Sampson

Tbf they want to leave the ECHR and replace it with their own constitution. One can only imagine what a Reform written constitution looks like. The Tories also shat out some pretty rotten laws which are primed for some populist to abuse about the him secretary being able to shut down any protest they like, and to be able to strip the citizenship off people. I also wonder whether the UK has less genuine protections against authoritarianism in terms of not having a constitution. The ECJ and ECHR offer us plenty of protection and the ECJ in particular was a very important check and balance in stopping Poland go full authoritarianism under their last government when the government were trying to go after their Supreme Court judges. However, Farage’s first port of call I image would be to leave the ECJ and ECHR. He’s even got Jenrick and Vadenoch eating out of his hands in that regard in case of a coalition.

It’s baffling to me that neither Labour or the LibDems aren’t going after Farage being Trumpian with huge billboards of all his quotes fawning over Trump and Musk. It’s an age of populism, you have to fight dirty to fight it. But in the UK, all the other parties seemed so scared of Farage they just didn’t engage with him. Trump is deeply unpopular in UK polls and we’ve seen how being a right wing populist after Trump got elected completely reversed their fortunes in Canada and Australia after people got to see what all this means in practice.

I do wonder whether the tech bro billionaires like Bezos are regretting getting behind Trump yet.

He hasn't been good for like 4 or 5 years now though. Why would anyone pay £9mil for someone who was good half a decade ago? May as well pay £9mil for Marc Albrighton in that case.

The Simpsons in the 90s was great too.

I wonder who Trump is supporting

Yep it’s the same with Trump - destroying one institution is not enough. They’ll always be one more who is to blame on destroying the country that they need to go after - it’s the tried and tested route to authoritarianism and how populism crosses the line to fascism. These right wing populists feed on negativity and making out the country is completely broken and only they can fix it by taking on whatever the latest thing is that’s causing all the problems with the country. Therefore they always need one more thing to blame all the woes of the country on. Farage never has a single good thing to say about the country, he is ferociously anti-patriotic, but that’s also kind of the point. The fact most people (including Boris Johnson) never really understood what the EU actually was helped to. They can tie the ECHR together with it even though they are completely different things because they’re both European institutions. It helps them to make out Brexit wasn’t radical enough even though England, Scotland and Wales already left everything in the EU so you can’t really get a harder or more radical Brexit other than moving the Customs Union from the Irish Sea to the Irish border and therefore almost certainly starting the process of Northern Ireland ceding from the UK and creating a united Ireland.

And there we go. Farage 2029 is fully in motion now. Badenoch is Franz von Papen-ing it at a time Starmer is Neville Chamberlain-ing it.

I think he was fine. He was a 6/10 player who at least had the work rate. More than you can say for a lot of others.

Danny Ward is unquestionably the most damaging. In that he was expected to be a replacement for one of our greatest ever players and was League Two level and that and Rodgers’ blind spot to him and insistence on playing him was catastrophically bad for the club. If we had even a mediocre PL keeper then we easily stay up 2 seasons ago. Daka similar story. Was meant to be the marquee long term replacement for Vardy but looked out of his depth in the Championship.

Nothing but pure vice signalling.

Thanks I might give it a try

They haven’t even taken like a 1/3rd of the country’s landmass. How can you even call that a concession (?)

Pretty sure that was Corbyn not Starmer tbf but may be wrong.

nm

The issue isn’t the population numbers per se, it’s the population distribution - I.e. that it’s going to be a population of mostly older people who require a lot more help from the state in terms of pension, healthcare costs, disability benefits etc. mixed with much less workers to generate income for the state. South Korea is already past the point where it can’t reverse the fact it will be a country of majority over 65s in the future. Many of whom end up it cramped old people’s homes which are already well over capacity. Then there’s the issues of democracy. How can you change these things when the majority of voters are all over 65 and crammed in retirement home. They have a right to vote for their own interests in terms of pension, state funded healthcare etc. But you can’t realistically provide these things without large scale immigration from Africa and the Middle East, which is where the majority of young people will come from (which itself is becoming politically impossible because immigration has become so politically weaponsised) or making people work 60+ hour weeks. “The natural ebb and flow” also usually means brutal world wars, pandemics or inhumane governments trying to change a populations distribution through force I.e. forced deportation or worse of certain demographics. But lots of suffering regardless.

Plenty of countries have tried these things. Sweden has tried giving generous benefits to parents. Poland increases benefits per child, sort of the reverse to what UK does - so you get more benefits for your 3rd child than you do for your 1st child. They help maybe a little, but nowhere near enough and still no western country has got close to getting birth rates back up to replacement level of 2.1 children per woman again. As leicsmac says I think the only way can really solve it is by becoming an African or Middle East style country with higher death rates and where people depend on children as the breadwinners. Even most of South America and India have got to the point that it has followed North America, Europe, Asia and Oceania with birthrates dropping below 2.1 children per women now. The world population is basically only propped up by Africa, the Middle East and some of the poorer countries of Asia (I believe the statistic is that within 25 years over 50% of babies born in the world will be in Sub-Sahara Africa) Having children just idoesn't seem to be very compatible with western modern life. List of countries by total fertility rate - Wikipedia

Sounds about right. If he is Christian I’d guarantee its just because he was told he was as a kid. I doubt he gives any second thought about the bible or to the actual substance and morality behind Christianity.

I don’t think he loves the bible at all. I doubt he even thinks about religion, it’s so engrained in American culture people are just brought up to be told their Christian and they barely give it a second thought

The biggest concern with Reform though is the same thing with Trump - a lot of their rhetoric is thinly disguised (and sometimes not even disguised at all) radical rhetoric about smashing the institutions, checks and balances and separations of powers that have helped hold up democracy in the west since WW2. A lot of it when you read between the lines is about giving the PM more and more powers and the civil service and different offices of government less and less as well as constantly demonising “the mainstream media”, lawyers, education institutions etc.

You can see what happens in Japan and South Korea trying to deal with population ageing while maintaining low migration figures - people end up working 60+ hour weeks or crazy hours and a lot is in unpaid overtime. South Korea officially has a 40 hour work week but many people work a lot more than that and the government is currently trying to increase maximum work hours to 69 hours per week.

I feel like virtue signalling has been replaced by vice signaling where people try to outdo each other by being crueler and crueler to other human beings in order to show how bona fide they are.

nm