>>103360

>>103349
The lesson is that a good chunk of the fucked up state of geopolitics is our fault (in some cases specifically the UK, in other cases European imperialism more broadly). Israel/Palestine, Syria, Sudan, India/laplanderstan, all of that is on us and our historical inability to look at a map and not draw fucking lines on it.

>>103362

I blame the Ottomans.

>>103362
I reckon there's always going to be objectively evil people in the world and we have a responsibility to do something given there's not an international policeman around. The soul-searching after Rwanda led to intervening in the breakup of Yugoslavia and Sierra Leone which I think most people class as a good thing.

Either way I think what we might need is not only a party with good policies but one with a vision it can sell of the future, something we can buy into. Even if it's just the most back-to-basic enlightenment liberalism because honestly things like democracy and individual rights is what Yankees ideology is pushing against these days (at least in the creepy weirdos who make up the intellectual scene) and I don't think average people are actually keen on a return to serfdom.

>>103354

>In her defence she was talking about the winter fuel allowance and the chance that trying to maintain it would have caused a run on our debt

Whether or not you agree with maintaining the winter fuel allowance, the idea it would have caused a run on gilts and 'crashed' the economy is ludicrous.

>>103355

Why are you posting a screenshot of an article from 2018?

>>103362

I think we all know this. The original post was against British intervention in overseas conflicts, I don't think anyone is arguing that Britain hasn't caused problems overseas.

>>103366
I assume it's an image he had saved already that is representative of the British people's aversion to the aggressively forced diversity that we aren't supposed to notice.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrQAvUQ8If4

Your Party continue to go from strength to strength.

>>103369
She's right though.

>>103369
Nothing she said was terribly disagreeable to me. I would very much like Ukraine to uproot the Russian occupiers from their land, but no one seems to be asking "how?" anymore, and that is a terribly important question. I'm not saying there isn't a positive answer to that question, but if there is one it's not commonly spoken about, so I can't hold it against Sultana for not knowing what it is. She is still the MP for Coventry South, and doesn't, to my knowledge, hold ambitions to become Supreme Commander Allied Expeditionary Force. The Russo-Ukraine war has moved on dramatically from the fairly conventional affair of two or three years ago, and now resembles no other war in history. Perhaps the arrival of a NATO corps would be a fine shot in arm the for conventional warfare, but as things stand Ukrainian soldiers are living in net covered, subterranean dugouts while trying to fend off motorcycle-borne cavalry raids. With the Russian state showing zero signs of giving up, or succumbing to domestic pressure, I have to wonder aloud again, what does Ukraine do to win the war?

She also has very salient points about Britain's half-arsed attitude to trading arms to Israel, and the completely under-the-carpet trade with the UAE, who get away with literal murder in Sudan.

Here's something I read about Ukraine earlier today as well, which is largely responsible for my rather pessimistic outlook: https://web.archive.org/web/20251027204829/https://www.I need to find an archive link for this.co.uk/world-news/2025/10/27/trump-freeze-frontlines-trouble-ukraine/

Nice Wordfilter, Geniuses.

>>103369
She handled it pretty well, considering there's no good answer to "What would you do about Ukraine?" that hasn't already been said a hundred times. She's anti-Putin, and that's all you can really ask for. I myself would give a madly hawkish answer because Ukraine are unequivocally the good guys and arms sales are good for our economy, but my own position that we should be treating this as a new Phony War and getting ready to break up the Russian state with extreme prejudice probably wouldn't go down perfectly either.

It's a bit weak that her discussion of Ukraine basically boils down to a set of anecdotes about what she heard at the Big Festival of Hippie Communism, and that's probably worse than Zarah Sultana's actual position on the war.

>The chancellor is facing a larger-than-expected gap in initial Budget numbers as a result of long-running poor productivity in the UK economy. The downgrade to productivity performance from the government's official forecaster could lead to a £20bn gap in the public finances on its own, the BBC understands. The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) will deliver its final draft forecast, showing the output of the economy per hour worked, to the Treasury on Friday.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0rpve82jxvo

>>103374
>It's a bit weak that her discussion of Ukraine basically boils down to a set of anecdotes about what she heard at the Big Festival of Hippie Communism

You see, every person I've encountered (I'm not saying every person who argues as such) who "wants the war to end" begins by making some good points about unwise actions from the west and perhaps unrealistic thinking by Ukraine, and then gradually unrolls stuff about Russia actually being the good guys and how Russian imperialism is actually great and how they had such an awful terrible time during WWII so it's fair enough for them to invade their neighbours.

That, or it's this vague fantasy idea about Russia being "traditional", even though it has pretty much all the same social problems as Western countries do. Seeing that compared with the fantasy of some older leftists who still view this conflict, for some strange reason, as The Soviet Union versus AmeriKKKa, is quite amusing in a despairing way.

