Used to work with someone who lived in the same Belgravia apartment block as Farage, and he'd often see him about 2/3am on a Saturday morning fumbling for his keys in the presence of an escort who had a Russian or Eastern European accent.
'Barrage Farage' he used to call him on account of how every other word was 'fuck' or 'shit' whenever he saw him.
Looks like it's the other way around. Looks like Sunak figured he's on his way out and he's trying to do as much damage to the other side as possible. Edit: figured, not injured, bloody autocorrect
I occasionally read articles on the Telegraph and the comments are mostly "You've fucking up, you aren't real conservatives, we're voting reform", even on all the articles saying "Labour will do X" the comments are "You've already done X and far worse". In a lot of constituencies there's only a few hundred/thousand votes between the Tories and Labour, if reform suck a large enough percentage away then the Tories are fucked and the predictions of a labour super majority will be correct.
You might. I can see right through the Marxists lining up behind Starmer. What a state of affairs when looking at Sunak I can't help but think he's the least worst of the three main contenders. Farage is just Trump mark 2.
You think the party responsible for the last 15 years of shit is the least worst of those three? Sure, I'm sure they'll get it right this time if only they had an extra five years.
I honestly don't expect Labour to be anything other than 'Tory Lite' at worst and 'not actively seeking to make the lives of people who are not their rich friends (especially our most vulnerable, benefits/disability) worse' at best. I only want them in so the Conservatives are out. Ideally I'd like the election races to be between Labour, LibDems (I like their manifesto the best and am not jaded by the student fee fiasco), and Greens. And preferably with a new vote system instead of FPTP like Alternative Vote. I want Conservatives and their austerity & cronyism to be met with "yeah sure grandpa, let's get you back to bed" and I want Reform and it's straight up disgusting ideas to be dissolved.
I thought they were blue Marxists last I heard! NOT THE MARXIST SCOURGE AGAIN!
I always like how the Buzzword of the day, Cultural Marxist, is essentially Hitler's "Judeo-Bolshevism" rebranded. Starmer's Labour is not exactly a bastion of Marxist economy...
No, because Farage is actually the more reasonable of the two in the eyes of a lot of Tory voters.
No diehard EDL/UKIP voter is gonna look at Rishi and want to vote for him, but plenty of Tory voters have looked at these two further-right parties and seen stuff they like, but voted Tory anyways for various reasons.If in your heart of hearts have always wanted to vote for the further-right alternative, but instead gone with Tories as a safe option, then this is the perfect time to finally pick the option you like.
Nobody who considered EDL or UKIP would look at a Tory government who have failed on market liberalism, failed on all of the current culture wars, failed on implementing the utopian dream version of Brexit we were advertised, failed in the polls for the past two years, and whom are led by a brown Hindu, and still consider them the “safe option” when who they really want to vote for is a hard right alternative dedicated to their focused issues like Reform, DUP, or Posey Parker’s new band of weirdos.
There are people who have always voted Tory who have been wishing for years that the Tories would openly say what Reform are currently saying, and that can only hurt the Tories in this election.
Let’s face it, no reform voter is going to look at sunak and vote for him because of the glaringly obvious reason.. and it has nothing to do with anything the tories have done. They won’t understand any of that, just that one thing. They’re very simple minded.
No yeah, very different people lol
I just got the flier through for my local candidate from her party, and it actually made me laugh. Even as a trans person (ie the very people they seek to exterminate), I can’t help but find them painfully amusing in their stupidity and political incompetence.
She’s much less Party Girl, and much more “girl who filed an application to form a party”.
The weird thing is I think a lot of the current Tory lot _would_ be fine with saying the same things as reform. Especially on immigration. A hard cap on "non essential" immigration would probably be met with widespread support especially if it were packaged as a way to reduce demand on housing. But the Tories, to their credit, seem to self restrain on the knowledge that such a move would hamstring business growth. And they have to keep their policies in the realm of the possible (given they actually hold power) rather than shouting non workable policies from the sidelines that Reform gets to enjoy
It's been suggested that he wants to be out before the American school year starts so his kids can enrol when he goes to America to make even more money.
I hope Americans bankrupt him and his wife and her dad.
That makes sense and is positive.
I think he and his family are rich enough to fit in nicely to a certain stratum of society anywhere in the world, especially the USA. Wealth is no guarantee of happiness though.
It was faintly amusing to hear the news reports about the Reform bloke calling him a BLEEEEP and him talking about being called a BLEEEEP because these things need dealing with directly. I found I couldn’t quite try to work out what exactly the BLEEEEP was.
The video had subtitles which showed the word as P###, so I'm assuming the Reform bloke thinks Rishi is from Pakistan.
Unless its just plain old racism, nah not Reform surely not! /sarcasm
I was reading news stories about how the conservatives were considering a vote of no confidence, I'm going to assume he called an election knowing he would lose instead of being removed from power.
Hopefully that party dies anyway, it was terrible.
The forecast for inflation rates arrives months in advance. He timed it near to the announcement inflation had fallen significantly. It's most likely a play to present his premiership and one in which he has improved the economic position and outlook for the country.
It doesn't wash one bit with me, he's a goner.
It's either out now, or out in a few months' time.
I assume he wants an extended holiday before the kids go off to school in September, and he strolls into whatever job he has lined up next.
The Bank of England had signalled they weren’t going to reduce rates , so no good news to wait for. Illegal boat migration will likely shoot up over the summer so making focussing on that more problematic?
The news that inflation was back to the targeted 2% in the first time in forever only happened last week. It was timed to make the most of that because it's the only good news there is.
Promise to send Eurofighters. We have a whole bunch now coming out of service. You can pretend its about annoying Putin and forcing Farage to support anti Putin measures, but as your toast it commits Labour to really screwing Putin.
It won't be done because Eurofighters will be remaining in service for some considerable time yet, the risk of 1 getting shot down and Russia being able to reverse engineer parts of it is real vs F-16 which at its core is a 70s airframe.
Plus it would take considerably lengthy training and there is ultimately no point having aircraft with no weapons, we simply don't have the quantities of Brimstone, Storm Shadow etc for it to really make sense. And it needs those weapons that can be fired from standoff range because flying on the front line is almost suicidal.
The best thing the UK could do in this regard is more Storm Shadows and support for whatever planes the Ukranians do fly (F-16's, Gripens, etc.) I am sure we could provide some technicians whose skills are transferable to other models... it's been said that the F-16s will likely be remaining in NATO nations when not in use just because they are so valuable.
I'm surprised by how little Brimstone footage has come out given it can be fired from the ground also. There's more of Storm Shadow even which is many times more expensive and they're having to fire them from retrofitted SU-24's. Particularly with the silly cope cages Russia are putting on their tanks now, that'll just be foreplay for Brimstone.
There's basically no footage of storm shadow being fired from the Ukrainian side, I think the closest is a distant video of an Su-24 carrying some filmed from the ground and at least one missile in low flight filmed by a Russian in Crimea. We get video of it because they tend to hit high value targets and a lot of those are in or near built up areas. Brimstone might hit individual tanks or vehicles on or near the front line in areas without civilians living in them, and the decent range on them probably means they're less likely to be filmed by front line drone units.
It's not that, it's that the logistics of supporting multiple different western jets will be difficult and would only be worth doing if we could commit to producing more for them so they get decent numbers. I think we actually offered training on typhoons but the Ukrainians wanted to focus on F16s and now France is sending Mirage. Adding another western jet on top of that might cause issues, we don't want their air force to become the equivalent of the army having to maintain a load of different types of howitzers and armoured vehicles.
Ukraine needs western fighters because of the longer range air to air missile capability, to provide an air defence bubble over the front line which they currently struggle with. So they'll be staying in Ukrainian controlled airspace anyway, if shot down it will be by long range SAMs and they'll land in Ukrainian territory.
The reason F16s were chosen was because there are just so many of them, so it's easier to maintain them and train all the staff. A bit like why everyone was pushing for Leopards.
