garcia and Chagos during their dinner at Davos. US Treasury Sec believed to have credited Farage for getting this issue in the President’s in-tray and subsequent Trump stance.

Farage wants to re-frame this with equivalence to Chagos, will be fascinating to see how far he gets with that in his Sunday interviews.

Everyone can point to Greenland on the map…

So they’re not just a bunch of kindly souls worried about the erosion of free speech? Stunned!

“Is that what you want for Britain?” Is going to be a very powerful argument at the next election.

And hugely underpriced in the current analysis of Reform/Tories (although they will shift and run as the saner version)

People are going to have to pick a side eventually, may as well start that debate now

Fire Brigades Union leader, Steve Wright: “If people think that Nigel Farage, a city trader millionaire & his mate, Richard Tice, are gonna be the people that can fix this country for the benefit of the majority, they are wrong”

#politicslive

Badenoch is alarmingly lightweight

Genuinely don’t think people have fully grasped how catastrophic it was for Labour and Starmer that Trump won and everything changed within months.

A Dem win, the social media companies get restrained, Lab have cover to edge closer to the EU, not spending every day contorted by the US’s madness.

“I tried my best to contain these lunatics but look what happened anyway…..so do you really want their UK representatives in charge here?”

That will be a powerful message if everything falls the right way (and Labour have brought about some meaningful improvements)

If not, then….😬

There’s no good path through this, only bad/uncomfortable ones.

Our best hope is that come 2029, Trump is gone and MAGA’s candidate has lost the previous November. That way you can run as the anti-MAGA against Reform.

A lots of ifs and buts, and so much more madness to manage until then.

I can see precisely where we are heading, that’s what concerns me. Unless people realise tricky, sometimes uncomfortable pragmatism is the best we’ve got, we are in serious trouble.

It’s really not. Policy-wise on dozens of issues they’re as left a govt as we have had in decades. On social issues, they’re moving to meet voters where they are right now. That’s politics.

Good luck with your purity crusades. Don’t think you’ll enjoy the destination sadly.

This govt is not right wing 😂

It’s certainly too complicated within hours of a major situation occurring, where facts are unknown and you’re dealing with mad, volatile regimes on both sides.

We have to beat these people in elections by making better arguments and people seeing the larger picture, rather than picking parochial fights and conducting purity tests

That’s not what I’m saying. I objected to the characterisation of “weasel words” when things are far more complicated than that and there is a cogent reason for early caution

Totally agree, but thats not the reality we are in right now

Pretending we live in a different world is delusional, dreamer stuff unmoored from reality.

Easy to criticise Starmer for tiptoeing through this minefield but, really, there’s no plausible alternative no matter how demeaning it feels.

The American people voted for a madman surrounded by even madder people. We can’t control that, only try to mitigate it somehow.

We allowed ourselves to become so hitched to the US, to outsource our security to them, so we have to live with the consequences for the time being.

No doubt it’s galling, but that’s the situation we’re in. The world as we find it.

What happens if Starmer, Macron, Merz etc come out swinging and it emerges this was done in conjunction with Venezuelan Govt figures, as increasingly looks the case.

Initial caution was the correct/only approach

In a rapidly changing situation, dealing with a volatile and highly unpredictable US regime whose economic and security interests are intertwined with ours.

Perhaps more of a carefully-crafted diplomatic text than ‘weasel words’?

Reiterating support for international law?

Given the speed of events, the unpredictability of an increasingly rogue US regime and the potential knock-on effect to multiple inter-locking geopolitical events, what SHOULD the UK prime minister have said within 24 hours of this all happening?

Fascinating to know the course you’d choose…

The internet has utterly poisoned people’s brains. Everyone has seen it at some level. Pals/family who had zero interest in politics now ranting about boats, “illegals”, flying flags or slaughtering the Govt for being “Red Tories”, baby killers etc. It’s rife. Don’t see how we snap folk out of it

Sadly the people indulging in it or at least being curious about what they’re offering (on both sides) is growing and it’s hard to see enough of them coming to their senses for us to avert disaster.

He’s not the devil. He’s just a relatively boring, uninspiring, results-driven guy who has no time for the frippery politics in the 2020s demands

That people have convinced themselves he’s satan in a suit is bonkers

Modern democracies are growing increasingly ungovernable because populations are becoming so radicalised on all sides

The blame Starmer for everything brigade illustrates the political horseshoe very well. Left and right united.
The real question is why would anyone reasonably decent want to run for office here on Normal Island.
Thankless job.

Undoubtedly but there’s also an element of the left radicalising themselves going on too.