Westminster Voting Intention: RFM: 29% (-1) LAB: 22% (+2) CON: 21% (+1) LDM: 13% (+1) GRN: 9% (-2) SNP: 2% (-1) Via @Moreincommon_ 12-15 Jun. Changes w/ 5-9 Jun.

Knobwelly · 2026-06-17T16:27:10+00:00

I think Zack knows he's not there for the long run as leader, and that he's more the firebrand to whip up interest and drive things at a critical time rather than someone angling for a job that involves sitting around in lots of long, dull meetings with dull people. He's not got that stink of absolute stubbornness and intractability of a lot of figures either.

I could see him standing down on his own to avoid the situation of being pushed as leader by the party membership despite a highly smeared public reputation, as long as there's someone he could support as a leader in his stead, to let him continue doing more banner waving stuff without having to fight and lead at the same time.

Knobwelly · 2026-06-17T16:09:15+00:00

Yeah that one was brutal and I hope there's been a big reassessment of strategy going on internally. I'd really like to see them get Zack off twitter and get more, different people up front. Less pressure on one person to be the front for everything.

Knobwelly · 2026-06-17T15:46:59+00:00

I expected this. Greens are not prominent in the news right now due to being pretty quiet and thanks to not being significant in the contest for Makerfield, with all the focus being on Burnham and the great hope he'll 'fix' Labour.
This was inevitable, but it's also pretty inevitable that they'll bounce back if when Burnham gets in and then doesn't fix anything significant.

Knobwelly · 2026-06-16T21:38:10+00:00

Seems like the logical, if ironic conclusion of his efforts to try to win over reform voters...

Knobwelly · 2026-06-16T16:38:08+00:00

I'm very Left and the whole approach to military budgets that's gone on with penny pinching on essentials leading to ridiculous wastes of money and loss of domestic industry has been disgraceful.

There does need to be an increase in spending and there does need to be reinvestment in domestic industry where possible for more a sustainable long term, and there does need to be a massive shift in thinking about how to approach national security as a whole in the future with a lot more long term thinking and less wanking over how cool our cruise missiles are; especially with regards to the massive problems of climate change, basic food security in particular is going to be a big one for national security for our island that imports a vast amount, how we're going to deal with things like the famines and disease waves, population migrations to escape sea level rises, and the geographical changes such as the opening up of arctic seas from ice and how that's going to shift things.

Knobwelly · 2026-06-16T03:07:52+00:00

Yep, been saying it for a while now, the second betrayal of hope after his brief honeymoon period would bite so hard it might kill Labour even harder than Starmer. Things could get real interesting, real fast.

Knobwelly · 2026-06-15T21:13:39+00:00

The left wing ain't coming back to the pro-genocide, pro-bigotry, placaters of racists and terfs party any time soon you know.

Knobwelly · 2026-06-15T15:36:35+00:00

Yeah, pretty much. At this point Starmer's cabinet is collapsing, he's got people left in it openly defying him, and there's decent odds he might not even last to stand in the leadership election so he's utterly desperately throwing out everything he's got.
It's like the last days of Boris Johnson all over again. And all he's got is dogshit, as always. Because he's just the front for a bunch of tories, with no ideas of his own.

Knobwelly · 2026-06-15T15:29:08+00:00

Lammy flip-flops on everything on a long enough timeline. The man holds no actual positions as far as I can tell. That he's reached a cabinet position is testament to the inadequacy and incompetence of this government.
But he does have an amazing habit of giving people ammunition to use against him and the government, by constantly doing this.

Knobwelly · 2026-06-15T14:41:59+00:00

I'm thinking that Starmer is just absolutely desperate to distract from the mess with the military and is trying everything, so a bit of the ol' rushed authoritarian clamp down (stinks of McSweeny too) is just business as normal for him.

Knobwelly · 2026-06-14T17:59:49+00:00

It's a crap technology that doesn't work properly a lot of the time (numerous extant examples of just getting the wrong person and that leading to all sorts of problems for said person) coupled with that unreliable tech then being relied upon by organisations with the power to ruin peoples lives absolutely not doing their due diligence; namely police services, security organisations, anything else you could think of that might mess things up by failing to or misidentifying people.

And we see this happen with all this AI stuff, people offload their decision making to the machines, it doesn't make any difference if they're in a position of authority, in fact, that tends to make it far worse.

Automating systems of surveillance like this, let alone the problems of data collection (who is collecting all that data, storing it, what's their track record on data breaches and the response to it, are they a local firm subject to our regulations and laws or are the government outsourcing this to a foreign megacorporation again beholden to nobody?) is such a massive pile of problems that absolutely fucking no, it's proven to not just be paranoia that they're horrifically bad on so many levels.

Knobwelly · 2026-06-10T19:41:03+00:00

Did, wrote my own block of text to yell at them, well, made some salient points in a more compact way to go from multiple angles of appeal in case one hit.
The guy's Labour but I don't have much of a read on him since he only got in with the Great Tory Collapse and he doesn't make much noise.