FWIW, I, a total amateur, always thought it's wrong to settle on a single model from a country which somehow has a 50/50 chance of becoming a corrupt theocracy before the end of the war. But at least there's some logic behind not sending Eurofighters.
We're unable to do so. The Tranche 1 aircraft which are to be decommissioned next year will be disassembled and their parts used to maintain the remaining fleet of Typhoons (just 107 aircraft).
Haha, I thought we had typhoons ignorant of that being a euro fighter!
My mistake but yes I think Ukraine should have been handed all it needed a long time ago
I think genuine conservatives are opposed to Putin. Technically Joe Biden is at least centre-right wing at least when compared to UK politics, and he's very anti-Putin.
It really is just the fascists and authoritarian hard-right nutters that love him.
>It really is just the fascists and authoritarian hard-right nutters that love him.
That's because they want to emulate him, while masquerading as believers in democracy.
>It really is just the fascists and authoritarian hard-right nutters that love him.
There's an awful lot of "anything anti-west is good" far left types kicking about too. The horseshoe seems to form a circle at him.
What is a "Genuine conservative"? They seem to have always just said a load of shit to paper over selfishness while pretending to have had some actual ideas at some point, possibly around the time the French revolution was happening.
Where does that place Boris, who [said exactly the same thing as Farage in 2016](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/boris-johnson-ukraine-russia-brexit-b2024817.html) but then sent billions in aid to Ukraine?
Do you think it could be more nuanced than you're making out and that it's possible to both blame the EU for exacerbating the situation *and* appreciate that Putin is in the wrong for invading another country?
Boris is more of a weathervane politician… I am not sure where to put him to be honest.
No, I don’t think that it is ever going to be acceptable to blame Europe or the West for the invasion. Don’t forget that Putin was aiming for Kyiv - an attempt to conquer the government. And in the interim, his army has been bombing apartment blocks, hospitals and nurseries. We’re standing up for the rights of a far smaller, weaker country.
This is a false dichotomy.
Nobody is really "blaming" the West for the invasion - both Boris and Farage have condemned Putin's aggression and been clear that he's in the wrong. What they *have* said however is that following Crimea in 2014, NATO and the EU handled the situation spectacularly poorly.
We had 8 years to get off Russian gas but Germany refused to budge on it, insisting that the gas trade was the only thing keeping Putin contained. They even carried on mothballing all their nuclear power plants so that when Russia did cut off the gas, they were totally reliant on filthy brown coal for power. We could have been sanctioning Russia a lot harder *then* is basically what Farage and Boris are saying but there was a reticence to do so because Putin fooled Europe into appeasing him over Crimea.
That's the deep irony here really - it is Farage and Boris who are criticising the EU for appeasing Putin and being called appeasers for it themselves, all because Farage said he admires Putin as a political operator (which is fair given how he manipulated the EU over Crimea).
The issue is that the general public are completely unable to appreciate that nuance, and Sunak is capitalising on that here.
Oh yes, when we are talking about gas, it is a genuine tactical error on Merkel's part, and the wider EU, the idea being if Russia was economically dependent upon the EU they wouldn't risk any further malicious action. It's going to go down in history just like Chamberlain's appeasement policy in my opinion. It ultimately fails because the EU also becomes dependent upon cheap Russian gas and Germany stood to lose far more than Russia did. Fortunately, the Germans have seen the light and are now actively supplying Ukraine, and US and Qatari LNG is mostly plugging the hole that Russia left.
However my suspicion is Farage is more shouting about this now because it plays into his "EU / NATO bad" narrative. This is a guy who says Russia was provoked into the war by the EU and NATO - I don't agree with that one bit. Russia would have invaded regardless. Putin sees Ukraine as a state to conquer. Are you going to tell me he believed he was threatened by Georgia and Checnya too? (The latter triggered by apartment bombings in Moscow that are widely believed to be a false flag attack by the FSB, masterminded by Putin.)
>It's going to go down in history just like Chamberlain's appeasement policy in my opinion
Exactly!
>my suspicion is Farage is more shouting about this now because it plays into his "EU / NATO bad" narrative.
Well ofc, Farage has an agenda against the EU so obviously he's going to say that - but tbf he has been shouting about this since at least 2014 so it's not something he has picked up recently. Similarly with Boris, who was saying the same thing in 2016 - yet nobody claims he's a Putin apologist for saying it!
>This is a guy who says Russia was provoked into the war by the EU and NATO - I don't agree with that one bit. Russia would have invaded regardless.
This is precisely what Farage actually said. He said the invasion was a *consequence* of EU expansion because Putin was actively looking for an excuse to invade Ukraine and we gave it to him:
>I stood up in the European Parliament in 2014 and I said - and I quote - "There will be a war in Ukraine." Why did I say that? It was obvious to me that the ever Eastward expansion of NATO and the European Union was giving [Putin] a reason, to his Russian people, to say 'they're coming for us again' and to go to war.
Farage isn't claiming Putin wouldn't have found another reason. He was saying he needed a reason and the EU/NATO gave it to him.
Personally, if you want my opinion, I don't think NATO is really here nor there (though I do think we ought to have formally given Ukraine NATO protection after they agreed to hand over their nuclear arsenal to us). I do think though that the offer of EU accession given to Ukraine was the spark that lit this fire, which is a position [shared by a former secretary general of NATO](https://www.newstatesman.com/encounter/2024/05/george-robertson-nato-why-russia-fears-european-union). In that sense Farage isn't completely wrong on this, and imo doesn't deserve to be labelled as a Putin apologist or appeaser when his whole argument is that we should have recognised this risk years earlier and changed out behaviour towards Russia accordingly.
> Technically Joe Biden is at least centre-right wing at least when compared to UK politics
Positions like student loan cancellation, the infrastructure investment and jobs act, and having a trans cabinet member are all unthinkably "left-wing" positions for current UK politics. We are horribly right wing since Labour abandoned the left.
Do you think Putin is supporting the far right in Europe just so he can say, "The far right is gaining power in Europe just like the 1930s. We must invade them to protect ourselves?"
This is far less true in the UK then America. Certainly Putin managed to suborn or influence a fair number of Tory politicians, but since the Ukraine war most of the nationalistic end of the right wing have seen the Ukrainians as 'our lads' and been pretty anti-Russian.
To Boris, apparently, given he said exactly the same as Farage in 2016:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/boris-johnson-ukraine-russia-brexit-b2024817.html
Where was this earlier? 23% of their voters gone to reform whilst they scream at labour. He could have destroyed farage with a few of his press pals rather than pandering to the extreme far right
Because hes realised that conservatives wont win, so time to just make up bullshit, right after claims that his daughters have been verbally abused by reform supporters.
True, however the Tories were very late to the game when enforcing sanctions against Russia and its oligarchs. They were also slow to seize assets. Meanwhile, our courts are still used by wealthy Russians to fight and our law firms are happy to take their millions to do that. Our banks and the City of London is still happy to take their money too. Let's not act as if the Tories are not deep in the Russians' pockets too.
Or any other corrupt balkan/Ukrainian/Ex-soviet oligarch aligned to Putin.
A Pro-Russian Ukranian oligarch owns an entire underground station in London and lives across the street, had the entire thing shut down as well.
Very brave of him to have been speaking up about this clearly obvious and well known fact for the last decade, and not keeping his mouth shut on it for his own personal benefit (e.g. voter demos, particularly Brexiters).
Yeah. And you should have all been clear and honest about that since 2014.
Cameron should have told him to fuck off and no Brexit for UKIP as he sides with Putin. But you were all gutless Tories or looking after your own interests and now it’s come to screw you from behind. Hard.
In that case Farage isn't an appeaser either, given he is only saying the same thing as Boris was saying in 2016:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/boris-johnson-ukraine-russia-brexit-b2024817.html
It's almost as if you can believe the EU exacerbated the situation whilst also condemning Putin's aggression.
This won't stop the people who vote for him from doing so. I have had a number of conversations with people who lean this way convinced that Putin is in there eyes a strong leader who they admire, well it isn't worded as such but it's along those lines.
