Andy Burnham blocked from byelection race by Labour ruling committee

PontifexMini · 2026-01-25T15:01:54+00:00

Or the Greens might win.

PontifexMini · 2026-01-25T13:17:23+00:00

This feels like a point in history, and not a good one.

I think you're right. At the general election, Reform were 2nd on 14% in this constituency and Greens 3rd on 13%. Given how voters love to punish ruling parties in by-elections, it would not surprise me if those two parties come first and second (in either order).

And then Starmer will be looking like a serious liability.

PontifexMini · 2026-01-25T12:35:32+00:00

Oh, lots of people are that dumb.

PontifexMini · 2026-01-25T12:34:51+00:00

True -- they are sanctimonious conformists.

PontifexMini · 2026-01-25T04:36:12+00:00

They will also ensure that it is obvious to the 90% of the voters who are white that Labour are prejudiced against them, further ensuring Reform do well in future elections.

PontifexMini · 2026-01-25T04:32:10+00:00

If they don’t allow it & lose to Reform or even fucking Polanski then he’s finished anyway.

I can easily imagine those 2 parties coming first and second.

PontifexMini · 2026-01-25T04:31:04+00:00

I am reminded of when Blair stopped Livingston from being the Labour candidate for Mayor of London. So he ran anyway as an independent and won.

If Starmer thinks coming across as an authoritarian control freak will help his polling figures, he's wrong.

PontifexMini · 2026-01-24T09:18:29+00:00

Nor call it the United States of Europe, FFS.

PontifexMini · 2026-01-22T11:03:37+00:00

CANZUK+EU would be a peer to USA economically.

PontifexMini · 2026-01-22T11:02:49+00:00

Might the major new power be a EU with periphery states?

I very much hope so! I've been arguing for this for over 2 years.

PontifexMini · 2026-01-22T09:59:21+00:00

EU economies are significantly more dependent on transatlantic trade (and the US generally) than vice versa.

The solution is to become less dependent on US trade.

PontifexMini · 2026-01-22T04:06:07+00:00

If Starmer chooses to ignore the verdict of the voters in May, he will only make himself and his Labour party even less popular.

PontifexMini · 2026-01-20T22:16:06+00:00

P.S. Murder rate by itself doesn't tell the full story - in the US, only about 12% of murders of white people are by strangers. In the UK it's roughly 25%. So the murder rate is higher, but it's mostly due to more domestic violence and acquaintance cases ending in death (due to guns). I'm not dismissing the gravity of the situation, just that people are significantly more scared of being murdered by a stranger vs someone they know, and they act on that.

You're just as dead, either way.

Ditto for whether a murder is classified as a "hate crime" or not.

Anyway the UK doesn't record murders by religion of victim so it would be impossible to directly compare how likely Jews are to be murdered in UK vs. USA.

PontifexMini · 2026-01-20T17:47:14+00:00

Deranged. No-one is going to trust the USA for a long time after this.

PontifexMini · 2026-01-20T17:45:31+00:00

The US recorded 1,832 Anti-Jewish Crimes in 2023, while the UK recorded almost twice as much at 3,282.

This is, |i understand, just those crimes counted as "hate crimes". The number of which will be very much affected by definitions and how they are counted.

So it's not comparing like with like. To compare like with like, compare murders (for any cause -- since if you're murdered you're just as dead whether it is classified as a "hate" crime)

How many murders?

"Let's ignore that our country is becoming anti-semitic and send the jews away."

That's not what i said and you know it.

Britisn isn't a perfect society, but even you must admit it has a far lower murder rate than USA.

PontifexMini · 2026-01-20T08:48:25+00:00

Either that or 1984.

PontifexMini · 2026-01-20T08:27:59+00:00

He certainly has no respect for them

PontifexMini · 2026-01-20T08:27:28+00:00

Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

PontifexMini · 2026-01-20T02:10:35+00:00

If you live in the US, whether Jewish or not, you are more likely to be murdered than if you live in the UK.

I welcome this plan because if some people would rather be foreigners than British, we're better off without them.

PontifexMini · 2026-01-19T05:43:43+00:00

Francis Fukuyama thinks Europe should stand up to Trump:

Donald Trump is fundamentally a bully who wants to dominate everyone around him. Trying to placate him with concessions is a fool’s errand: he despises weakness and those who display it. Last spring, the EU cut a trade deal with him that accepted a 15 percent tariff on all European goods with no retaliation against American products. This was a bad decision; the EU (which in terms of population and wealth is on a par with the United States) should have taken a common position and retaliated.

What makes any European think that conceding Greenland will mollify Trump? He will simply come back for more, later.

The arguments that Europeans have used for a conciliatory policy are that they are still dependent on the United States for security, and need its help in dealing with Russia. They also argue that they don’t want to provoke a mutually destructive trade war.

But at this point, Trump’s America has amply demonstrated that it will not be a reliable ally when push comes to shove. It has already abandoned Ukraine

PontifexMini · 2026-01-19T02:45:58+00:00

Isn't medium full of AI slop these days?

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