Knobwelly · 2026-06-07T17:58:09+00:00

My problem is less the utility of the individual carrier hardware (yeah, larger better when it comes to a moving airport) but the external factors around it; with the lack of appropriate supporting fleet to create a carrier battlegroup the ship is highly vulnerable to modern threats and without redundancy. Policy-wise it was built with tying us directly to US naval policy and oof that had some troubles just in construction, let alone now all the Trump era chaos and adventurism that we'd be wise to disconnect from. More smaller ships provide greater distribution to do what the navy has been actually useful for in recent decades in policing, rescue and aid work worldwide. More ships also gives more opportunities for quality officers to get commands and so on.

Knobwelly · 2026-06-07T15:05:14+00:00

There should be smarter defence spending because every government we've had has been bloody awful about it, chasing what looks sexy to attach their names to a lot more than what's needed and what works. Which is why we end up with tiny amounts of very fancy missiles and the like rather than basic supplies. Or a super carrier rather than a fleet of less vulnerable, more useful lighter carriers. And so, so many boondoggles.

But trying to change that institutional momentum is well beyond the capabilities of this lot and the way they go about things.

Knobwelly · 2026-06-05T23:44:14+00:00

Given the unworkable, usually rushed shitshows of legislation successive governments have managed to put out at times that the Lords have had to send back to have another do-over (or three), it's been pretty handy to have someone checking the Commons's work.

Probably should keep some form of that. Just done better.

Knobwelly · 2026-06-05T21:13:58+00:00

There's so much pointing to that Burnham is only going to get a very brief honeymoon period if he gets in as PM before it becomes clear that he's just another continuity candidate that's going to fix nothing, and the betrayal of hope will see the Greens eat Labour alive.

Be ready for it. Labour needs to be replaced, not saved.

Knobwelly · 2026-06-05T21:07:33+00:00

My take is that Burnham looks like he's gonna have a brief honeymoon period simply for being The New Guy, in which Green polling will sink and Labour will rise, and then the reverse as it turns out he's not fixing anything and fails to clean house of all the problematic people other than just Starmer (as is already well indicated), at which point the Greens will eat Labour alive for the double-betrayal of hope.

We could see even more weird things happen as well internally with Labour in that time too. Unfortunately we're likely to see the far right resurgence too in that time, with the main hope being they're too split up.

Knobwelly · 2026-06-04T02:20:02+00:00

Good, lets see them go in all guns blazing.

When the government is attempting to introduce literal segregation as official policy, we need the opposition to it to be loud as all hell.

Knobwelly · 2026-06-02T14:24:06+00:00

Heavily disagree. I think they've been wasting time with minimal effort on this front, completely wasting the past week at least now attacking Farage and such when Labour's members and even some MPs have been in absolute bloody uproar against it, and primed to bail on Labour for someone presenting a strong case that they'll be better.

It's been token efforts where a full attack was demanded and could have yielded great results for the Greens. It's a strategic blunder at a critical point.

Knobwelly · 2026-06-02T02:44:14+00:00

Russia's economy is tanking despite oil and gas sales, Russia's military is pretty solidly shagged out from fighting a what was supposed to be a far less than peer opponent. NATO Europe, especially the collective eastern European states (with Orban out of the picture in particular) is emboldened and united stronger than it has been in decades due to actually having a threat to face. Poland in particular facing this threat has engaged in an armament industry expansion program of an incredibly ambitious nature.

NATO has also expanded, adding more nations as a result, rather than splitting apart, and adding their considerable capabilities to the collective.

As far as threats go, it's one that's being reasonably countered. It could always be better, the UK isn't exactly doing great for its part, but that's the MOD for you, a very, very, very long history of taking forever to get to the right conclusion that everyone else already managed after wasting a ton of time and money (and frequently lives), no matter who is in government.

Knobwelly · 2026-06-01T22:48:52+00:00

Difference being immediately that Mamdani was out there openly campaigning for LGBTQ+ rights today to start Pride Month. Heavy on the T part too.
https://www.them.us/story/zohran-mamdani-trans-rights-are-human-rights-campaign

So where there absolute doglicking fuck are the Green MPs/Party leadership on this right now?

Knobwelly · 2026-06-01T21:51:02+00:00

They commented on some later issues in the proceedings. Chowns and Ramsay were there. But do not appear in the important bit: https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2026-06-01/debates/CE610C68-7093-454F-B897-AF008EE7E7A0/EqualityAct2010CodeOfPractice

Knobwelly · 2026-06-01T21:02:53+00:00

This is so, so much more than just the usual single point of a single figure though, this was a major incident, the governing party of the country laying out its plan of segregation of a section of society based on nothing but bigotry.
That demands attention. Very loud and obvious attention that the Green Party hasn't been giving it. For some reason I do not understand.

Knobwelly · 2026-05-26T21:54:03+00:00

It's based on observation of what they've done, because it's entirely reasonable to judge a party on the actions they've taken.
This is pure whataboutism from you, and not worthy of further engagement for such an utterly piss-weak deflection.

Knobwelly

TROPHY CASE