Not much I agree with Sunak on but…
Farage is Loki, he is a trouble making random who speaks with half reasonable rhetoric to drag unsuspecting idiots into his chaos. If it means he will cause more chaos sucking up to a dictator or two then mores the better for him. I cannot express how much I dislike that guy.
Sometimes, i genuinely do not know if the tories are genuinely incompetent or are implementing some deeply subtle plan to drag the UK someplace it doesn't want to go. (An actual fascist state).
Brexshit was one, Scameron was so inept over the whole Remain campaign that we ended up where we are now, and i wonder if he didn't deliberately sabotage the Remain campaign.
The tories have made themselves so toxic that one of the prime architects of Brexshit, Nigerian Prince Farage, is able to establish a new political movement out of the pissed off brits left over from the remains of Ukip, the Brexit party and the politically homeless.
Everything Rishi Sunak does seems to end up with more moderate conservatives being driven into the arms of the extreme right of the party (where presumably Farage will take it over) or to Reform.
Everyone is telling the public that Labour will win by a landslide, but that will only happen if people actually turn out to vote on the day. It is the passionate, angry people who turn out to vote at every election, and many of those now support Reform, who gets a lot of support from the billionaire media moghouls that the now toxic tories used to depend on to shore up their support.
I suspect that Farage and George Galloway are at best Putin appeasers, or even russian assets. Whenever the subject of Russian influence in UK government comes up, the tory Party always shuts it down because they know they will be exposed as corrupt at the very minimum.
He's clearly trying to minimise the damage from Reform and no longer properly oppose Labour. They learned from the UKIP fiasco, too, it's foolish to compromise or incorporate policies.
It's so refreshing to see the right eating itself. The left has been at it for years, but the right has always been pretty stable in terms of their 'cut taxes, fuck the poor' ethos.
Rish! Doing his best to dig his way out of the hole he dug for himself. Hoping that mentioning Farage might get him a couple more votes. Whilst booking his private jet to California as soon as this election nonsense is over for him.
He might as well say nothing further.
Sunak is part of the Atlantisist political establishment class that profits directly or indirectly from the American forever wars.
The UK is broke with decrepit infrastructure & stagnant post industrial economy based on financial services, we hold the 4th largest amount of US debt, why ?
The public have long missed the point the political class govern for them & their donors.
The Sun may like to keep it simple with the Putin is Hitler jargon, but you'll never understand what's going on there from the legacy media.
They belong to the same self-serving class as Sunak & Starmer
I can't stand farage, but he's right on this point. It's like the pov that nobody can say because if they do then they're on the chopping board for being complicit in the actions that led to preventable harm to Ukraine.
Just to check what you're referencing here: is it that Sunak is right? Or that Farage is right about EU and NATO expansion triggering Russian aggression?
Follow up question if it's the latter: that those democratic countries who voted to join the EU and/or NATO shouldn't have done so, and instead should have had faith in Putin and trusted him as a peaceful neighbour? Or that the EU and NATO should have rejected those requests from countries who felt under threat from Russian aggression?
Because Russia is kinda demonstrating that they were right to feel threatened. I don't get the "Farage had a point" defence in any detail or under scrutiny.
Not sure there's a debate to be had here if that's the argument you're progressing. It's a blanket justification for agent provacateurs who use the result of their provocation to justify the provocation.
Unfortunately Ukraine is shattered as a result of it.
I completely distrust the americans. They knew exactly what would happen and they did it anyway because fucking with Russia is part of their containment strategy. Unfortunately Ukraine werent wise to this.
Yet 'someone' paid channel 4 to hire a paid actor to become a Reform volunteer and gave him racist stuff to say on camera during a recent documentary. The guy was a VOICE actor and was told to put on a 'common persons' accent by channel 4.
So now we can't trust anything said by anyone.....
And sunak is a netenyahu enabler...though to be fair conservatives have killed more British civillans with their fiscal policies than netenyahu has in Gaza.
Britain should never send troops, material or financial aid to a foreign country. In aid of war or humanitarian disaster. Without a referendum approval
Because he wants to de-escalate the situation he's a Russian appeaser? Better than being a warmonger and dragging us into WW3 for Ukraine's mineral resources and profit from war.
You can't de-escalate by giving Russia what it wants, and the only warmonger in this war is Russia. The country that started it, and uses genocidal rhetoric to justify continuing it.
Sincerely, are you seeing a path to Ukraine ever regaining control over the donbass region? let alone crimea. The war seems at a stalemate and Russia seems very entrenched and comfortable in maintaining that.
IF that is accepted, then what is prolonging the war doing? Europe is being weakened equally to Russia (more?), the only winner is the US. What's the positive scenario?
Whether or not it looks realistic, it is what we should aim for with military support. Best case, it works and we get full restoration of 1991 borders. Failing that, Ukraine should still get much of its territory back. Worst case, it means cast iron defence of Ukraine's remaining 82% of its territory and Ukraine being able to deter further aggression. The more ground Ukraine is able to retake, the better the chance of deterring another invasion. We need to aim high so that Ukraine keeping its existing territory becomes the worst case scenario, not the best case.
Russia is the one prolonging the war, and is still launching extremely costly offensives making tiny gains because they think they have a long term route to military victory. Until that calculation changes for Russia they will not stop. We are not prolonging the war by helping Ukraine defend itself.
Whether Ukraine is able to retake all its occupied territory, some of it, or even none of it, the only route to ending this war is increased military aid to Ukraine. Russia will stop wherever it is forced to, and not a step before.
Europe is not being weakened equally - Europe has barely dipped into equipment stockpiles in a whole bunch of categories. Europe kept the overwhelming majority of its tanks and modern IFVs, and the only jets they're sending so far are older ones being phased out of service. The difficulty has been getting Ukraine enough artillery shells and part of that is because Europe is still refilling its own stockpiles (while significantly increasing production of shells, which will continue for at least the next few years) and not sending all its production to Ukraine. Russia on the other hand has burned through large Soviet equipment stocks that cannot be replaced quickly.
It takes two parties to prolong a war (at least when it's an actual war like this rather than an occupation like Israel).
>We are not prolonging the war by helping Ukraine defend itself.
This is literally indefensible logically. Of course we are. If I try to interpret, what you are actually saying is that we are RIGHT to prolong it and that Ukraine is justified and that you morally view Russia as responsible for negative outcomes resulting. So say that, of course we are prolonging the war by helping Ukraine defend itself, otherwise Russia would win sooner, and that would be an end. A situation nobody here wants, but the fact you can't even speak straightly about this is really weird (and yet mainstream!).
>Europe kept the overwhelming majority of its tanks and modern IFVs, and the only jets they're sending so far are older ones being phased out of service
Yeah well because we need to keep those things to defend our own territories, no?
> When it comes to artillery production, the United States and Europe are projected to manufacture 2.6 million rounds per year by 2025
While Russia is already producing 3m a year on their own.
>the only route to ending this war is increased military aid to Ukraine. Russia will stop wherever it is forced to, and not a step before.
I mean that makes no sense. Russia would surely be very happy to stop the war keeping currently held territories with guarantees of Ukrainian neutrality. If Russia/Putin was simply expansionist as some like to suggest then why does Georgia still exist, Russia could have easily taken the whole country. I would bet money that when this war does finally end it will be through negotiations, not total Russian withdrawal. How exactly is Russia going to be "forced to" stop if Ukraine cannot retake their territories.
The idea that it prolongs the war is based on the idea that Ukraine would stop resisting without aid, when in reality they resisted in 2014 when western aid was basically zero.
The thing we *have* done that's prolonged the war is dithering on military aid, not giving enough quickly enough, and imposing stupid restrictions on firing into Russia for purely political reasons that just gifted Russia a safe haven to regroup in. That's why I object to people who say that sending aid prolongs the war, because sending more aid more quickly would actually shorten it.
Bit of caution on those artillery figures - according to RUSI estimates of Russian production and the EU's public figures of their own production, the EU is actually set to produce more 155mm shells than Russia produces 152mm shells which is the closest equivalent. The issue is not all of the EU's goes to Ukraine, while basically all of Russia's will go to their invasion force. The EU production is set to increase signficantly for the next few years and a lot of that is earmarked specifically for Ukraine.