>>103376

For me it just comes down to how supporting this war is really costing us more than we stand to gain, and I don't give a fuck how much you bleat about PutinHitler re-establishing his Eastern European empire.

There really are no good guys or bad guys in geopolitics, just power, and in this particular instance, he can afford to drag it out, whereas the costs are sinking us. Keeping on fighting it weakens the west and is exactly what Putin wants. We're currently the mugs and the correct move is letting it go.

>>103376
I cannot dispute that they do all do that, but my point was more that it sounded out-of-touch. I'm not so sure that I'm right on this that I can promise to defend this opinion, but she's being too academic about it, and also too flippant. If she said she went to the Ukrainian frontlines herself, then I'd be happy, but she went on a jolly holiday to watch some documentaries and listen to some speeches and she thinks this is worthy of inclusion in her answer. Even if she had made the points she makes, but pretended she had thought of them herself, it would be more worthy of respect than the chirpy reaction of, "Oh, actually I know a lot about this because I paid money to listen to a university lecturer's opinions on it." There's a distance involved in doing that, and it makes me instantly dismiss what she said for some reason. Perhaps I am making my point badly; feel free to disagree if I am.

>>103377
You've been watching some very different news from the rest of us.

>he can afford to drag it out
His country is a pariah state, haemorrhaging its young male workers who would benefit the economy if they had productive jobs. Russia would be completely fucked if Europe did what Donald Trump said and actually stopped buying their oil and gas.

>whereas the costs are sinking us
No they aren't. Western economies aren't doing too well, but we're doing better than Russia and our problems are always shown to be due to productivity, housing, planning laws, and that National Insurance rise. The US Army alone could send all its old tanks and missiles that are due to be replaced, and that would be enough to repel the Russians if they sent all of them, at a total cost of $0.00 plus tip. European economies might do a bit worse if we stopped buying Russian gas, like we should, but as mentioned above, that isn't happening.

>Keeping on fighting [...] weakens the west and is exactly what Putin wants.
NATO has grown and pro-Western sentiment has skyrocketed in Eastern Europe. It's basically just the Russian-funded regimes of Hungary and Serbia (and Belarus, if that even counts) that aren't completely opposed to even speaking to Russia now. Being the external invader has united the West against Russia better than any amount of extra US airbases could ever have hoped for.

>There really are no good guys or bad guys in geopolitics, just power
So fuck it. Let's invade then. Russia barely has an army left now, and if we nuked Moscow and St Petersburg, there'd be nothing left of the rest of Russia but farmland and alcoholism. And what would a nuclear war cost us? Warsaw and Riga? Who gives a shit? Take that gas and oil and get paid, homie. If you want to say the only thing that matters is power, why wouldn't you want to maximise your power?

>>103377
>I don't give a fuck how much you bleat about PutinHitler re-establishing his Eastern European empire.

I wasn't bleating about anything, I was saying how often I encountered scepticism about Ukraine's cause being overlaid with a warped admiration for Russia by old commies or people with traditionalist fantasies.

>There really are no good guys or bad guys in geopolitics, just power

Yes, I'm aware of that thank you.

>>103378

I get you, thanks. I guess people are mostly inclined to view foreign wars as ideological conflicts between different political factions in their own country, rather than something that's actually happening somewhere beyond the realm of debate.

>>103377
>There really are no good guys or bad guys in geopolitics
That's convenient.

>>103380

I wasn't saying you were bleating about that. But it is something people who make your points do inevitably start bleating about. Same way your strawmen inevitably start going pro-Putin.

>>103381
For the bad guys, definitely.

>>103383
Hey, come now, Amnesty International and MSF are powerful in their own ways.

Anyway, Yougov has the Greens on 17% and Labour and the Tories both on 18. Still, if you distribute that Labour vote share with McSweeney's patented skill I'm sure they'll come away with a working majority.

>>103385
The poll on Newsnight earlier had a 17-17-16-15 split. If it wasn’t for Reform on 27%, it would be a four-way tie. At least Zack Polanski is doing well. I’m wondering if this is the first time the Green Party have been ahead of the Liberal Democrats.

>>103386
This seems like a very good argument for Labour changing the electoral system to something other than FPTP like Conference told them to in 2022. Want to lock out Reform and also abolish hard-right Tory government forever? Move to PR. Between them, Reform and the Conservative Party have a ceiling, and that ceiling is well under 50%. If the oldest and most successful party in the world wants a way back into government under PR, they'd have to move away from the hard right and towards the centre. Hell, just using preferential voting like we idiotically rejected in 2011 prevents the likes of Reform from convertimg 25-35% shares against divided opposition into 400 seats like Labour did last year.

TL;DR: Labour needs to stop ignoring its own official party policy and ditch FPTP.

