It's all falling apart alarmingly fast for Boris Johnson across the water. How long you reckon he has left as British Prime Minister? Hours surely?
How many parties are they talking about now? I've lost count.
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Ah the "not as bad" party line begins in earnest.
It's well known the Tories themselves were pushing the high numbers so they can throw out the "not as bad" nonsense. They are being eviserated .
It's also well known that most of the councils in this election were Labour councils anyway so the overall changes would be marginal.
You're repeating yourself. The purported burden of EU regulation is irrelevant. Johnson can take in as many refugees as he wants. As expected, he's opted for the lowest number possible.
Just a snapshot of the counting but so far it's not looking as bad as predicted for the Tories. Its not good but not as bad as predicted mostly because Labour failed to scoop up their lost votes. Tories lost 6 councils. 3 went to Labour, one to lib dem and 2 to no overall control.
Labour not doing as well as they hoped and Lib Dems and greens are the piggest proportionate winners. Lib dems up over 20% and greens over 100%.
I understand a lot of councils only start counting at 9am so more results through the day.
I think you're overthinking this and ignoring the obvious, i.e., the incompetence and malevolence of one Priti Patel.
They don't say they did nothing.
But isn't doing nothing the ultimate 'doing things more slowly'?
Sovereignty means, if it means anything at all, that you are free to make your own decisions.
Your argument is that the UK were forced to make a certain decision because of what the EU did?
Sure. But that's not how the UK sees it. They've told their people thst the EU is the lumbering ogre, tripping over its own red tape.
There are great videos of James O Brien, where pro-Brexit callers talk about how leaving the EU will mean they can get rid of all the EU mandated laws. Then he asks them to name some laws and they can't name a single law. They just know the EU imposes terrible laws and they're slow and undemocratic.
Following the EU couldn't happen with refugees. They needed to either be faster or less open. They could have been equally open if they did it faster than the EU, but once the EU acted faster, they didn't realistically have the choice to follow their lead.
The UK doing things more slowly than the EU has been a trope of European politics for half a decade.
Of course it makes sense. Once the EU acted quickly, the UK couldn't do the same thing more slowly. What was the point of leaving the EU if they do the same thing but less quickly? One of the strongest arguments for brexit was being more nimble and less open.
They needed to be either quicker or less open than the EU.
This makes no sense. The only thing stopping the UK from taking in refugees is the government. It doesn't matter what the EU does.
I noticed that I could only vote Tory, Labour or Green this time around. A bit grim...
That election there was a lot of extra overall votes gained in already Labour areas.
There is a huge shift happening in English demographics which means some previous Tory areas are open like in some west London councils or suburban councils. Only a few will change overall control but I think it will point to a trend ad to where future votes are going.
I think Labour can forget the red wall. The brain drain there will turn it into another West Country in the towns and rural councils but will lead to gains in urban and suburban areas. It will also open up the Home Counties in a big way.
I read in a couple of places that because Labour did so well in the last local elections, they were kind of at their high water mark already. So gains aren't going to be massive. I haven't really looked into that deeply, we shall see.
Ah, there are so many councils and so little interest and ability to poll them, that I wouldn't bother to guess. I predict the tories will lose seats. That's about as far as I'd go.
I saw one prediction that they'd lose 800 seats but that seems wild. Other predictions seem to cluster around losing 500 seats being a bad result. So if I were to make a prediction it would probably be around 400 seats lost on aggregate. But that's just based on how the media tends to exaggerate.
Not long to wait now. One of my mates in England was taking tomorrow off to stay up all night to watch the results come in.
Anyone hazard a guess re tonight’s local elections counts will go for BoJo and the tories? Will his fawning media friends digging dirt on Sir Keir re “beergate” in recent days be enough to damage Labour? Could this be election Armageddon for the beleaguered PM? Will there be any exit polls? Should be an interesting night.
@Rawr
Very much agree. It's a wierd situation where him going down to Kyiv is a bit of a morale boost for the Ukrainians (which I like), but at the very same time he's clearly trying to cloak himself with the conflict in an attempt to deflect how feckless he really is.
It is virtue-signalling of the highest order, especially with Pitri Patel announcing what seemed like next day that refugees were going to be sent to Rwanda.
Yeah. It's very much a case of using what he can to delay having to take responsibility or face consequences, then once enough time has passed he'll use the excuse that people have moved on from it.