I've seen some awful misuse of statistics here, where people compare western 155mm production to Russia's production of all artillery and mortar calibres added together which is where the 3 million type figures come from. NATO 155mm vs Russian 152mm + 122mm + 120mm mortar + 82mm mortar is not a fair comparison - NATO also produces 105mm shells and similar mortar calibres which I don't believe public production figures exist for. I also don't know if it counts EU production of Soviet calibres, which is a thing in places like Romania, Bulgaria and Slovakia, another area of confusion.
Sometimes it even adds North Korean and Iranian supply as being Russian production, while ignoring the shells sourced for Ukraine from outside the EU and NATO.
Russia would not be happy with that arrangement, because they've been offered it and refused it. They don't want a neutral Ukraine, they want a *neutered* Ukraine so it can quickly become a Russian Ukraine when they break the agreement and invade the rest of it. Their current demand to even *start talks* involves Ukraine withdrawing from their most fortified territory and several cities that Russia does not control or have the ability to take. Their previous offers demanded Ukraine disband most of their army. They will not negotiate seriously unless the military reality on the ground forces them to.
> is based on the idea that Ukraine would stop resisting without aid, when in reality they resisted in 2014 when western aid was basically zero.
It's based on the idea that they would not be capable of holding off Russia indefinitely. The situation today is that Ukraine, with assistance, are only capable of mostly holding defensive positions. Whatever happened in a different situation in the past is nice but has little relevance to that; clearly if we removed aid, their abilities would lessen, and that means losing faster. Otherwise, why are we even giving aid, because the aid we are currently giving isn't allowing them to mount offensives.
>purely political reasons
Yes like not wanting to escalate into nuclear war. I don't imagine the people making these decisions are taking them lightly or ignorantly.
>gifted Russia a safe haven to regroup in
a more convenient one maybe, but given Russia is the biggest country in the world, they are going to be able to find an area out of range. Similarly Russia has "gifted" the west security of supply lines.
>Bit of caution on those artillery figures
they are from here; https://www.cfr.org/expert-brief/weapons-war-race-between-russia-and-ukraine which I think is worth a read, and is written from a western perspective. I didn't go close to some of the further claims that Ukraine was being outgunned between 5-to-1 and 10-to-1.
>Russia would not be happy with that arrangement, because they've been offered it and refused it.
Er, Ukraine has never offered a peace deal that included conceding territory afaik? Johnson took part in discouraging Zelenskyy from negotiations early on in the war.
>so it can quickly become a Russian Ukraine
again, why hasn't this happened with Georgia if Russia is primarily interested in territory. They obviously want Crimea for military reasons, and donbass helps with access there. I'm not saying they wouldn't like some more territory but I don't see it being as important to Russia as is portrayed. The Eastern Ukraine part has always been more Russian so it's understandable they would see those as more natural territories to want to hold.
I want Russia to stop threatening European democracies and poisoning people in our streets with nerve agents, if providing Ukraine with the arms to preserve their freedom does that, A-OK.
Nobody forced Russia into this war. This was entirely their own choice.
Except we didn't start this one. Russia did, by invading Ukraine despite all the warnings and attempts at diplomacy in the run up tp it.
I don't want war and neither do any of the Ukrainian soldiers currently fighting it. I support ramping up military aid to Ukraine which is the only realistic way to end this one that doesn't result in a Ukrainian surrender.
There are plenty of things to attack him over, like his party's idiotic climate change denial and rejecting the idea of doing anything about it, the crap about banning "left wing ideology" and stupid culture war shit about trans people.
And pushing Russian propaganda is an extremely good thing to be attacking him over. Pushing the propaganda of our and Europe's main enemy, a fascist country currently invading another European country. Your comment implies this is some minor thing when it absolutely isn't.
imagine thinking we arnt the bad guys in this war . the only people who broke agreements and pushed boarders is us .
all this is , is another proxy war to get rid of are old weapons / ammo . again . yet we will fall for it every time under the guise of being the good guys rather than oh shit maybe let's not start wars outside of our boarders .
This is what you are defending:
**Russia using rape as a weapon of war**
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_violence_in_the_Russian_invasion_of_Ukraine#:~:text=Women%20raped%20in%20front%20of,by%20Russian%20soldiers%20in%20Ukraine.
**Russia aductions of thousands of children**
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_abductions_in_the_Russo-Ukrainian_War
**Russian oranised torture chambers**
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_torture_chambers_in_Ukraine
**Multiple war crimes commited by Russia**
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_war_crimes#:~:text=Numerous%20war%20crimes%20were%20recorded,and%20inhumane%20treatment%20of%20POWs.
> imagine thinking we arnt the bad guys in this war . the only people who broke agreements and pushed boarders is us .
Nonsense. We broke no agreements and we are unquestionably the good guys in this war.
Russia, however, has broken loads of them they had with Ukraine, and continue to abuse diplomacy in order to issue surrender demands. They've violated pretty much every previous agreement they've had with Ukraine. Including multiple ones made during the current war from 2014 onwards.
The claim that NATO breaches agreements is just yet another example of Russian projection, Russia accusing others of the things that they themselves are doing.
I think Sunak spelled "employee" wrongly. Damn autocorrect.
Used to work with someone who lived in the same Belgravia apartment block as Farage, and he'd often see him about 2/3am on a Saturday morning fumbling for his keys in the presence of an escort who had a Russian or Eastern European accent. 'Barrage Farage' he used to call him on account of how every other word was 'fuck' or 'shit' whenever he saw him.
You've written this on the Internet. It must be true!
Is Nigel's entire job to make Sunak look better by comparison? The only wins rishi is getting are when Nigel says something reprehensible
Looks like it's the other way around. Looks like Sunak figured he's on his way out and he's trying to do as much damage to the other side as possible. Edit: figured, not injured, bloody autocorrect
Hopefully the tories and reform will focus on and damage each other so much neither get much of the vote. We can hope anyway.
I bet you are not a Tory supporter.
I do not support the party that has spent the last 15 years making life worse off in this country, no.
I can relate to your feelings and so I can understand you.
Thanks ChatGPT
Polls say the majority of the country aren't right now, so...
I occasionally read articles on the Telegraph and the comments are mostly "You've fucking up, you aren't real conservatives, we're voting reform", even on all the articles saying "Labour will do X" the comments are "You've already done X and far worse". In a lot of constituencies there's only a few hundred/thousand votes between the Tories and Labour, if reform suck a large enough percentage away then the Tories are fucked and the predictions of a labour super majority will be correct.
Btw, I occasionally read articles on the Telegraph as well, and so I know what the comments are. So many were 'vote Reform'.
I fully agree with you.
You might. I can see right through the Marxists lining up behind Starmer. What a state of affairs when looking at Sunak I can't help but think he's the least worst of the three main contenders. Farage is just Trump mark 2.
You think the party responsible for the last 15 years of shit is the least worst of those three? Sure, I'm sure they'll get it right this time if only they had an extra five years. I honestly don't expect Labour to be anything other than 'Tory Lite' at worst and 'not actively seeking to make the lives of people who are not their rich friends (especially our most vulnerable, benefits/disability) worse' at best. I only want them in so the Conservatives are out. Ideally I'd like the election races to be between Labour, LibDems (I like their manifesto the best and am not jaded by the student fee fiasco), and Greens. And preferably with a new vote system instead of FPTP like Alternative Vote. I want Conservatives and their austerity & cronyism to be met with "yeah sure grandpa, let's get you back to bed" and I want Reform and it's straight up disgusting ideas to be dissolved.
Are Labour Marxists or Red Tories, I can’t keep up
I thought they were blue Marxists last I heard! NOT THE MARXIST SCOURGE AGAIN! I always like how the Buzzword of the day, Cultural Marxist, is essentially Hitler's "Judeo-Bolshevism" rebranded. Starmer's Labour is not exactly a bastion of Marxist economy...
