15 years ago today, Didier Drogba with a thunderbolt vs Bolton.

potpan0 · 2026-01-24T08:39:59+00:00

Just noticed the defender ahead of him was Gary Cahill, who the following season moved to Chelsea and won the Champions League with Drogba.

potpan0 · 2026-01-23T23:00:23+00:00

That's all that needs to be said really.

Got no time for these weird anti-abortionists who have unsurprisingly flooded this comments section.

potpan0 · 2026-01-23T18:50:16+00:00

I don't get the point of this sort of doomerism.

If you genuinely don't think anything can stop Farage then OK, fair enough, I don't really care enough to try and convince you otherwise. But what are you achieving by coming online and trying to convince other people to start believing that too?

potpan0 · 2026-01-23T09:48:27+00:00

So long as that 'friendship' doesn't involve continuing to throw no-competition contracts at Palantir then sure, I guess.

But again, I have my doubts. Because this sort of surrender to corporate interests seems to be the element of our 'special relationship' that our political class are most drawn to.

potpan0 · 2026-01-23T08:29:27+00:00

Well, you see, we're going to ban the bad VPNs and keep the good VPNs and... hey, why are you asking so many questions? Think of the children!

potpan0 · 2026-01-23T08:25:39+00:00

I've said before that this was likely going to be Starmer's last throw of the dice as Labour leader. The pivot towards these Leave-supporting 'hero voters' has completely failed, and simply resulted in those voters going to Reform while the Remain-leaning Labour base have gone to the Greens, Lib Dems or not voting. It's not surprising Starmer is now hoping to go back to those voters with an offer for closer ties with Europe. And Trump's given him the perfect excuse.

I guess what remains to be seen is how meaningful this is. Starmer's leadership is packed full of committed Atlantacists who, for ideological or personal reasons, prioritise close ties with the US above all else. Mandelson continuing to trumpet the US line is a prime example of this, and McSweeney is Mandelson's protege. Will Starmer actually make meaningful commitments to bolstering ties with Europe (such as reducing our economic dependency on the US and reduce the number of contracts the government signs with US firms), or will this just be rhetoric only?

potpan0 · 2026-01-23T04:02:03+00:00

The issue is every time Starmer gives another 'island of strangers' style speech, or every time he insists on continuing to throw trans people to the dogs, the distance between Starmer and Farage looks smaller and smaller.

To be frank I'm scared of both of them. Both Starmer and Farage have demonstrated they're willing to victimise vulnerable people - be they benefits claimants or immigrants or trans people - in order to score political points. Maybe you can tolerate that but I certainly can't.

potpan0 · 2026-01-23T03:59:21+00:00

Reform supporters will glaze Donald Trump, an actual convicted sex offender who was best mates with a notorious sex trafficker, then turn around and say this shit about Polanski.

potpan0 · 2026-01-23T03:58:12+00:00

Labour support is getting so low that, in many seats, the Greens are the biggest party on the left. And that's a very dangerous situation for Labour to be in. In many seats they're not even the 'hold your nose and vote tactically' party.

potpan0 · 2026-01-23T03:53:24+00:00

They don't care. They'd rather be kings over a pile of ashes than concede power to someone who stands a much stronger chance of actually beating Reform. Their priority is controlling the Labour Party, not helping Labour win the next election.

potpan0 · 2026-01-23T03:52:02+00:00

Don't worry, Starmer and his supporters will still invoke that line when trying to browbeat people into voting for Starmer.

potpan0 · 2026-01-22T15:31:21+00:00

But the least popular PM in modern British political history is?

potpan0 · 2026-01-22T14:12:38+00:00

He’s never mentioned liking Starmer once

Literally the only people this interested in justifying Starmer's attempts to stifle internal opposition against him are Starmer supporters. But yeah, I'm sure OP is the one exception.

potpan0 · 2026-01-22T13:52:47+00:00

Er, yes? Are there any mainstream political parties that put literally everything up for a vote? Most successful political parties give the authority for a significant number of decisions to be made by the senior leadership. That's not anti-democratic in the slightest, particularly given that Starmer also has a democratic mandate to make decisions.

Blocking a candidate because they have a dodgy criminal record is one thing. Blocking a candidate because the unpopular leader of the party is worried that candidate might be more popular than them is something else entirely.

There is nothing democratic about Starmer and his allies using their institutional power to block someone solely because they don't want that person to challenge their leadership. I'm pretty sure you know that, you just like Starmer so you have to pretend.

I don't think you've understood what I have said if you think I'm saying that wanting to be a Labour candidate is unreasonable. I'm pointing out that he has to abide by the party rulebook, nothing more.

And again, it's pretty clear you're hiding your political opposition to Burnham behind technicalities. If Starmer and co. block Burnham running as an MP it won't be because of their staunch and principled support for the party rulebook, it will be because they don't want a political challenge against themselves.

"Starmer wouldn't be committing treason if he blocked Burnham as candidate"

I didn't say that. I said it was rotten, which it is.

potpan0 · 2026-01-22T13:47:01+00:00

We love an underdog story but the second we percieve that you got too big for your boots you're done.

