Sampson

This is the classic right wing trap I keep posting about. You’re supposed to answer something like you have so they can say you’re talking down to them calling them stupid etc. and you have therefore “proven” point 2 (Even when it was a leaver who originally inferred that anyone voting remain were the “elites” calling anyone who voted “leave” stupid). There’s no way you can actually answer it without it being somehow talking down to people voting for it. It’s a total catch 22. Which is fine, if it’s just internet trolls. The sad part is the number of moderates who keep falling for it and saying “Brexit/Trump/Farage was voted for because you keep calling them stupid”

Deleted so no one gets in trouble

Sure but the chances of freezing to death dieing in an ambulance or getting stabbed to death will only increase if we all just stand idly by and let Putin roll through Europe. Especially given how much of our bread and grains in Europe come directly from Ukraine and the Balkans and that’s not something to that amount you can just “grow in the uk instead”

It’s because he appeals to people in a very American way so it seems baffling to us as outsiders. Make no mistake that Farage is just as radical and just as much about smashing the traditions, institutions, checks and balances that have been in place in the west since 1945, but you’ll get British people denying it and saying he isn’t and find him a lot more understandable because we see how he directly pulls at British tendencies instead and we understand the nuances of those so it feels different even if the end goals are the same.

Thought this was a very good interview and summary of the state of affairs by the former head of MI6.

Moving away from the US, the German elections tomorrow are huge for the UK and Europe as a whole tomorrow. Especially if US is going to be a loose cannon over the next 4 years, UK’s alliances with Germany and France are going to be crucial in the next few years

You missed the deportation flights ASMR videos on the White House twitter page as part of an ongoing alleged attempt to completely dehumanise immigrants.

The world seems to go a lot faster nowadays. We had Brexit, Covid and the Ukraine war - 3 of the absolute biggest and society changing events in post-war British history all within the space of about 3 or 4 years of each other. Feck knows what is going to happen over the next few years in the west.

Shhh. We’re still not allowed to call them the f word. The left are just as bad as the right because they simply call the spade a spade, which is equivalent to the spade itself doing openly and blatent spade things apparently.

Interested to see how Starmer reacts to all this. He can’t keep sitting on the fence like this, refusing to call Trump out.

They’ve had a few people from Trump’s first presidency on Rory Stewart and Alistair Campbell’s podcast and they absolutely all infer as much. Allegedly never bothers reading briefs, gets bored listening to any explanation of geopolitics etc. I think you have to take Trump at face value.

I think you’re reading too much into it . Trump and Vance are very transparent about their worldview and always have been - it’s America First - always has been and that’s all it boils down to. It’s not about creating conflict in Europe, it’s that they don’t care one jot about Europe and they don’t care one jot about international treaties or international laws or international obligation or the international world order that was built after WW2 in order to protect people from their own governments. Unfortunately as the saying goes “no man is an island” and suddenly pulling the ripcord on foreign aid and foreign support and setting up tariffs on everything and expecting their not to be blowback from other nations all feels a bit Treaty of Versaille-ish.

I must admit, I only recently discovered it is “shoo-in” and not “shoe in”,

“Throwing a strop”?! He’s having his entire country being sold down the road. Trump is not going to be convinced about anything he’s been extremely open about his “America first” and lack of support for Ukraine ideals from the off, this is what he said would happen and that everyone knew would happen.This kind of spin is depressing Said on here in early January that I give til February until Trump starts claiming Zelensky is the villain for not signing some peace treaty. Still thinks it looks likely

Me too. Sadly it’s winning it again.

Australia making brutal immigration and asylum laws and still having all this populism is making the “populism in the west is just about immigration” arguments look a bit weak.

I was basing on recent talks with Starmer in Brussels in which nothing was even agreed or barely talked about, Rees-Mogg came out on twitter with an angry post saying we can’t go under the yolk (sic) of the EU. I would be extremely surprised if even any sniff of a defence alliance across Europe didn’t have Farage and Rees-Mogg coming out extremely strongly claiming it was some back door agreement of going back into the EU. The EU is not officially a defence alliance no but it inherently kind of breaks down if internal states go to war as you’d have to create customs and immigration borders in such cases on security grounds to stop weapons and spies going into each others countries. It is almost all part of NATO which the US clearly no longer cares for. So it is in principle a defacto defence alliance and you would very much expect EU countries to defend each other. Again, I’m not sure how that’s contradicting me. If that’s true I’m glad Germany has upped its budget, I’m not saying they haven’t upped their budget, I’m saying I think in general the UK, Germany, France, Poland, Italy etc. all need to form a concrete defensive alliance and built up their militaries in that face of Russian aggression and US apathy over the next few years.