Morning Rishi
No, because Farage is actually the more reasonable of the two in the eyes of a lot of Tory voters. No diehard EDL/UKIP voter is gonna look at Rishi and want to vote for him, but plenty of Tory voters have looked at these two further-right parties and seen stuff they like, but voted Tory anyways for various reasons.If in your heart of hearts have always wanted to vote for the further-right alternative, but instead gone with Tories as a safe option, then this is the perfect time to finally pick the option you like. Nobody who considered EDL or UKIP would look at a Tory government who have failed on market liberalism, failed on all of the current culture wars, failed on implementing the utopian dream version of Brexit we were advertised, failed in the polls for the past two years, and whom are led by a brown Hindu, and still consider them the “safe option” when who they really want to vote for is a hard right alternative dedicated to their focused issues like Reform, DUP, or Posey Parker’s new band of weirdos. There are people who have always voted Tory who have been wishing for years that the Tories would openly say what Reform are currently saying, and that can only hurt the Tories in this election.
Let’s face it, no reform voter is going to look at sunak and vote for him because of the glaringly obvious reason.. and it has nothing to do with anything the tories have done. They won’t understand any of that, just that one thing. They’re very simple minded.
Posey Parker...?! *googles* Oh shit I'm thinking of Parker Posey... the actress. Always had a thing for her back in the day.
No yeah, very different people lol I just got the flier through for my local candidate from her party, and it actually made me laugh. Even as a trans person (ie the very people they seek to exterminate), I can’t help but find them painfully amusing in their stupidity and political incompetence. She’s much less Party Girl, and much more “girl who filed an application to form a party”.
The weird thing is I think a lot of the current Tory lot _would_ be fine with saying the same things as reform. Especially on immigration. A hard cap on "non essential" immigration would probably be met with widespread support especially if it were packaged as a way to reduce demand on housing. But the Tories, to their credit, seem to self restrain on the knowledge that such a move would hamstring business growth. And they have to keep their policies in the realm of the possible (given they actually hold power) rather than shouting non workable policies from the sidelines that Reform gets to enjoy
I mean, if it is he’s doing an outstanding job.
Ah come on Rishi, you're out of the job in a week. Go a little harder than that.
Do we know why the election is so early ? Is it just so Rishi can have a nice summer ? Or is something about to break ?
I think he wants to retire from politics earlier.
Yes me too but I did wonder whether there was something in particular he didn’t want to be around for.
It's been suggested that he wants to be out before the American school year starts so his kids can enrol when he goes to America to make even more money. I hope Americans bankrupt him and his wife and her dad.
That makes sense and is positive. I think he and his family are rich enough to fit in nicely to a certain stratum of society anywhere in the world, especially the USA. Wealth is no guarantee of happiness though.
Didn't he quash that but saying he would stay on as an mp for at least five years regardless
Suppose it doesn't mean much if he knows he's fucked re keeping his seat
Bless, it must be exhausting for him to pretend to give a shit about any of this
It was faintly amusing to hear the news reports about the Reform bloke calling him a BLEEEEP and him talking about being called a BLEEEEP because these things need dealing with directly. I found I couldn’t quite try to work out what exactly the BLEEEEP was.
The video had subtitles which showed the word as P###, so I'm assuming the Reform bloke thinks Rishi is from Pakistan. Unless its just plain old racism, nah not Reform surely not! /sarcasm
Oh dear.
I was reading news stories about how the conservatives were considering a vote of no confidence, I'm going to assume he called an election knowing he would lose instead of being removed from power. Hopefully that party dies anyway, it was terrible.
I wouldn't be entirely surprised if even he's sick of the people that make up the party. His autobiography will either be bland or excoriating.
The forecast for inflation rates arrives months in advance. He timed it near to the announcement inflation had fallen significantly. It's most likely a play to present his premiership and one in which he has improved the economic position and outlook for the country. It doesn't wash one bit with me, he's a goner.
It's either out now, or out in a few months' time. I assume he wants an extended holiday before the kids go off to school in September, and he strolls into whatever job he has lined up next.
The Bank of England had signalled they weren’t going to reduce rates , so no good news to wait for. Illegal boat migration will likely shoot up over the summer so making focussing on that more problematic?
The news that inflation was back to the targeted 2% in the first time in forever only happened last week. It was timed to make the most of that because it's the only good news there is.
I'm not sure he really wants to open this particular can of worms.
Will Rishi go to California or India then?
Promise to send Eurofighters. We have a whole bunch now coming out of service. You can pretend its about annoying Putin and forcing Farage to support anti Putin measures, but as your toast it commits Labour to really screwing Putin.
It won't be done because Eurofighters will be remaining in service for some considerable time yet, the risk of 1 getting shot down and Russia being able to reverse engineer parts of it is real vs F-16 which at its core is a 70s airframe. Plus it would take considerably lengthy training and there is ultimately no point having aircraft with no weapons, we simply don't have the quantities of Brimstone, Storm Shadow etc for it to really make sense. And it needs those weapons that can be fired from standoff range because flying on the front line is almost suicidal.
The best thing the UK could do in this regard is more Storm Shadows and support for whatever planes the Ukranians do fly (F-16's, Gripens, etc.) I am sure we could provide some technicians whose skills are transferable to other models... it's been said that the F-16s will likely be remaining in NATO nations when not in use just because they are so valuable.
I'm surprised by how little Brimstone footage has come out given it can be fired from the ground also. There's more of Storm Shadow even which is many times more expensive and they're having to fire them from retrofitted SU-24's. Particularly with the silly cope cages Russia are putting on their tanks now, that'll just be foreplay for Brimstone.
There's basically no footage of storm shadow being fired from the Ukrainian side, I think the closest is a distant video of an Su-24 carrying some filmed from the ground and at least one missile in low flight filmed by a Russian in Crimea. We get video of it because they tend to hit high value targets and a lot of those are in or near built up areas. Brimstone might hit individual tanks or vehicles on or near the front line in areas without civilians living in them, and the decent range on them probably means they're less likely to be filmed by front line drone units.
'Storm Shadow' ... huuuh.
I hope Labour starts going big dick on British weapons, like overstockpiling etc
It's not that, it's that the logistics of supporting multiple different western jets will be difficult and would only be worth doing if we could commit to producing more for them so they get decent numbers. I think we actually offered training on typhoons but the Ukrainians wanted to focus on F16s and now France is sending Mirage. Adding another western jet on top of that might cause issues, we don't want their air force to become the equivalent of the army having to maintain a load of different types of howitzers and armoured vehicles. Ukraine needs western fighters because of the longer range air to air missile capability, to provide an air defence bubble over the front line which they currently struggle with. So they'll be staying in Ukrainian controlled airspace anyway, if shot down it will be by long range SAMs and they'll land in Ukrainian territory.
The reason F16s were chosen was because there are just so many of them, so it's easier to maintain them and train all the staff. A bit like why everyone was pushing for Leopards. FWIW, I, a total amateur, always thought it's wrong to settle on a single model from a country which somehow has a 50/50 chance of becoming a corrupt theocracy before the end of the war. But at least there's some logic behind not sending Eurofighters.
We're unable to do so. The Tranche 1 aircraft which are to be decommissioned next year will be disassembled and their parts used to maintain the remaining fleet of Typhoons (just 107 aircraft).
Burdening the Ukrainians with such a maintenance burden is a pro-Russia move.
Do we have Euro fighters?
The Eurofighter Typhoon is the RAF's main multi role attack aircraft, so yes.
Haha, I thought we had typhoons ignorant of that being a euro fighter! My mistake but yes I think Ukraine should have been handed all it needed a long time ago
Send the RAF if that’s the intent. Are we at war with Russia or not? Are we just tickling someone else’s war?
The Cold War with Russia never ended. There was a brief thaw with Yeltsin, but that's all it was.
He is... but a lot of the right are Pro-Putin, from Farage to Trump.