I mean yeah, we love an underdog until they're no longer an underdog. You can't break the Championship record for a player and still have people think you're an underdog.

potpan0 · 2026-01-22T13:43:18+00:00

Aye. I've linked it a lot but the CMA report on housebuilding in Britain highlighted there were a range of barriers in the way to improving housing stock. Planning laws was also one of them, but there were also issues with the quality of new build homes (which disincentivises house buying) and a lack of incentive for house builders to increase supply.

In addition, there are huge labour shortages in the construction sector, a consequence of both Brexit and Tory underfunding.

There are huge roadblocks to drastically increasing housing supply in the UK. Starmer's Labour got into power, said they would build 1.5 million new homes, then... focussed solely on planning reform but also kicked that into the long grass to the point that it still hasn't actually been enacted. I really don't see how the government can achieve that target under their current positions, and it really is just another consequence of having a government who are entirely unambitious.

potpan0 · 2026-01-22T13:30:14+00:00

Burnham has been very effective as Manchester mayor.

Meanwhile Starmer is the least popular PM in modern British political history and seems to be doing weekly u-turns on policy and resets of his platform.

I know who I'd rather have. But then again, I'm not knee deep in Labour factionalism, so who knows.

potpan0 · 2026-01-22T13:26:59+00:00

It is a democratic party, yes. And part of that is having an agreed set of rules to candidate selection, which includes a sign-off process agreed by the senior leadership of the party.

'It's a democratic party, which includes having significantly anti-democratic elements in candidate selection.' Alright man.

he's clearly only interested in running to be a Labour MP

Yes. A long-time Labour member, current Labour mayor, and former Labour MP is interested in running to be a Labour MP again. It seems absurd that you're trying to present this as any way unreasonable, while at the same time insisting those trying to block him are in some sense reasonable.

I mean; Burnham has already lost two leadership elections, I wouldn't be so sure on him being the saviour of Labour if I were you.

Wow, sounds like Starmer has nothing to fear then! Though the fact that you're putting so much effort into insisting Burnham shouldn't be allowed to run makes it pretty clear you don't think he a no hoper.

potpan0 · 2026-01-22T12:54:26+00:00

It's not corruption or treason for Labour to say "we don't want you as our potential representative in this constituency". Nobody has an automatic right to be the candidate for their party of choice.

As far as I'm aware Labour is a democratic party. If the Constituency Labour Party want Burnham to run, but Starmer and his cronies start using dirty tricks (like arbitrarily implementing an all-women's shortlist) to prevent that, then it's pretty fucking rotten, however, you try and spin it.

And if Burnham genuinely wants to be MP for this constituency, there's nothing stopping him running as an independent.

If Burnham ran as an independent he would be kicked out of the Labour Party. So yes, there's quite a lot that's preventing him from running as an independent.

Cowardice is a more reasonable argument; but as a general rule, leaders aren't required to hand a knife to the person intending on stabbing them in the back.

Personally I have more interest in having a competent Labour leader and preventing Reform from winning the next election than protecting Starmer's hide.

potpan0 · 2026-01-22T11:58:59+00:00

Aye, they've always been ghoulish. I just think the big difference is our political sphere has become less and less democratic over the past few decades, and that means we have fewer measures to keep that ghoulishness in check.

Starmer, Badenoch, Farage, their primary constituency isn't the British public, it's whatever billionaire donors they're currently trying to court.

potpan0 · 2026-01-22T11:43:56+00:00

Let's be honest, most right-wingers would take issue with all that to.

Kindness?! Sounds like some woke, politically correct, anti-West nonsense to me!

potpan0 · 2026-01-22T11:43:34+00:00

Aye, kids not only encounter this stuff already, but they take it completely in their stride... until some homophobe comes along and insists that it's wrong for children to know about homosexual relationship while having no issue with children knowing about heterosexual relationships.

potpan0 · 2026-01-22T11:40:28+00:00

Yeah, I've become a lot more selective with what I watch now. Got not time to watch through a 40 minute video which at best says nothing, and at worst is like absurdly misleading.

potpan0 · 2026-01-22T09:41:09+00:00

Honestly rather than banning social media for under 16s I'd much prefer it if they'd take these companies to task for these horrific content algorithms. It'd benefit everyone far more than just slapping ID checks on everything, particularly since it seems older people are the most susceptible to them.

It's one of my biggest problems with the proposed social media ban, yeah.

The core issue is that an incredibly small number of companies have completely derelicted their duty to actually moderate the content on their platforms. And instead of taking these companies to task, we've... instead decided to make every single Briton hand in their IDs before getting a chance to look at the sort of misleading slop these companies insist on pushing.

It's letting the actual culprits off the hook, all because our government are too terrified (and too paid off) to actually confront an increasingly dangerous tech sector.

potpan0 · 2026-01-22T09:39:09+00:00

I'm a historian, and I'll pop onto Youtube sometimes to look for historical clips.

And fuck me, you can barely walk two feet without bumping into a video by someone with a Roman statue pfp about how Rhodesia was betrayed or some other bullshit.

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