General Election 2024

[Ralphw2]

i am in what is currently a 3 way marginal. I have had 8 election leaflets delivered - all from the Lib Dems.

[UndercoverElephant]

I had one from the libdems today. Nothing else from anybody.

Meanwhile....

https://x.com/georgegalloway/status/1803944235416092978

I'm so old-fashioned I want to Just Drill Oil and use the proceeds to rebuild our industrial base, put our people back to meaningful work, and make Britain Great. I'll get my coat... @WorkersPartyGB

[UndercoverElephant]

3rd poll putting Reform ahead of the tories:

https://x.com/ashcowburn/status/1804182 ... yF5LX6OAag

Labour - 39% (-2)
Reform - 20% (+2)
Tories - 19 (-)
Lib Dem - 12% (+1)
Green - 6% (-)

[Ralphw2]

Farage has stated that the West provoked the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

This will lose him some votes, but I don't know how many. It emphasises that he would be a very dangerous person to be in charge of this country.

[oobers]

Have any of you been to a hustings event in your constituency yet or intend to go to one? What Powerswitchesque questions will you be asking? It’s tempting to go for something around degrowth but suspect it would be greeted by groans from the audience and quickly fobbed off by every candidate..

[UndercoverElephant]

This will lose him some votes, but I don't know how many.

Not enough to stop the rise of Reform in the polls. He rephrased it rather well in the interview: NATO and EU expansion eastwards gave Putin the excuse he needed to justify a war in the eyes of the Russian people. That much is probably true. The counterfactual holds true I think: had NATO not expanded so far eastwards then the war would have been considerably less likely. This is not a moral justification for the war, although the word "provoke" might be taken as that. Sometimes reacting to provocation is not morally defensible, regardless of the provocation. The important question is whether or not he would continue to support Ukraine, and I don't remember him actually being asked that question.

Another poll putting Reform ahead of Tories:

Westminster Voting Intention: LAB: 39% (-2) RFM: 20% (+3) CON: 19% (=) LDM: 12% (+1) GRN: 6% (=) SNP: 3% (=) Via @WStoneInsight, 19-20 Jun. Changes w/ 12-13 Jun.

Although there's another one out tonight putting Reform on 13 and the tories on 22. I don't know what to believe.

[clv101]

These small polls of ~1000 people have a 3% points error - and that's assuming you have a fair sample which is incredibly difficult to do as there are strong political biases associated with land line use, Internet use etc.

We'd expect them to jump around like this.

[Default0ptions]

This will lose him some votes, but I don't know how many.

Not enough to stop the rise of Reform in the polls. He rephrased it rather well in the interview: NATO and EU expansion eastwards gave Putin the excuse he needed to justify a war in the eyes of the Russian people. That much is probably true. The counterfactual holds true I think: had NATO not expanded so far eastwards then the war would have been considerably less likely. This is not a moral justification for the war, although the word "provoke" might be taken as that. Sometimes reacting to provocation is not morally defensible, regardless of the provocation. The important question is whether or not he would continue to support Ukraine, and I don't remember him actually being asked that question.

Another poll putting Reform ahead of Tories:

Westminster Voting Intention: LAB: 39% (-2) RFM: 20% (+3) CON: 19% (=) LDM: 12% (+1) GRN: 6% (=) SNP: 3% (=) Via @WStoneInsight, 19-20 Jun. Changes w/ 12-13 Jun.

Although there's another one out tonight putting Reform on 13 and the tories on 22. I don't know what to believe.

UE: “had NATO not expanded so far eastwards then the war would have been considerably less likely.”

I’ve been making this point all along.

[UndercoverElephant]

This will lose him some votes, but I don't know how many.

Not enough to stop the rise of Reform in the polls. He rephrased it rather well in the interview: NATO and EU expansion eastwards gave Putin the excuse he needed to justify a war in the eyes of the Russian people. That much is probably true. The counterfactual holds true I think: had NATO not expanded so far eastwards then the war would have been considerably less likely. This is not a moral justification for the war, although the word "provoke" might be taken as that. Sometimes reacting to provocation is not morally defensible, regardless of the provocation. The important question is whether or not he would continue to support Ukraine, and I don't remember him actually being asked that question.