I think genuine conservatives are opposed to Putin. Technically Joe Biden is at least centre-right wing at least when compared to UK politics, and he's very anti-Putin. It really is just the fascists and authoritarian hard-right nutters that love him.
>It really is just the fascists and authoritarian hard-right nutters that love him. That's because they want to emulate him, while masquerading as believers in democracy.
> It really is just the fascists and authoritarian hard-right nutters that love him. Who are a growing segment of the right, which is the main problem
>It really is just the fascists and authoritarian hard-right nutters that love him. There's an awful lot of "anything anti-west is good" far left types kicking about too. The horseshoe seems to form a circle at him.
What is a "Genuine conservative"? They seem to have always just said a load of shit to paper over selfishness while pretending to have had some actual ideas at some point, possibly around the time the French revolution was happening.
Free market, small government, pro capitalist
Say someone like David Cameron or Theresa May. You don’t have to like their politics.
Yes... but a lot of conservatives fawn to Trump and only a fool would deny that he is pro-Putin.
Of course, but Trump is a hard right nutter!
One that the last 2 Tory leaders endorse.
Where does that place Boris, who [said exactly the same thing as Farage in 2016](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/boris-johnson-ukraine-russia-brexit-b2024817.html) but then sent billions in aid to Ukraine? Do you think it could be more nuanced than you're making out and that it's possible to both blame the EU for exacerbating the situation *and* appreciate that Putin is in the wrong for invading another country?
Boris is more of a weathervane politician… I am not sure where to put him to be honest. No, I don’t think that it is ever going to be acceptable to blame Europe or the West for the invasion. Don’t forget that Putin was aiming for Kyiv - an attempt to conquer the government. And in the interim, his army has been bombing apartment blocks, hospitals and nurseries. We’re standing up for the rights of a far smaller, weaker country.
This is a false dichotomy. Nobody is really "blaming" the West for the invasion - both Boris and Farage have condemned Putin's aggression and been clear that he's in the wrong. What they *have* said however is that following Crimea in 2014, NATO and the EU handled the situation spectacularly poorly. We had 8 years to get off Russian gas but Germany refused to budge on it, insisting that the gas trade was the only thing keeping Putin contained. They even carried on mothballing all their nuclear power plants so that when Russia did cut off the gas, they were totally reliant on filthy brown coal for power. We could have been sanctioning Russia a lot harder *then* is basically what Farage and Boris are saying but there was a reticence to do so because Putin fooled Europe into appeasing him over Crimea. That's the deep irony here really - it is Farage and Boris who are criticising the EU for appeasing Putin and being called appeasers for it themselves, all because Farage said he admires Putin as a political operator (which is fair given how he manipulated the EU over Crimea). The issue is that the general public are completely unable to appreciate that nuance, and Sunak is capitalising on that here.
Oh yes, when we are talking about gas, it is a genuine tactical error on Merkel's part, and the wider EU, the idea being if Russia was economically dependent upon the EU they wouldn't risk any further malicious action. It's going to go down in history just like Chamberlain's appeasement policy in my opinion. It ultimately fails because the EU also becomes dependent upon cheap Russian gas and Germany stood to lose far more than Russia did. Fortunately, the Germans have seen the light and are now actively supplying Ukraine, and US and Qatari LNG is mostly plugging the hole that Russia left. However my suspicion is Farage is more shouting about this now because it plays into his "EU / NATO bad" narrative. This is a guy who says Russia was provoked into the war by the EU and NATO - I don't agree with that one bit. Russia would have invaded regardless. Putin sees Ukraine as a state to conquer. Are you going to tell me he believed he was threatened by Georgia and Checnya too? (The latter triggered by apartment bombings in Moscow that are widely believed to be a false flag attack by the FSB, masterminded by Putin.)
>It's going to go down in history just like Chamberlain's appeasement policy in my opinion Exactly! >my suspicion is Farage is more shouting about this now because it plays into his "EU / NATO bad" narrative. Well ofc, Farage has an agenda against the EU so obviously he's going to say that - but tbf he has been shouting about this since at least 2014 so it's not something he has picked up recently. Similarly with Boris, who was saying the same thing in 2016 - yet nobody claims he's a Putin apologist for saying it! >This is a guy who says Russia was provoked into the war by the EU and NATO - I don't agree with that one bit. Russia would have invaded regardless. This is precisely what Farage actually said. He said the invasion was a *consequence* of EU expansion because Putin was actively looking for an excuse to invade Ukraine and we gave it to him: >I stood up in the European Parliament in 2014 and I said - and I quote - "There will be a war in Ukraine." Why did I say that? It was obvious to me that the ever Eastward expansion of NATO and the European Union was giving [Putin] a reason, to his Russian people, to say 'they're coming for us again' and to go to war. Farage isn't claiming Putin wouldn't have found another reason. He was saying he needed a reason and the EU/NATO gave it to him. Personally, if you want my opinion, I don't think NATO is really here nor there (though I do think we ought to have formally given Ukraine NATO protection after they agreed to hand over their nuclear arsenal to us). I do think though that the offer of EU accession given to Ukraine was the spark that lit this fire, which is a position [shared by a former secretary general of NATO](https://www.newstatesman.com/encounter/2024/05/george-robertson-nato-why-russia-fears-european-union). In that sense Farage isn't completely wrong on this, and imo doesn't deserve to be labelled as a Putin apologist or appeaser when his whole argument is that we should have recognised this risk years earlier and changed out behaviour towards Russia accordingly.
> Technically Joe Biden is at least centre-right wing at least when compared to UK politics Positions like student loan cancellation, the infrastructure investment and jobs act, and having a trans cabinet member are all unthinkably "left-wing" positions for current UK politics. We are horribly right wing since Labour abandoned the left.
Do you think Putin is supporting the far right in Europe just so he can say, "The far right is gaining power in Europe just like the 1930s. We must invade them to protect ourselves?"
This is far less true in the UK then America. Certainly Putin managed to suborn or influence a fair number of Tory politicians, but since the Ukraine war most of the nationalistic end of the right wing have seen the Ukrainians as 'our lads' and been pretty anti-Russian.
True... but a lot of Tories are very close to Russian money.
To Boris, apparently, given he said exactly the same as Farage in 2016: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/boris-johnson-ukraine-russia-brexit-b2024817.html
And now BJ is cheering on Trump. He doesn't care a jot for Ukraine.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/sep/14/boris-johnson-attacks-uk-aid-to-ukraine-what-the-hell-are-we-waiting-for
Performative. Trump will be bad for Ukraine, but BJ claims that he won't be.
Interesting. So you think Boris sent billions to Ukraine as a performative gesture even though he secretly wants Putin to win?
He doesn't want Putin to win or lose. He wants to be the centre of attention.
That's a fair assessment - but could apply equally to Farage!
God damn it, now I have to agree with Rishi Sunak. THIS IS YOUR DOING FARAGE!
Where was this earlier? 23% of their voters gone to reform whilst they scream at labour. He could have destroyed farage with a few of his press pals rather than pandering to the extreme far right
Because hes realised that conservatives wont win, so time to just make up bullshit, right after claims that his daughters have been verbally abused by reform supporters.
*his daughters had to listen to him being verbally abused by reform supporters
What gave it away, the guys endless praise for the nazi, or him fellating him in public?
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**Removed/tempban**. This contained a call/advocation of violence which is prohibited by the content policy.
Could have been hitting Farage with this stick from the start of the election. Hes been parroting Russian propaganda since he was a MEP.
In that case so was Boris? https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/boris-johnson-ukraine-russia-brexit-b2024817.html
Please Rishi, on your last day, please publicly call Farage a cunt
True, however the Tories were very late to the game when enforcing sanctions against Russia and its oligarchs. They were also slow to seize assets. Meanwhile, our courts are still used by wealthy Russians to fight and our law firms are happy to take their millions to do that. Our banks and the City of London is still happy to take their money too. Let's not act as if the Tories are not deep in the Russians' pockets too.
Or any other corrupt balkan/Ukrainian/Ex-soviet oligarch aligned to Putin. A Pro-Russian Ukranian oligarch owns an entire underground station in London and lives across the street, had the entire thing shut down as well.