The Ukrainians might be naming a street after him for his support of them. I doubt the British will be doing the same.
It also feels like his trips to Ukraine are almost like some of those people who "Hike the Andes for Charity". On the surface it might look like it's "for a good cause", but really they're just going on a mountaineering holiday which they believe they can use for moral clout later.
The U.K. isn’t desperately courting the Ukraine to become a member either, hence the remaining visa requirements.
What the U.K. didn’t do, that it should, was recognize that it’s visa provider for Ukraine was never going to cope and therefore an alternative needed to be put in place. Either stick with visas and increase capacity, or drop visa requirements completely
I disagree. Europe was very quick to set up systems to accommodate Ukrainian refugees. If the UK followed suit but did it slower than the EU, then it would have been embarrassing when you consider how they like to think they're much more legislatively nimble and quick than the lumbering EU with all its red tape.
So once the EU made their decision, the UK couldn't follow. They had to take a different approach. Brexit means controlling the borders for loads of people. They don't seem to be being ironic when they say "our compassion is unlimited but our resources aren't" they genuinely think they're the most generous in the world already.
Ah yeah giving weapons is not just good manners, but it it both good publicity for Johnson at hone and obviously the Ukrainians are appreciative.
Clearly the mental gymnastics are your own with your flight of fancy examples, ignoring the completely obvious point breezy was making that Boris going to Ukraine and strongly showing his support is one of the simplest and most effective things he could do to play in to his attempts to wash away the Partygate issue given his repeated claims that because of the war in Ukraine, now is not the right time to talk about stepping down or facing consequences for his own actions.
It's absolutely transparent what Boris' plan was by going to the Ukraine. Whether the Ukrainians praise him for it or name streets after him is irrelevant. He's using the war in Ukraine to say there's more important things happening than the British Prime Minister breaking the law and therefore he needs to stay.
Whole the Ukrainian war is obviously more important, there's no reason Boris needs to remain as PM because of it.
It's no coincidence that this happened a few days before the 5th and just so happened to coincide with an attempt to create a culture war story over a woman's legs and best of all the "possibly maybe might have rumoured to sort of lockdown breaking" curry that Starmer had with a corpse to create a "there all at it" narrative.
The cruelty to refugees has nothing to do with Brexit. It's long standing Tory policy designed to pander to the worst racists and xenophobes in this country. Nothing more.
Yeah, they've been pretty on the ball in terms of supporting Ukraine with material support but Starmer isn't someone who'd hesitate to do the same so that's not much to see the Tory party on.
Last time I checked the oligarchs got their ivory towers in London under Johnson. Most Russian donations to UK politics goes to the Tories and Johnson was caught at the parties of top Russian politicians.
One has to remember that UK has a massive arms industry, so sending weapons is not simply good manners.
There is also the massive issue with Russia money in UK politics, particularly the Tory Party.
Sending weapons over, rather than taking refugees, keeps the conflict 'over there'.
He was extremely slow to sanction the oligarchs, and of course it must be remembered that Johnson is one of the key drivers of the division of the EU, which no doubt helped Putin consider that invasion was low risk.
So Johnson hasn't messed up like he has in almost everything else he has done, but hardly a high bar.
For example, Macron was deeply involved in trying to dissuade Putin from invading in the first place. Ultimately didn't work, should he should be commended for taking the lead and trying.
Might be an opening for him in Ukranian politics if the Tories defenestrate him. Already got a plausible Christian name. Boris Ivanovych has a certain ring to it...
To be fair, the UK has been pretty quick to offer support to the Ukranians. They're not great with helping refugees but taking control if the borders after Brexit complicates that. But they've been good with sending weapons and there were accusations of the SAS acting the maggot on sabotage missions in Ukraine. I wouldn't object if the SAS are actually doing some good over there under the cover of advisory or training roles or whatever else.
I dislike Johnson but credit where its due. It's about the only positive story he has going for him at the moment.
Tomorrow will probably be a disaster for him. The only positive for him is that it's been covered as such disaster already that losing anything less than 400 or 450 council seats could be seen as a good thing.
What is the point here? I'm a UK voter.
can you imagine how embarrassing it would have been for the UK if Corbyn won the last election.
the SAS would probably have been sent to provide close personal protection for Vlad.
and it would appear the Ukrainians appreciate Boris, not only a street, but an embankment named after him. all this after being the first world leader to visit Kiyv and promising what can only be described as a shed load of munitions.
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