Another poll putting Reform ahead of Tories:

Westminster Voting Intention: LAB: 39% (-2) RFM: 20% (+3) CON: 19% (=) LDM: 12% (+1) GRN: 6% (=) SNP: 3% (=) Via @WStoneInsight, 19-20 Jun. Changes w/ 12-13 Jun.

Although there's another one out tonight putting Reform on 13 and the tories on 22. I don't know what to believe.

UE: “had NATO not expanded so far eastwards then the war would have been considerably less likely.”

I’ve been making this point all along.

And had that been the only point you had made, I would not have argued with you. The statement is true, but it does not justify Russia starting the war, and certainly doesn't justify all the other nonsense you have posted in support of Russia. I am NOT saying that NATO should not have expanded eastwards. I am making a factual statement, not a moral one, and I am doing so in order to analyse the exact meaning of Farage's statement.

It is a fact that NATO did agree not to expand that far eastwards, but it can also be argued that the choice whether to join NATO or not should always have been in the hands of the countries concerned, not NATO and not Russia. After the breakup of the USSR those countries became independent sovereign states with a right to self-determination. The root problem here is that some elements in Russia never accepted this. Had Russia accepted it, then those countries probably wouldn't have been so keen to join NATO.

[Default0ptions]

I’ve replied in the Ukraine thread to avoid going off topic here.

[Default0ptions]

Farage Ukraine
(Telegraph)

The West’s errors in Ukraine have been catastrophic. I won’t apologise for telling the truth
Until we admit what we got wrong, we will never have a lasting peace

Nigel Farage22 June 2024 • 3:44pm
Britain's Reform UK Party Leader Nigel Farage attends an interview with Nick Robinson
Don’t blame me for telling the truth about Putin’s war in Ukraine. Facing up the facts about the mistakes of the past has to be the first step towards the peaceful future we all want to see.

In my BBC Panorama interview on Friday, Nick Robinson outrageously accused me of “echoing” Russian president Vladimir Putin’s excuses for his invasion of Ukraine. The political establishment has since been busy echoing that slur.

So, let me set the record straight. I am not and never have been an apologist or supporter of Putin. His invasion of Ukraine was immoral, outrageous and indefensible. As a champion of national sovereignty, I believe that Putin was entirely wrong to invade the sovereign nation of Ukraine. Nobody can fairly accuse me of being an appeaser. I have never sought to justify Putin’s invasion in any way and I’m not now.

But that doesn’t change the fact that I saw it coming a decade ago, warned that it was coming and am one of the few political figures who has been consistently right and honest about Russia’s Ukraine war.

What I have been saying for the past 10 years is that the West has played into Putin’s hands, giving him the excuse to do what he wanted to do anyway.

Back in 2014, when the EU first offered Ukraine an accession agreement, I said in a speech in the European Parliament that “there will be a war in Ukraine”. Why? Because the expansion of NATO and the European Union was giving Putin a pretext he would not ignore.

As I have made clear on multiple occasions since then, if you poke the Russian bear with a stick, don’t be surprised if he responds. And if you have neither the means nor the political will to face him down, poking a bear is obviously not good foreign policy.

Even though he was on the radio last night (Friday) denying it, former Labour cabinet minister George Robertson, who later became head of NATO, has also recently made clear that Putin’s fears about EU expansion helped cause the war. He is on the record – twice - in his New Statesman article in May and a BBC interview in February of this year.

And it’s not only Ukraine. The West’s diplomatic blunder over how to tackle Putin’s mix of paranoia and assertiveness was just one of many disastrous interventions in the two decades since Tony Blair’s Labour government joined the catastrophic invasion of Iraq (which I opposed).

Western statesmen have too often tried to dress up in white cowboy hats and pose as heroes saving the world. We have witnessed vanity taking the place of reason in foreign policy, and the result has been to destabilise a series of countries with dire effects both there and here.

We should recall how, around the same time as tensions with Russia were being ramped up, US President Obama and his secretary of state Hilary Clinton, with the full support of David Cameron’s Tory government, reduced Libya to a smoking ruin in order to remove the dictator Gaddafi.

I have consistently pointed out the dangers of the West’s foreign policy. It gives me no pleasure to say that I have been proved right and that the Tories and Labour have been wrong.

