That is a depressingly plausible scenario

If somehow Starmer makes it to year-end and its a 2027 (or after) change then Douglas Alexander under-priced. Assuming he gets a national brief post-May shuffle he'll have a national profile by 2027 with Wes skills e.g. proper media skills, and fewer Wes negs e.g. blanker ideological slate

Fair, is a lot. She'd have had 30-40 Tories because Brexit was important (Johnson expelled 21). Incentive for Lab would've been to split the Tories e.g. she becomes Ramsay Mac. My point: there was a path, might not have completed, but she didn't even try put country first

Her emotion and character was that she was a Conservative. Her inability to follow through on what she thought was best for the country, over this identity, snuffed out the opportunity. Much was possible given how Lab MPs were happy to ignore Corbyn on Brexit

Agree on ending in a GE. But there were 273 votes for the Clarke Customs Union with the SNP and LDs opposed and Tories whipped heavily against. If May had stayed neutral, potential it would've passed & then dynamic changes e.g. pressure on SNP, LDs to not reopen; CU would've been the oven ready deal

She would have had a chance to continue as PM, not Tory party leader, with a defined mandate to close out a customs union or whatever the Commons had passed. Clearly the votes in the House for that, regardless of what Corbyn might have wanted. *That* would have been country over party

(2/2)...have fundamentally changed what then happened, possibly. Tory party would have decapitated her but if a deal had already been passed then no Johnson 'oven ready' deal tosh, the hard Brexiteers would have been the ones re-opening Brexit at the next election & continuing the psychodrama

At the point Chequers was done, so was she. Johnson had the votes in the parly party. She *could* have gone country>party, allowed a fair run for the indicative votes or even backed Customs Union. In that Commons, the votes were there, regardless of what the Tory backbenches wanted. It would...(1/2)

Had several long conversations about this with someone at the core of her team and the basic point on both was that depending on Labour votes wouldn't have been viable for a Conservative PM. Even after Chequers was done and she was done. That's party over country and frankly unforgivable

There were two big country>party opps May had and chose party:
(1) Late 2018 when a chunk of the PLP would've peeled off for a Customs union
(2) After Chequers was voted down, they whipped like hell to kill the alternatives in the indicative votes. This esp is where she did party > country

Think Harriet Harman said similar. So gratuitous and unnecessary. All about showing 'we're tough fiscally'. At the time I thought it made sense, not now. I do wonder for older Lab pols the extent to which that shaped a determination to lift the 2 child benefit cap. Or maybe 97 was too long ago

You're right, fair. Single parent benefit cuts were a terrible mistake that few of the time would repeat. Corbyn wouldn't have gone with BoE indy either, but on the main policy platform, the pledge card, what the govt did in health, education etc., he'd have wanted more but didn't vehemently oppose

Very true, an economic crime bigger than Brexit, for which she is not held fully accountable. Flip side of that tho is she abandoned it and even after betraying part of her ideological base, they stuck with her. The winning is the glue. When that stops the fissures open

Think early Thatcher & Blair are quite different beasts to how we think of them now. 79 Thatcher was of the right but her early Cabs were big tent e.g. Willie Whitelaw's role. 90s/early 2000s Blair had people like Meacher and Chris Mullin serving happily , term 1 had little Corbyn would object to

Surely the hallmark of any successful leader: a broad coalition can project their hopes and agenda (often conflicting) onto him/her - a loosely etched tho not blank canvas - and persuade themselves all is fine...as long as that leader keeps winning. Applies equally to Blair and before that Thatcher

You can agree with the first statement or not, but Polanski and his media writers know exactly what they're doing with the "if not now, when?" formulation and if they don't then they're not fit to be in position.

You come to Wealden, you play by Wealden rules bro. Wealden rules.

Edmonds sure fits the profile. Humbly suggest tho when he came for the king - Jim van den Bos, Press Officer at Wealden District Council in 2009 - he missed. Van Den Bos remained in post for another 12 years. For that reason, Edmonds is out

Closest was 50 years ago this year. Hughie Green's unhinged rant at the end of the Opportunity Knocks 1976 Christmas special (for those not around, huge talent show thing, 18m viewers). Can't find proper vid but the audio gives the sense. *He* could've been Brit Trump www.youtube.com/watch?v=64z1...

The point here is about evidence of actual change. An opinion that one can take-off like a coat is one that can be put back on again, just as easily. As West has done before.

100%. If he was even vaguely sincere, there would have been a lot of engagement with the Jewish community (a) in the US not the UK only after the big payday is threatened, (b) without any self-serving publicity and (c) over the course of several months

That's unbelievable

V interested who will ask for it, if I was back working for an MP 10,000 years ago, I'd def have been in touch. And for those that don't and are living in a misty-eyed fantasy world of miners, dockers and unionised manufacturing, post it and tag 'em

Should be essential reading for Labour MPs to understand their constituencies as they are, not some expression of a Glasman fever dream

An excerpt from the piece: "Apparently targeting four ambulances in London’s Jewish community is part of some cunning Mossad plan to do… what, exactly? In this grand conspiracy theory which you have built in your head, does Keir Starmer instantly commit to an Iran ground invasion? Or has ‘Israel’ done it to somehow engender support for Jews in the UK (in this scenario, why blame ‘Netanyahu’ for conflating Jews and Israel when you do it so effortlessly yourself?) Or are you trying on for size the more longstanding ‘Israel false flag’ conspiracy theory of Mossad attacking a Jewish community target to promote fear among Diaspora Jews and encourage them to move to Israel? "So, then, is Israel’s cunning plan burning several ambulances to induce Diaspora Jews to migrate to Israel now, when the country is being targeted by Iranian ballistic missile fire?"

I'm incredibly angry I needed to write a piece about the bizarre stupidity of the Hatzola ambulance ‘false flag’ conspiracy theories, but apparently this is the world we're living in now.

Please read & share (including with idiots you see parroting this stuff)

www.jewishnews.co.uk/bizarre-stup...

I move between feeling sick at just how open so many people now are in their antisemitism and relief that people I admire are waking up to just how bad things are on what could loosely be called their 'side'.

Twitter has more open Nazis. This site has more antisemites with 'be kind' in their bios.

Excerpt from the article: "The question here is not really one of whether such prayer is in fact an attempt to “dominate” – or the more obvious explanation, that during Ramadan one breaks ones’ fast by eating very briefly just before and then more properly after the evening Maghrib prayer (yes, like our own Maariv prayer). Rather it is about whether one has the right to publicly express their religious identity in this country. In this specific instance, an event to mark a key event in the Islamic calendar had been openly and legally booked for Trafalgar Square. Muslims present had every right to pray as a part of that."

The Jewish News, which I am proud to work for as Deputy Editor, has published an editorial on this week's Iftar prayers in Trafalgar Square

www.jewishnews.co.uk/voice-of-the...

Non-trivial chance some of the younger segments thinking about the Churchill dog from the ad

Badenoch: Starmer’s Iran stance is appeasement of ‘sectarian’ vote - The Jewish Chronicle The Conservative Party leader added: ‘we should be looking after the British national interest, not particular constituency interest’

Every day a new low is reached. No, Jonathan, a Gails is not a provocation. No, Janice, “MENAPT” immigrants are not inherently inferior. No, Kemi…honestly where does one even start with this?!

Seconded. Great for getting to prototype or creating small stuff that automates personal work (often that's all that's needed) BUT every addition (e.g. put a filter in here or change flow there) adds complexity, builds tech debt. Comes a point, as our lead eng says, cough and it will fall over