LiberalFox

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I'm not an expert on the matter so if anyone has more knowledge than me then feel free to say. There is something called short money which is paid to opposition parties based on their election performance. My understanding is that this isn't a huge amount compared to the cost of running election campaigns. So most money does come from private donations. Traditionally the Conservatives have attracted the most from private interests while the Labour Party is funded by large Unions. It's one of the areas that comes up for debate. Some people think party funding should be provided more from the state to reduce the influence of private donors and the Unions although I don't know how that would be achieved.

Why would they be funded by the tax payer?

The problem with manifestos is people aren't that interested in them. You can bet whatever is in the Labour manifesto even if it is a bunch of blank paper the Tories are going to claim that it's going to cost you and your hard working family £2000. Your pension will also be raided. Whether people think that is true basically depends on whether the media tell people it's true and whether the public wants to believe it or not.

I'll be voting Lib Dem in South Leicestershire. It's probably a similar situation where LDs will point to their local election performance and Labour will point to their 2019 vote share being higher and both will ask for tactical votes from the other. I doubt there is any real threat to Costa to be honest. So far haven't received anything from anyone apart from my own focus round.

F1 is currently quite competitive. Looking forward to the regulations getting changed and one of the teams having a huge advantage again...

I would be interested to hear from someone who has studied the matter why we assign labels of left and right to particular ideologies. Why is Rory Stewart right wing and Tommy Robinson right wing when to me they are fundamentally different? Stewart isn't a more moderate version of Robinson. Why am I left wing and George Galloway is also left wing when we are fundamentally different? I'm not a more moderate version of Galloway.

Most people on the left consider the motivation behind anti abortion laws to be the denial of female bodily autonomy and the promotion of a belief system that makes a woman's primary role in society one of having a man's children. People on the left tend to support an individual's right to bodily autonomy and to oppose enforced gender roles. Most people on the left oppose the death penalty. They do so for a number of reasons. Some consider it simply less just and more barbaric to execute the worst criminals rather than forcing them to live out the rest of their lives in prison. Some consider that no justice system is perfect and having a death penalty will inevitably lead to innocent people being killed by the state.

You're objectively wrong here. The woman articulated beliefs consistent with the great replacement theory which is a racist theory about whites becoming a minority in 'their' country. It isn't the same as the scenario you describe. There's no issue of race involved with the behaviour of British tourists and expats in Spain and France. I think we have to ask ourselves can we agree that certain beliefs and patterns of thought are racist in nature?

She articulated core racist beliefs rather clearly. What you really mean is she didn't use dogwhistles and innuendo and stick to arguments that centrists are comfortable rationalising.

I feel like such thinking is far more widespread than people realise. I don't know what the way forward is. When it comes to Islamophobia I think the UK is actually less racist than mainland Europe. Yet all bigotries have their routes in common themes of xenophobia, supremacism, entitlement and anti-social tendencies. There's a tendency among liberal types to just turn everything into a matter of education. If I can discredit the reasoning behind a bigoted position then I win the argument. The thinking goes that people have been conned into believing things that aren't true and so there is this obsession with fact checking and confronting bigotry with reason. Yet I feel the driver of bigotry isn't lack of knowledge. I think many liberals know this too but pretend not to notice because they have no idea how to win an emotional argument.

It's the combination of talent, hard work, ability to empathise, privilege, motivation and business mindedness.

@MPH I read your comments about Libertarians in the news thread claiming to support Trump over what they felt was over reach. What do those people think about the treatment of Hunter Biden? It seems to me as an outsider that a Libertarian would be against his prosecution. Yet I don't hear much about people over there being outraged.

Polls seem quite varied because nobody is quite sure how genuine the Reform vote is or how many Conservatives will get out and vote. It does seem nailed on that we have a Labour majority at this point which is quite amazing considering the result in 2019.

My biggest issue with VAR is it has slowed games down and made goal celebrations less spontaneous and hasn't delivered on what it promised because of fundamental issues with the way the game is refereed and frankly a lack of common sense and competence.

I get that perspective. Also what @Alf Bentley says is reasonable. Still your supposed benefits are an Islamic party, the far left, the greens and the far right getting more power. I find that hard to feel excited about.

I feel like PR would make politics less stable and benefit the far right more than anyone else. To add a bit to this I look at how the LDs and the Greens are currently expanding and that involves building up strength at local level and putting together local campaigns that can actually win seats under FPTP. Then you look at Reform and they are pretty much a classic far right protest party centred around being anti immigration and they have barely a handful of councillors. It's touch and go whether they can win a seat or two in deprived heavily Brexit constituencies. All things equal a PR system would massively favour Reform and parties like that. So that makes me think actually it might be preferable to keep the system as is. I'd like STV or AV to create more seats where the winner as won the support of a majority and to avoid odd scenarios where a candidate wins with a tiny share of the vote.

Not specific to this election but my enthusiasm for PR is at an all time low.

Without the backing of the Tory press I don't think Sunak has much of a chance. Suggests the people with influence are satisfied a Starmer government is safe enough for their interests.

I don't bother watching these any more.

I was briefly pleased when I read that Nigel Farage had made a commitment to achieving net zero. Unfortunately it turns out that he was talking about migration.

I've been getting them on FT too. Although there is small print on them that tells you they are from the Conservative party.

Trying to scare Reform voters into backing Rishi.

I think it depends also on who the candidates are. If you have a blue Labour candidate running against a moderate Conservative then there isn't a strong left wing case for voting Labour. If right wing Labour candidates do worse in marginals and if moderate Conservative candidates do better than extreme ones then that is sending a message to both parties.