>>103385
>McSweeney

I'm starting to think you're a little bit obsessed with him.

>Rachel Reeves is unlikely to raise the basic rates of income tax and national insurance in order to avoid breaking a promise to protect "working people" in the budget.

>It comes as Sky News has obtained an internal definition of "working people" used by the Treasury. Officials have been tasked with protecting the income of the lower two-thirds of working people, meaning in theory people earning more than around £46,000 could face a squeeze in the budget.

https://news.sky.com/story/income-tax-and-national-insurance-unlikely-to-rise-as-sky-news-obtains-definition-of-working-people-13459288

>>103388
Is it obsession to make fun of Labour's chief strategist when his strategy is giving the party the worst poll numbers they've ever had?

>Rachel Reeves admits breaking rules by renting out her house without a licence

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/oct/29/rachel-reeves-admits-breaking-rules-by-renting-out-her-house-without-a-licence

Absolute clown show.

>>103393
Lots of people say there are just too many laws now. If even the people at the top of the government can't follow all their own laws, that could be true.

So in the next Budget, Rachel Reeves is going to remove lots of these rules, and that'll be great, and the newspapers will point out that she's doing it so she doesn't have to obey these laws herself, and she is personally involved, and it's incredibly corrupt, and people who would otherwise support the removal of these laws (perhaps even me!) will decide they're actually opposed to cutting legislation.

>>103393
I mean, it's hardly Watergate, is it? And I tell you lads we need to internally exile every landlord in the country and expropriate their properties at least once a month.

Reeve's dead end economics remain a much more pressing concern for me.

>>103398
It is a load of nothing, unlike what happened with Rayner, but it's not a good look right before she's set to deliver another unpopular Budget.

>Chancellor Rachel Reeves is eyeing up a simultaneous 2p hike to income tax and 2p cut to national insurance, it has been reported, in an effort to raise some £6bn. Reeves is considering the controversial tax hike, according to The Telegraph, which would breach the Labour Party manifesto and risk infuriating voters.
>It would also only affect pensioners and landlords who do not pay national insurance. Rachel Reeves would also be the first Chancellor to raise the basic rate of income tax in 50 years.
https://www.cityam.com/rachel-reeves-considers-income-tax-hike-and-national-insurance-cut/

Can you imagine if we actually did something so sensible in this country?

>>103393
>Absolute clown show

It seems like she fell fowl of local licencing restrictions and the letting agent has gone out and apologised for not sorting it. I think the thing this is a useful metric for is who is reading the story and who is just a screaming banshee about anything to do with the government.

>>103401
>It seems like she fell fowl of local licencing restrictions and the letting agent has gone out and apologised for not sorting it

This is what Reeves said in her letter to Starmer:

The property is situated in Dulwich Wood ward of Southwark Council. There are selective licensing requirements in this ward for renting out a property. Regrettably, we were not aware that a licence was necessary, and so we did not obtain the licence before letting the property out. This was an inadvertent mistake. As soon as it was brought to my attention, we took immediate action and have applied for the licence.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6902a1cd6d9e8bf43eaf70c2/Letter_from_the_Chancellor_of_the_Exchequer_to_the_Prime_Minister.pdf

This is what the letting agents have said:

We alert all our clients to the need for a licence. In an effort to be helpful our previous property manager offered to apply for a licence on these clients' behalf, as shown in the correspondence.

That property manager suddenly resigned on the Friday before the tenancy began on the following Monday. Unfortunately, the lack of application was not picked up by us as we do not normally apply for licences on behalf of our clients; the onus is on them to apply.

Our clients would have been under the impression that a licence had been applied for. Although it is not our responsibility to apply, we did offer to help with this. We deeply regret the issue caused to our clients as they would have been under the impression that a licence had been applied for.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c24l7gnp3v2t?post=asset%3Ad2cbbe84-abd7-4f07-bd7f-cac7d38be0ab#post

Reeves claims she was never made aware she needed a licence before renting it out. The estate agents have claimed they made her aware she needed a licence, told her they would help her sort it out but then didn't do so because a staff member left and this led to Reeves wrongly believing this was all in place.

The accounts don't match, even if this is a storm in a teacup.

What next in the endless parade of "Reeves made some minor administrative cock-up" smear attempts that the news will spend all day wittering on about instead of all the real things that are happening in the world?

>SWINDLER REEVES FAILED TO BRING IN NON-UNIFORM DAY MONEY IN YEAR 9

>Sources close to the chancellor suggest that as she was out of schoolona pre-arranged holiday at the time of the annual non-uniform event, she did not believe she was still required to pay

>The school has been contacted for comment.

>>103403
Remember how people defending Rayner initially tried dismissing it as a non-story until more and more details came out?

>>103404

Remember how it then turned out to be exactly the non-story they all said it was to begin with?

