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I was pretty confident that would be the case, mainly as @MakemineVanilla clearly isn't a massive wrong 'un. Even so, I feel its still a fairly sensible policy to have.

That might be the most insightful video in the world, but without a sentence or two of context as to what it's about first, there's no way I'm corrupting my YouTube algorithm with the sort of video that a guy with a Union Jack in his title talking about "British Democracy" could potentially be.

Oh, "senior party figures" is Simon Clarke. Imagine the state you've got yourself into for Simon Clarke to be someone whose opinions are considered important.

Tonight's "the polls will definitely close as we get closer to the election" news:

Also, take a quick glance at the polling for "rejoin EU" and "rejoin EU if required to adopt the Euro" and they are wildly different. The second of those points (whether we should / whether we would have to promise to / whether we actually would) is something with a lot of nuance - but you can bet now what the other side of any future "rejoin or not" campaign is going to be based around.

Nobody is disputing that they wouldn't welcome back a stable, united version of the UK back into the fold. And everything suggests that will happen within a couple of electoral cycles. But they will take the current (massively imbalanced in their favour anyway) relationship over constant accession / secession talks with every new government who sees it as an easy wedge issue to squeeze an extra half dozen seats out of Lancashire and Cumbria. And have whatever referendum you like. As long as you know what is in the Government's power to offer in the question that they ask.

Because it's not up the voters of the UK whether we are members or not. And while it is a subject that could be flipped every five years on the whim of an electorate that is happy to judge EU = good / bad as lazy shorthand for what they think of the Prime Minister of the day, they're comfortable leaving us to sort that shit out until there is consensus, one way or the other. There is no "referendum to go back in". There is plausibly something like "general election manifesto commitment to negotiate accession terms, subject to future confirmatory referendum". Probably in six or eleven years time. Don't hold your breath, either way.

We absolutely could not.

It's a glorious mess of a seat. It's only happening due to the resignation of the former (Labour) councillor after he was pictured consoling another former (Labour) councillor after he'd been found with child porn (the latter has since been convicted of said offence). Then the new Labour candidate goes on a big anti-trans rant online (not really popular with your average Labour council voter) so they suspend her. Then realise that there is no time to get a new candidate, so unsuspend her the day before the election. So the other guy, (16 years of being a Lib Dem councillor in the same ward and appearing to know everyone) decides that he may as well now be a Tory, having previously been a Labour councillor on top of his Lib Dem history. He stands on a Tory "we hate ULEZ" campaign, sweeping up the dozen Tories in Hackney, all his Lib Dem mates from the last two decades he's been a councillor and all the Labour voters upset at all the stuff in the first two paragraphs. Lib Dems, who normally share the seat with Labour drop to 3% of the vote because the guy that the Lib Dem voters have liked for twenty years now wears a blue tie. Labour mired in every scandal possible. Massive turnout too - 32% for a local council by-election, more than some parliamentary by-elections. It's silly that Iannuci didn't follow up TTOI with a Vicar Of Dibley / Yes, Minister type crossover thing about local government. Absolutely mental stuff.

It's not heresy, it's just pointless to say it. Given it can't be "reversed" even if there were the political will to do so.

Oh yes? Care to share the £169k per person arguments?

They are staying.

One for @bickster's "death of the Tory party" theory.

Brace yourself.

No, it's just to whine at the House Of Lords not to change his silly Rwanda bill.

If repeated at a General Election, would leave them on circa 30 seats.

Tory social media pricks: "is there any way that we could give him both a slightly cool anti-hero vibe while also using a slogan that makes him sound extremely competent at what he does?"

Yup. Never rule out any UK-voting-public craziness, but if you offered Labour the opportunity to fight the election-after-next with the Tories running on "we need to leave the ECHR" as their main policy they'd absolutely bite your hand off.

There is no possibility of that happening in this Parliament. I fully expect it'll form part of a Tory election manifesto at some point in the next decade, but it's not a 2024 issue to worry about.

All the stuff that Chindie said, but also they're not going to lose it unless something really odd happens. The number of people who voted for the amendment was almost certainly not enough to vote against the bill to make it fail. And if there is any risk, they'll just pull the vote and say how they've heard the voices of colleagues and know that there are changes they need to make etc, precisely to avoid the embarrassment.

Good lads, get that bill voted down.