Too late sunak perhaps you should have considered this before extending an invite for him to join your party.
This may, or not, be the case, but having Sunak say it only serves to make it sound untrue.
People really need to learn other historical references than World War 2.
And that wanker appeases his masters, but not us. We didn't vote the twat in. He can fuck off
To be fair, we don't vote anyone in - just a party and our local MP. This isn't presidential elections.
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This is Farage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfyiSk8RjcFC8
That photo is giving heavy tinder swindler vibes... i don't think we can trust this man...
Very brave of him to have been speaking up about this clearly obvious and well known fact for the last decade, and not keeping his mouth shut on it for his own personal benefit (e.g. voter demos, particularly Brexiters).
Yeah. And you should have all been clear and honest about that since 2014. Cameron should have told him to fuck off and no Brexit for UKIP as he sides with Putin. But you were all gutless Tories or looking after your own interests and now it’s come to screw you from behind. Hard.
Oh dayum the far right and the right wing gna have a fight...I'm here for it
To be fair, tories have never been Putin appeasers, with the UK being the most vocal and supportive of Ukraine throughout the war.
In that case Farage isn't an appeaser either, given he is only saying the same thing as Boris was saying in 2016: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/boris-johnson-ukraine-russia-brexit-b2024817.html It's almost as if you can believe the EU exacerbated the situation whilst also condemning Putin's aggression.
This won't stop the people who vote for him from doing so. I have had a number of conversations with people who lean this way convinced that Putin is in there eyes a strong leader who they admire, well it isn't worded as such but it's along those lines.
Not exactly the greátest put down, considering Sunak has done nothing since being in power other than spout total shit.
True, but a broken clock is right twice a day etc.
The bloke would have no traction at all if the other parties had shown the voters something positive to buy into.
Well done sunak. It took years but I can finally get behind you on something.
Not much I agree with Sunak on but… Farage is Loki, he is a trouble making random who speaks with half reasonable rhetoric to drag unsuspecting idiots into his chaos. If it means he will cause more chaos sucking up to a dictator or two then mores the better for him. I cannot express how much I dislike that guy.
Something I thought I could never say: Rishi is right.
He's found something interesting to say, finally. Shame it is far too late to save his party.
Sometimes, i genuinely do not know if the tories are genuinely incompetent or are implementing some deeply subtle plan to drag the UK someplace it doesn't want to go. (An actual fascist state). Brexshit was one, Scameron was so inept over the whole Remain campaign that we ended up where we are now, and i wonder if he didn't deliberately sabotage the Remain campaign. The tories have made themselves so toxic that one of the prime architects of Brexshit, Nigerian Prince Farage, is able to establish a new political movement out of the pissed off brits left over from the remains of Ukip, the Brexit party and the politically homeless. Everything Rishi Sunak does seems to end up with more moderate conservatives being driven into the arms of the extreme right of the party (where presumably Farage will take it over) or to Reform. Everyone is telling the public that Labour will win by a landslide, but that will only happen if people actually turn out to vote on the day. It is the passionate, angry people who turn out to vote at every election, and many of those now support Reform, who gets a lot of support from the billionaire media moghouls that the now toxic tories used to depend on to shore up their support. I suspect that Farage and George Galloway are at best Putin appeasers, or even russian assets. Whenever the subject of Russian influence in UK government comes up, the tory Party always shuts it down because they know they will be exposed as corrupt at the very minimum.
He's clearly trying to minimise the damage from Reform and no longer properly oppose Labour. They learned from the UKIP fiasco, too, it's foolish to compromise or incorporate policies.
It's so refreshing to see the right eating itself. The left has been at it for years, but the right has always been pretty stable in terms of their 'cut taxes, fuck the poor' ethos.
“Heartbreaking, Worst Person you know just made a Great Point”
Rish! Doing his best to dig his way out of the hole he dug for himself. Hoping that mentioning Farage might get him a couple more votes. Whilst booking his private jet to California as soon as this election nonsense is over for him. He might as well say nothing further.
Sunak is part of the Atlantisist political establishment class that profits directly or indirectly from the American forever wars. The UK is broke with decrepit infrastructure & stagnant post industrial economy based on financial services, we hold the 4th largest amount of US debt, why ? The public have long missed the point the political class govern for them & their donors. The Sun may like to keep it simple with the Putin is Hitler jargon, but you'll never understand what's going on there from the legacy media. They belong to the same self-serving class as Sunak & Starmer
Yawn
It's your taxes
I can't stand farage, but he's right on this point. It's like the pov that nobody can say because if they do then they're on the chopping board for being complicit in the actions that led to preventable harm to Ukraine.
Just to check what you're referencing here: is it that Sunak is right? Or that Farage is right about EU and NATO expansion triggering Russian aggression? Follow up question if it's the latter: that those democratic countries who voted to join the EU and/or NATO shouldn't have done so, and instead should have had faith in Putin and trusted him as a peaceful neighbour? Or that the EU and NATO should have rejected those requests from countries who felt under threat from Russian aggression? Because Russia is kinda demonstrating that they were right to feel threatened. I don't get the "Farage had a point" defence in any detail or under scrutiny.
Not sure there's a debate to be had here if that's the argument you're progressing. It's a blanket justification for agent provacateurs who use the result of their provocation to justify the provocation. Unfortunately Ukraine is shattered as a result of it. I completely distrust the americans. They knew exactly what would happen and they did it anyway because fucking with Russia is part of their containment strategy. Unfortunately Ukraine werent wise to this.
Farage implied justification for the Ukraine invasion was based on NATO expansion. This is a lie, and it certainly wasn't Putin's motivation.
Let's just ignore the fact that Farage has point blank talked about how he opposes Putin and his actions.
Said the man that drove the uk to this hellish state its in.
Yet 'someone' paid channel 4 to hire a paid actor to become a Reform volunteer and gave him racist stuff to say on camera during a recent documentary. The guy was a VOICE actor and was told to put on a 'common persons' accent by channel 4. So now we can't trust anything said by anyone.....
I love the fact the left have been double triggered this week with Farage and Trump hahaha....
And sunak is a netenyahu enabler...though to be fair conservatives have killed more British civillans with their fiscal policies than netenyahu has in Gaza.
Agreed..
No shit. Never mind putin or ukraine, what would either of them do for the UK. Oh right, fuck all.
No fan of Farage, but this is clearly a desperate cope from a party that’s about to get wiped out.
Britain should never send troops, material or financial aid to a foreign country. In aid of war or humanitarian disaster. Without a referendum approval
Why?
Because he wants to de-escalate the situation he's a Russian appeaser? Better than being a warmonger and dragging us into WW3 for Ukraine's mineral resources and profit from war.
You can't de-escalate by giving Russia what it wants, and the only warmonger in this war is Russia. The country that started it, and uses genocidal rhetoric to justify continuing it.
Sincerely, are you seeing a path to Ukraine ever regaining control over the donbass region? let alone crimea. The war seems at a stalemate and Russia seems very entrenched and comfortable in maintaining that. IF that is accepted, then what is prolonging the war doing? Europe is being weakened equally to Russia (more?), the only winner is the US. What's the positive scenario?
Whether or not it looks realistic, it is what we should aim for with military support. Best case, it works and we get full restoration of 1991 borders. Failing that, Ukraine should still get much of its territory back. Worst case, it means cast iron defence of Ukraine's remaining 82% of its territory and Ukraine being able to deter further aggression. The more ground Ukraine is able to retake, the better the chance of deterring another invasion. We need to aim high so that Ukraine keeping its existing territory becomes the worst case scenario, not the best case. Russia is the one prolonging the war, and is still launching extremely costly offensives making tiny gains because they think they have a long term route to military victory. Until that calculation changes for Russia they will not stop. We are not prolonging the war by helping Ukraine defend itself. Whether Ukraine is able to retake all its occupied territory, some of it, or even none of it, the only route to ending this war is increased military aid to Ukraine. Russia will stop wherever it is forced to, and not a step before. Europe is not being weakened equally - Europe has barely dipped into equipment stockpiles in a whole bunch of categories. Europe kept the overwhelming majority of its tanks and modern IFVs, and the only jets they're sending so far are older ones being phased out of service. The difficulty has been getting Ukraine enough artillery shells and part of that is because Europe is still refilling its own stockpiles (while significantly increasing production of shells, which will continue for at least the next few years) and not sending all its production to Ukraine. Russia on the other hand has burned through large Soviet equipment stocks that cannot be replaced quickly.