Of course it doesn't matter that it resolved to have been absolutely fuck all by 7pm, they already managed to get basically a full day of news coverage out saying she's a crook. I'm no fan of Rayner but it's completely transparent the dirty trick they are trying to pull with these repeated min-scandals.

>>103406
Jesus, I didn't think people actually fell for this:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8t6KRstWIk

It was right for Rayner to go. People who focus on the technicalities of it are happy to overlook that a) taking advantage of the trust set up for her son to buy herself another property looks dodgy as fuck and b) if she'd sought the proper legal advice which she was recommended to do then that could have saved her the additional stamp duty. It makes her character look extremely questionable, she's either very incompetent or greedy and arrogant.

>>103408
Have we got crossed wires?

>>103409

Ah I see what's happened. I put Rayner instead of Reeves. Getting my token female politicians mixed up ain't I.

Rayner's was a more significant cock up. The things they keep trying to make stick on Reeves are just media attrition.

I think the worst thing the bond markets have ever done is providing employment insurance to Rachel Reeves. She's perhaps the most uniquely unlikable member of the cabinet, but she'll never be sacked because the bond markets have decided this incompetent status-quo maintainer is their best bet against the government breaking anything. (Or, for that matter, fixing anything.)
I want Jeremy Hunt back.

>>103401
I don't hate the idea, but it's a mark of the absolute fecklessness of Labour in opposition that we're talking about marginally tweaking the balance between NI and income tax in their second budget when they should've hit the ground running and started the process of scrapping NI and rationalising the tax system more generally in their first budget.
I can forgive the government for not being left wing, but their combination of cowardice and laziness is unforgivable.

>>103379

Is this Schrodinger's Russia? Both on the verge of defeat in Ukraine, but also an imminent threat to the rest of Eastern Europe and even the UK?

>>103413
Not a huge threat, just an inconvenience. The geopolitical equivalent of littering, or stepping in dog shit.

>>103414

Should we be compelled to spend 5% of GDP on countering the geopolitical equivalent of littering if the country is supposedly broke?

>>103415
That sort of investment will create jobs and develop skills. It's a lot to spend, yes, but it would only go on pensions and tax cuts otherwise.

>>103416
This is a fairly weak and confused argument for military spending even when money isn't tight.
If you want to spend it on an effective military, the vast bulk of it should go on importing the best hardware at the best price, which means you're not getting much by way of jobs and skills. Ideally, you'd like a license production deal where the production process is as unskilled as possible so that in the event we find ourselves in a war, we don't run out of stuff
If, on the other hand, your aim is to create jobs and skills, it's senseless to throw that money at a handful of jobs in the defence sector when you could throw it at something with more desirable spillover effects on growth (such as transport or housing or general research) or, indeed, on tax cuts that might let private individuals and firms decide where the money is best used. A new Tesco Superstore in your area would create jobs and develop skills too...

And that's before you go beyond abstractions and wonder whether you've any confidence that our institutions are going to use the defense budget wisely, or blow it on total debacles like Nimrod MRA4.

>>103417
I'd like to say that I agree entirely. Your reasoning here is why I roll my eyes whenever I hear someone talking about "increasing defence spending" with no further elaboration. It's hardly the only sector where politicians and pundits will call for more money with no specific aim in mind, but it definitely feels like more of a black hole than education, health, or housing.

I think I had a moan about this like like two weeks ago on here. Never mind.

>>103412
>I can forgive the government for not being left wing, but their combination of cowardice and laziness is unforgivable

Due to when the election called they had weeks to put together the budget and even then I wouldn't exactly call it cowardice to leave yourself with as small amount of fiscal headroom as Rachel did with Trump coming into office.

>>103413
Yes, a state can be both things. It's also telling that Putin won't even accept Trump's ceasefire terms on the matter.

I'm not sure why this discussion is even worth bothering with. Sultana, even if she was still a credible politician, going out and calling for Britain to leave NATO makes her completely unpalatable without getting into her Putinist lines of it being an aggressive and expansionist organisation.

>>103413

Russia is poor, corrupt, can't beat a much smaller country in a war, and has thousands of intercontinental ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads. That's the constant background risk with Russia. No matter what happens, they retain the capacity to destroy most of the world.

Every good outcome in conventional military or geopolitical terms is a risk to the balance of nuclear deterrent. The more we back Putin's regime into a corner, the greater the chances of a nuclear confrontation - not necessarily all out nuclear war, but potentially a credible threat and an extremely dangerous stand-off. We can't allow ourselves to be bullied by Russia, but equally we can't push Putin so far that he becomes a desperate man with nothing to lose.

>>103413

That's how you know you are dealing with propaganda and it really has little to do with Russia. It's always the play, every time. The enemy is simultaneously weak and strong.