It happened last week - I nearly posted it in the anti-semitism thread, but when you scratch below the surface it's not as alarming a decision as it might first appear. It's a bit of an uncomfortable situation all round, but it's probably not the brightest or most diplomatic move to dedicate an award that he recently won to the IDF. He's still in the squad, he's just no longer the guy who will be doing all the interviews. Because that's all he would be asked about now.

Loads of fun numbers coming out of the Telegraph / YouGov MRP data if you dig below the headlines (or read other people who do digging below the headlines)

Not at all. But crucially, I don't think anyone, leading any political party can promise or do things that will changes lives (significantly) for the better. I don't want Johnson or Corbyn saying that all the problems can fixed by being knobs towards Brussels or bankers. As you allude to, the country has deep, structural problems which aren't solved by a new guy with a vision of how to fix everything. Because there isn't a unifying, ideological solution at the moment, fixing one thing will break another. So you have to manage all the bits into a boring, structural place where eg nationalising major industry doesn't screw pension funds. Or building entire new towns doesn't leave new schools and hospitals without qualified people to staff them. Or introducing massive new taxes on the bits of the country that currently make all the money without them going somewhere else and you getting no tax from them instead. Or how you promote an ethical foreign policy while your net zero commitments are reliant on Lithium and Cobalt mined by children in central Africa. It's a complicated world where taking one Jenga block out screws up something else, and any politician who is comfortable enough saying "if we just do this then we're fine" is probably a bad person to be in politics. I get people want to be inspired, but I'll be pretty comfortable with the novelty of thinking that those in charge are doing it because they at least think they're trying to make things better for the country rather than seeing it as an opportunity for themselves. While bleak and not going to get the crowds at Glastonbury, that's still better than we've seen for while. And I'm quite happy that the guys five years ago had that same motivation, which is why (while it would have been internationally shambolic) it would have been miles better than what we actually have had. In five years time things will almost certainly be as bad as they are now. But any politician who might have the nous to be able to do something about it is stuck with the Catch-22 situation of being aware enough to know that, while having to sell something to the country to get elected. And the best slogan I've got for Starmer is that I think he gets that there isn't a button to press (either labelled "tax more and nationalise stuff" or "tax less and kick the foreigners out") that magically fixes it all. And if he does get that, that's a good thing, not a bad thing. It's a bit like people demanding an Emery and for us to sign Moussa Diaby for £50m when we sacked Di Matteo. The country isn't at the Emery stage. Starmer isn't even Smith, he's Steve Bruce. He's the boring one that nobody likes, nobody wanted in the first place and nobody is sad to see the back of. But at least he's not setting fire to the dressing room, and (hopefully) when you look back the others bits don't happen without him signing Ahmed El-Mohamedy and Robert Snodgrass. There will absolutely be a Henri Lansbury style screw-up along the way (and probably even a Scott Hogan), but at least there might be a modicum of sense to the bad decisions for a change. While I'm stream-of-consciousnessing on the topic: Gerrard - Johnson. Minor success with a similar but smaller role and massive public profile which meant loads of people thought it would be a triumph, but even a cursory glance below the surface, and his personality meant it was always going to be a disaster. It was always about him, not the thing he was responsible for. Sherwood - Truss: Speaks for itself. Cameron - Lambert: The few bits that he got right and the shiny, initial popularity mask the fact that it was all a facade for gross institutional decline behind the scenes which led to far greater failings later. O'Neill - Blair - the great hope after two decades of bleakness. Only to make really obvious mistakes which sour his legacy and make all the people who really liked him at the time, now hate him. Yet, they can't escape the fact that what he did was still better than the fifteen years either before or after. Around fifty percent of people will always hold his decisions around Europe against him. Houllier - Brown - was always going to be a bit deflating after what went before, and it always felt like the end of an era. But there was a bit of logic in why it might have worked. Bit tin-earned to why people weren't on board with what he was trying to do, and it always felt a bit weird to see him there given he'd always been around doing something else for much of the previous decade. Sunak - Di Matteo - when the last "season" was a disaster, why not roll the dice on a guy in a suit who could at least point to a time when people thought (albeit wrongly, and in extreme circumstances when their minds were on other things) he was good a few years back? There's probably an essay in that Prime Ministers vs Villa managers somewhere. Or at least a fanzine article.