Adam Squires

I’ve worked abroad my whole adult life and fairness, consistency, ability to bring family, straightforward path to permanent residency / citizenship are deal breakers. If the UK wants high skilled white collar workers then these all matter a lot

Right but when they were doing well in the polls the argument was "they have hardly any MPs".
Now they have nine times as many MPs as Reform do, that apparently isn't important any more.

Bizarre how anyone looking at the spike in oil prices the last few days, see how one 29 mile stretch is essential to our energy needs, and still decries the move to 'net zero' energy independence.

HMS Dragon: UK to send Royal Navy warship to Cyprus, Starmer confirms The prime minister said the

Comments sorted by highest rated was quite interesting - praise for Starmers approach, distrust of the US, revulsion at being dragged into the ME again

Not views shared on Twitter or here but possibly more representative of the UK in general

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

For the insults / Tommy Robinson etc - are you saying there would be a different approach to stop Trump doing that? Or that Starmer should have pushed back more strongly and publicly anyway regardless of whether Trump listens?

Yes. He literally stopped them from using the bases for something he didn't support. Which bit of this is the failure in your opinion?

It remains to be seen whether UK will face consequences / punishment/more tariffs for him doing that. But we'll see.

Likewise.
I didn't say he had no choice. Or that any other leader would have done the same. I dispute that this is a policy "ending in failure" or that he sacrificed anything significant in the belief that this would never happen.

I...think it's premature to say Trump being rude about Starmer is "it all ending in tears".
There is a good case that in the past, he had some influence, that he wouldn't have had otherwise.

(I didn't have strong views either way, but wasn't that bothered as long as it didn't involve caving on actually important decisions against UK interest).

I'm not sure what evidence there is that a different approach would have got a better outcome now?

I think it's a bit of a straw man to suggest that those of us who thought that a policy of being nice about Trump would mean Starmer could "control" him - rather, sometimes have some influence - or that we thought Trump would therefore never be rude about Starmer. He's largely unpredictable.

Am sticking with my bet that the right is reading this wrong and that the majority of voters are not at all unhappy Starmer has upset Trump by holding back from a war whose purpose and end game no-one seems able to define.

Balanced and sensible analysis of the many, many challenges facing Starmer.

Well worth a read.

And I think:
1) "Trump annoyed with Starmer" headlines may cut through as much as what he did and didn't agree to help with - and would help him (for low info voters)
2) There's a reasonable case that while he did not help the attack, he has to join now allies are being attacked by Iran (for higher)

Is that based on polling or something?
Personally it seems that he didn't actually make many *concessions* that weren't in UK interests, just said nice things. And - given that Trump is unpredictable - I don't think anyone thought there was any strategy that would guarantee good outcomes.

I went to uni with Corey Booker, and I can confirm.

Excellent choice.
"I ain't saying you haven't got your own struggles
All I'm saying is I don't fucking care about them"

Could you spell out your theory?

So...?

Saw them both at the Hacienda in 93 iirc

I've already made my feelings about this abhorrent policy clear but one antidote is to repost this piece I wrote last year about one refugee's story

open.substack.com/pub/christin...

Greens comfortably beat Reform in the last bye election so presumably doing something right...

Weird - the right has spent the last decade telling us it is unwise to sneer at working class voters who have the temerity not to vote the way we want them to...

Reminds me of the "more/less" than "you/some people might think" framing which again seems to involve correcting the wrong impressions of an imaginary reader.
bsky.app/profile/adsq...

‘You weren’t free’: Iranians party in London and Manchester after strikes against regime The diaspora hope the death of Ali Khamenei will bring change – and peace – even as fears remain over Iran’s future

This is quite surreal - an area of N London I know very well.
(NB it is not Finchley Road as the article claims - which is several miles south - "Little Tehran" is Ballard's Lane, in Finchley. The constituency has the UK's largest Jewish AND Iranian communities)
www.theguardian.com/world/2026/m...

Not sure that's true of Bush Sr.
Unless you count Saddam Hussein invading Kuwait as "America starting a war". Which ... would take a certain mentality.

YouTube video by Cinema shows Ray vs Therapist [ Mr Inbetween ]

1/ In thinking about the events of the last few days, vigilantism and international law, I can't get this scene from Mr Inbetween out of my head.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0_e...

Also Trumpy. Who also plays well with the 20% base, but not with most people, and is, I think, a Farage weak spot.

"Would you aim for a Farage govt to be similar to a Trump presidency, and if not, what would be the main differences?" is a question Farage should be asked more often.

“We should restrict the franchise to people who would vote for me” is not, I suspect, the winning response Nigel thinks it is

bsky.app/profile/adsq...

Finchley residents celebrate following death of Iranian leader Members of the Iranian community celebrated in Ballards Lane last night after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed during a US-Israeli attack

Me neither.
barnetpost.co.uk/2026/03/01/f...
(Friends were there. There were even some Israeli flags. The Persian supermarkets there all stock Israeli pickles - I'm sure they're still no fans of Netanyahu, but by no means anti-Israel / pro Ayatollah)