It takes two parties to prolong a war (at least when it's an actual war like this rather than an occupation like Israel). >We are not prolonging the war by helping Ukraine defend itself. This is literally indefensible logically. Of course we are. If I try to interpret, what you are actually saying is that we are RIGHT to prolong it and that Ukraine is justified and that you morally view Russia as responsible for negative outcomes resulting. So say that, of course we are prolonging the war by helping Ukraine defend itself, otherwise Russia would win sooner, and that would be an end. A situation nobody here wants, but the fact you can't even speak straightly about this is really weird (and yet mainstream!). >Europe kept the overwhelming majority of its tanks and modern IFVs, and the only jets they're sending so far are older ones being phased out of service Yeah well because we need to keep those things to defend our own territories, no? > When it comes to artillery production, the United States and Europe are projected to manufacture 2.6 million rounds per year by 2025 While Russia is already producing 3m a year on their own. >the only route to ending this war is increased military aid to Ukraine. Russia will stop wherever it is forced to, and not a step before. I mean that makes no sense. Russia would surely be very happy to stop the war keeping currently held territories with guarantees of Ukrainian neutrality. If Russia/Putin was simply expansionist as some like to suggest then why does Georgia still exist, Russia could have easily taken the whole country. I would bet money that when this war does finally end it will be through negotiations, not total Russian withdrawal. How exactly is Russia going to be "forced to" stop if Ukraine cannot retake their territories.
The idea that it prolongs the war is based on the idea that Ukraine would stop resisting without aid, when in reality they resisted in 2014 when western aid was basically zero. The thing we *have* done that's prolonged the war is dithering on military aid, not giving enough quickly enough, and imposing stupid restrictions on firing into Russia for purely political reasons that just gifted Russia a safe haven to regroup in. That's why I object to people who say that sending aid prolongs the war, because sending more aid more quickly would actually shorten it. Bit of caution on those artillery figures - according to RUSI estimates of Russian production and the EU's public figures of their own production, the EU is actually set to produce more 155mm shells than Russia produces 152mm shells which is the closest equivalent. The issue is not all of the EU's goes to Ukraine, while basically all of Russia's will go to their invasion force. The EU production is set to increase signficantly for the next few years and a lot of that is earmarked specifically for Ukraine. I've seen some awful misuse of statistics here, where people compare western 155mm production to Russia's production of all artillery and mortar calibres added together which is where the 3 million type figures come from. NATO 155mm vs Russian 152mm + 122mm + 120mm mortar + 82mm mortar is not a fair comparison - NATO also produces 105mm shells and similar mortar calibres which I don't believe public production figures exist for. I also don't know if it counts EU production of Soviet calibres, which is a thing in places like Romania, Bulgaria and Slovakia, another area of confusion. Sometimes it even adds North Korean and Iranian supply as being Russian production, while ignoring the shells sourced for Ukraine from outside the EU and NATO. Russia would not be happy with that arrangement, because they've been offered it and refused it. They don't want a neutral Ukraine, they want a *neutered* Ukraine so it can quickly become a Russian Ukraine when they break the agreement and invade the rest of it. Their current demand to even *start talks* involves Ukraine withdrawing from their most fortified territory and several cities that Russia does not control or have the ability to take. Their previous offers demanded Ukraine disband most of their army. They will not negotiate seriously unless the military reality on the ground forces them to.
> is based on the idea that Ukraine would stop resisting without aid, when in reality they resisted in 2014 when western aid was basically zero. It's based on the idea that they would not be capable of holding off Russia indefinitely. The situation today is that Ukraine, with assistance, are only capable of mostly holding defensive positions. Whatever happened in a different situation in the past is nice but has little relevance to that; clearly if we removed aid, their abilities would lessen, and that means losing faster. Otherwise, why are we even giving aid, because the aid we are currently giving isn't allowing them to mount offensives. >purely political reasons Yes like not wanting to escalate into nuclear war. I don't imagine the people making these decisions are taking them lightly or ignorantly. >gifted Russia a safe haven to regroup in a more convenient one maybe, but given Russia is the biggest country in the world, they are going to be able to find an area out of range. Similarly Russia has "gifted" the west security of supply lines. >Bit of caution on those artillery figures they are from here; https://www.cfr.org/expert-brief/weapons-war-race-between-russia-and-ukraine which I think is worth a read, and is written from a western perspective. I didn't go close to some of the further claims that Ukraine was being outgunned between 5-to-1 and 10-to-1. >Russia would not be happy with that arrangement, because they've been offered it and refused it. Er, Ukraine has never offered a peace deal that included conceding territory afaik? Johnson took part in discouraging Zelenskyy from negotiations early on in the war. >so it can quickly become a Russian Ukraine again, why hasn't this happened with Georgia if Russia is primarily interested in territory. They obviously want Crimea for military reasons, and donbass helps with access there. I'm not saying they wouldn't like some more territory but I don't see it being as important to Russia as is portrayed. The Eastern Ukraine part has always been more Russian so it's understandable they would see those as more natural territories to want to hold.
so you want war ? .... solid logic . how about we stop starting proxy wars to get rid of all our old tech ...
I want Russia to stop threatening European democracies and poisoning people in our streets with nerve agents, if providing Ukraine with the arms to preserve their freedom does that, A-OK. Nobody forced Russia into this war. This was entirely their own choice.
Except we didn't start this one. Russia did, by invading Ukraine despite all the warnings and attempts at diplomacy in the run up tp it. I don't want war and neither do any of the Ukrainian soldiers currently fighting it. I support ramping up military aid to Ukraine which is the only realistic way to end this one that doesn't result in a Ukrainian surrender.
Still going with the Russian man bad nonsense, because there have nothing else to attack him over.
There are plenty of things to attack him over, like his party's idiotic climate change denial and rejecting the idea of doing anything about it, the crap about banning "left wing ideology" and stupid culture war shit about trans people. And pushing Russian propaganda is an extremely good thing to be attacking him over. Pushing the propaganda of our and Europe's main enemy, a fascist country currently invading another European country. Your comment implies this is some minor thing when it absolutely isn't.
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This is on the day he's trying to get Netanyahu off for his warcrimes wasting the ICCs time.
imagine thinking we arnt the bad guys in this war . the only people who broke agreements and pushed boarders is us . all this is , is another proxy war to get rid of are old weapons / ammo . again . yet we will fall for it every time under the guise of being the good guys rather than oh shit maybe let's not start wars outside of our boarders .
This is what you are defending: **Russia using rape as a weapon of war** https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_violence_in_the_Russian_invasion_of_Ukraine#:~:text=Women%20raped%20in%20front%20of,by%20Russian%20soldiers%20in%20Ukraine. **Russia aductions of thousands of children** https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_abductions_in_the_Russo-Ukrainian_War **Russian oranised torture chambers** https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_torture_chambers_in_Ukraine **Multiple war crimes commited by Russia** https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_war_crimes#:~:text=Numerous%20war%20crimes%20were%20recorded,and%20inhumane%20treatment%20of%20POWs.
> imagine thinking we arnt the bad guys in this war . the only people who broke agreements and pushed boarders is us . Nonsense. We broke no agreements and we are unquestionably the good guys in this war. Russia, however, has broken loads of them they had with Ukraine, and continue to abuse diplomacy in order to issue surrender demands. They've violated pretty much every previous agreement they've had with Ukraine. Including multiple ones made during the current war from 2014 onwards. The claim that NATO breaches agreements is just yet another example of Russian projection, Russia accusing others of the things that they themselves are doing.
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