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Mostly fun for hearing none-more-establisment Sir Reg describing Michael Heseltine as a Representative for Wellingborough.

She doesn't have a job role. It's a party management thing, not a governance thing. She's literally Minister For Defending Sunak From A Position On The Right Of The Party. Or as Stephen Bush puts it:

It doesn't sound like he's keen on a ceasefire.

I'd say that Our Song is the quintessential, so-country-it's-virtually-pastiche Taylor Swift county song.

It's also a bit flat-earthy, in that there doesn't seem to be any good reason why they'd lie about it. There was nothing in it for him personally for people to think he was ill when he wasn't, and it wouldn't have done anything to help his Government (who, lest we forget, were extremely popular at that point and not really in any need an imaginary boost through a fake illness) Also I find it very hard to believe that in his cosplaying Churchill / moment of crisis he'd have willingly handed over control of the country to Dominic Raab for no good reason when he was getting to be on telly every night being In Charge.

Helpful as ever Tone, thanks for the input.

Lots of them will also be leaving friends and relatives behind who are still being held hostage. Not sure there's any good sense in giving them a deserved volley of abuse and then sending them back to your husband or son who they still have locked up.

What a nice, uncontroversial statement. Shame he's turned replies off so that his constituents can't tell him what a nice statement he's making.

Liam Conlon selected as Labour candidate for Beckenham & Penge.

Not sure what the two before them have done to deserve being left off your list.

Zeus would definitely approve.

Apropos of nothing, when we went to the British museum my wife was expecting really big versions of this kind of marble and was quite disappointed when it just turned out to be a load of pictures carved onto stones.

To be fair, he only got the job in the first place because they struggled to find another candidate who was happy to lie and tell them what they wanted to hear on Brexit.

It's just bizzare. It's been the position of every Greek government for about 200 years, it can hardly have come as a big surprise. What next, a hissy-fit with Spain because they'd still quite like Gibraltar back?

I'm sure that there are some, but I think on the whole it's a red herring. What people are, is interested in maintaining a status quo that benefits them - something which historically happens as you get older. Two things that this particular Tory party has done, (a) made it much harder for people to join the group that benefits from the status quo (jobs, property ownership, Brexit etc) and (b) gone to war with the institutions that this group likes and identifies with (BBC, NHS, National Trust etc.) They've burned both ends of their electoral candle and they're down to the last bit of wick.

Don't think there will this time. Reform have their blueprint, and the names are even the same. In 1993 Canada's Progressive Conservative Party party went from 156 seats down to just 2, largely because of pressure from the right from Preston Manning's (basically the proto-Farage) Reform Party, who went from 1 seat to 52. With the mainstream Tory party more or less wiped out, Reform then "merged" back with the remains of the PCP to create a new Conservative Party of Canada, with the Reform policies / people but the prestige and infrastructure of the older party. Last time I checked, they were on track to win the next Canadian election. It's not 2019, Reform don't want to help the Tories keep Labour out - they now want the Tories to be wiped out so that they can take their place.

Think all the nails have already been hammered in. There's now no more time to get any additional legislation on it through before the next election.

Risks becoming a bit Streisandy as well. Tories pushing the extending version of the video, saying how everyone should ackchooally watch the extended version where their leader is instructed how to hammer away like a three year old getting a new Early Learning Centre toy isn't *that* much better than the one everyone was laughing at. The overall tableau, in any context, is a net negative for the Tories.

"When's White Friday then eh? EH?!??"

I think that if there is every a promotion opportunity, he's passed a law that says he has to put Claire Coutinho in it.

There are two questions - "can Farage ever become Tory leader?". Sure, for all the reasons you say. He's a terrible shit, and the shits in the Tory party are quite capable of putting that sort of shit in charge of them if the will is there from his side. But the push-back is on the question "can Farage be the next Tory leader?". And the answer to that is definitely not, for all the reasons others have said.

Somewhere between a big shrug of the shoulders and a gif of a tumbleweed. A bit like Chris Waddle's opinions on Yemen or what Des Walker has to say about the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.