Of course I understand that many British people strongly sympathise with the resilient Ukrainians. The fog of war always makes it hard to be sure of casualty figures, but US intelligence sources suggested last year that almost half a million had been killed or wounded on both sides in the conflict. It is a meat grinder for both Ukrainian and Russian soldiers, with no apparent end to the slaughter in sight.

The UK alone has pledged £12.5 billion to Ukraine in military support and other aid. The war has also had a drastic impact on the European and British economies, contributing to the big jump in everything from energy costs and food prices to interest rates, intensifying the cost-of-living crisis that has hit millions of hard-pressed British households.

There is no easy solution to the war. But facing up to the truth about the causes and consequences must be a start. That is why I simply want to tell it as it is, and have done for a decade. Those slanderers who claim that telling the truth makes me a “mouthpiece for Putin” only reveal the weakness of their own case.

There is an issue of British democracy here, too. The escalation of British support for the war in Ukraine has not even been an issue in this election campaign, since the old parties all agree with it. Am I, as the leader of Reform UK, a party that is now running second in major polls, not even allowed to question this political conformism?

What real democratic choice could there be, if we are all expected to say the same thing and libelled if we refuse to do so? At election time, more than ever, free speech remains the lifeblood of our democracy.

My question for voters is this. Who would you trust most to shape the future of UK foreign policy? Me, who saw the disastrous wars in Ukraine and elsewhere coming down the line and repeatedly warned against them? Or the establishment parties who helped to make them happen?

[BritDownUnder]

It's quite true that Putin does not want Eastern European countries to be NATO members as they would be easier to invade if they weren't. He probably does not want Portugal to be a NATO member either. He is probably a bit uncomfortable having nuclear weapons based in the Baltic states or Finland being pointed at his home town.

I read somewhere that Russia does not have allies. They have either vassals or enemies and we all have to choose which one we want to be.

[UndercoverElephant]

I read somewhere that Russia does not have allies. They have either vassals or enemies and we all have to choose which one we want to be.

Russia is fast becoming a vassal itself. The real power lies in Beijing.

[Mark]

Meanwhile, back in the election campaign, bad news for the Tory grifters keeps on coming...

Fourth Tory official reportedly investigated over bets:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c511nv3pjd6o

[UndercoverElephant]

If you were in any doubt how bad it is -- the tories ask themselves whether they are the baddies: https://conservativehome.com/2024/06/23 ... e-baddies/

I can hardly find a word in that article to disagree with. Except this:

Once Farage implodes, like the proverbial dog, the right will turn back to the Tories. But we face the greatest existential challenge in our history. July 4th will be a battering to make 1997 look like a lightly bruised knee. Sunak losing his seat now looks likely. A good result is not coming third. Expect double figures, a parliamentary party denuded of talent, and a nervous breakdown.

Farage isn't going to implode. He's going to be elected to Parliament, where he is going to spend the next five years forcing what is left of the tory party to confront the reason why he and his party exists, which was their extraordinary betrayal of their own leave-voting base with respect to immigration. Until such time as the tories have adopted his stance on immigration (and also the culture wars, but that's easier for them) then the right will not turn back to them. It will remain hopelessly split, and therefor incapable of challenging Labour's total domination of the political landscape. In such a scenario Labour will be more threatened by forces from the left, not the right. It is not impossible that 5 years from now Labour is in as much trouble as the tories are now, for failing to get to grips with immigration and culture wars as well climate change and "the cost of living". Can you imagine an election where Labour is losing votes to the greens and libdems at the same rate the tories have lost them to Farage? Under FPTP?? It would be utter chaos, with Prime Minister Nigel Farage at the head of a tory/reform coalition becoming a real possibility.

Eleven days to go. Don't know what any of you lot are planning to do on election night, but I will be up until breakfast time, by which time I will be extremely drunk.

Meanwhile, back in the election campaign, bad news for the Tory grifters keeps on coming...

Fourth Tory official reportedly investigated over bets:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c511nv3pjd6o

The scandal itself is relatively petty, but all the time this occupies the headlines people are thinking about tory corruption and incompetence instead of what they want people to be thinking about. A few more don't knows and not sures decide they can't vote for these bastards.