I’m not disagreeing that UK has been probably the biggest donar in that regard, my point is about relations when Putin inevitably starts turning the pressure on again a few months after the cease fire that seems like it’s coming. So many in the Uk and the rest of Europe don’t want to accept it, but it’s extremely clear the US is cutting ties with its alliances with Europe and is arguably even hostile towards them now, they’ve been extremely open about that. At which point it’s essential that Western and Central Europe create a strong alliance if they want to stand any chance of standing up to Russia. The problem is politically UK is still in the blowback of Brexit despite that being a pre-Russia-Ukraine war and the world and Europe have changed dramatically since 2016, so Starmer is so hesitant to commit to anything as as soon as he even talks to French or German leaders you get Farage and Jacob Rees-Mogg harking up that it’s a betrayal of Brexit (and they seem to want to become a heel to the US and Trump instead). So Starmer continues to try this weak fence sitting and commit to neither strategy on are alliances with the US and EU.

Agree. Non-Russia/Belarus/Turkey Europe seriously needs to up its military spending and form a separate alliance right now. Starmer needs to seriously stop pandering to the Reform and Tory Brexiteers and actually get close to the EU on defence, it’s clear as day the US doesn’t care about Europe anymore and if anything arguably sides with Russia over Western Europe. Starmer needs to grow a backbone and realise the EU is by far our closest and most important ally right now and regardless of what Farage or Rees-Mogg crow about rejoining the EU every time he talks to them, it’s clear on defence we need to be a hell of a lot closer with them and he can’t keep spouting this “we can be close to both allies” while being close and making commitments to neither.

I personally don’t agree that you beat populism by ignoring it. I’m far from a master communicator, no one on this forum is, but I don’t agree that the solution is simply ignoring people spreading political lies and half truths and not trying to come back to them. For reference I do think about how I communicate with people and it’s not perfect but I think that you are trying to spin it on “blaming others” is the Catch 22 I’m talking about. No one, even the best political communicators in the West, have been able to solve this problem over the past decade, they all get called “the liberal elite” “who talk down to people” - because you can’t solve it, because as soon as you try and adress it you’re suddenly talking down to people and blaming others on others.Macron was supposed to be the one who solved it by swinging from one populist right position to one populist left position but all it ended up doing was giving those positions total credence. It’s a total trap and Catch 22.

Same. I’ve completely lost hope the past decade. People don’t believe facts anymore and believe lies and half truths and when you try and tell this to them you get accused of calling them stupid and get accused of talking down to them. I always believed in (and still do) Liberalism and Democracy and fell for the 90s/00s optimism that the world was going towards a federalised liberal democracy and autocracies were becoming rarer and rarer but since 2016 the world has flipped that on its head. I always believed humanity was ultimately good and would fix climate change and population ageing but I no longer believe that. It’s so hard to just not give up caring in the current political environment

The height of desperation when the dance of people trying to reason for Daka to start comes round every couple of months. We have this cycle every now and again where people seem to forget he’s shit and start reasoning he scored 4 against a bottom half Russian side once. He’s dreadful, one of the biggest flops in the clubs history, he barely looked good enough for the Championship last season, I know we’re not great atm but he’s not the answer.

Said it before and said it again - but I just think that the UK doesn’t have the money and there’s not really anything any government could do about it. There’s no money to put back into circulation in the economy, public services are already on their knees and penny pinching them even more will do nothing at best and make things worse at worst and we’re such an insignificant country at the geopolitical stage nowadays no one is going to care about it prioritise doing trade deals with us. Dunno if this leads to populist governments or what but I don’t see us improving economically at all right now regardless of what we try

I wonder if any of the moderates who’ve for years been saying “Trump/Farage/Musk are not fascists” are having the wobbles yet

There were people in this very forum arguing Trump was “the candidate of peace” during the election campaign. Not even sure who they were trying to convince. Setting fire to the institutions, checks and balances that were created after WW2 at both national and international level to help stop authoritarianism and the constant threat of both economic and military action against multiple countries doesn’t feel like how you go about creating peace to me. What is going to happen to those who don’t want to leave Gaza as it’s their home in Trump’s plan, forcefully arrest them and deport them from their own country?