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"He's succesfully worked with the security services and prosecuted terrorists, what have you done?"

New Conservative party logo following their latest rebrand.

Not if historically a larger chunk of the fifty seats to go voted for you. And a larger chunk of the 600 remaining didn't.

Any interview with a current minister?

Tony Xia?

Not anymore.

Wasn't the second part pretty much shot in the head around March 2018? There's been nothing to ebb away since then.

It has been an eyebrow-raisingly sharp pivot from some people from "let the markets decide, business needs to innovative or die, cut unnecessary taxes and regulation to help business adapt and thrive" to "NO, NOT LIKE THAT!"

The whoppers are way ahead of you. His fortune being in commercial property is completely coincidental though I'm sure.

I didn’t suggest that we did.

Of course there is. There are loads of things that a functioning democracy should have which the USA doesn't. If there isn't a televised debate it can just be added somewhere near the bottom of that list of all the other aberrations that are currently there. But the absence of one isn't anti-democratic. The UK didn't suddenly become a democracy in 2010 with the first televised debates.

What does a televised debate, or lack of have to do with democracy?

An interesting thing to watch will be how the unionist parties campaign in the Holyrood elections. They can't really go all out on the "vote for us otherwise the SNP will get a new referendum and the UK will break up" line because when the SNP get their inevitable majority then it'll be politically very difficult to not then have the referendum which they themselves said would be the consequence. But if they campaign on "there won't be another referendum whatever happens" then it's virtually goading people into voting SNP and increasing the size of their majority.

Only because accuracy is conducive to productive debate: Rachel Reeves (something of a bête noire for the Corbynites, for reasons I won't pretend to understand), current something-or-other in the shadow cabinet wrote a book called Women Of Westminster: The MPs Who Changed Politics. Which as you might expect, contains quite a lot about Nancy Astor, the first female MP to take her seat in the House of Commons. I've not read it, so offer no opinion on whether it's a balanced picture, including the Nazi stuff or a fawning hagiography. NB - Astor was the first woman to take her seat, Constance Markievicz was elected for Sinn Fein before her and didn't take her seat, per Sinn Fein policy. As you were.

Bingo. It's unlikely to lead to millions of repossessions, it's likely to lead to a boom time for the equity release industry and millions of people in their twenties through to their fifties not getting half as much inheritance as they thought they were going to.

NB on the date

Just 50% of the key speakers are members of the Trump family then. That seems like a sign of a healthy political party.

I'm not sure that it is true. Most of the time that I've seen its a link to DM Reporter on Twitter which in turn uses screengrabs. Or a similar third party. Obviously there will be exceptions, but I'd guess that most people linking to one of their stories in disgust/ horror / mockery are probably relying on someone else to to be the one actually wading through the slurry tank.

Wasn't there talk after the last election that they might rebrand and turn into a sort of "yell at each other angrily about burkhas and gays" party?

Sure, don't interrupt your enemy etc etc. But it wasn't really a comment on how Starmer has done - and I agree, broadly he's judged it about right. It was more a comment on what it takes to shift an opinion poll and what needs to happen to push the Labour figure significantly up and the Tory figure significantly down.

The main difference between now and then is the broader Labour Party. Starmer has the best individual ratings of any LOTO since Blair, but the difference is that Blair had a party that a majority of voters (60% iirc) said was a party that was ready to govern. Now, although Starmer comfortably leads Johnson on "who would be the better Prime Minister" question, the wider party still isn't trusted and it's barely over half the 60% figure above. Starmer's challenge isn't to make the Tories look shit, but to make Labour look good. Unless he can do that, then those poll ratings won't change too much. Up to now, he's not managed to do that. Partly by circumstance, but partly due to not doing it well enough. But that's probably for the other thread.

An incoherent elderly bloke who isn't an embarrassing fascist, or an incoherent elderly bloke who is? Yeah, that is a tricky one.