I'd love to imagine Abbott getting what he dreamed of -- the private school voucher scam into law -- but then he loses re-election because of angry rural and suburban parents.
I just wish the voters would FINALLY tire of this guy. At the end of his fourth term he will have been in charge of Texas nearly as long as Pinochet was in power in Chile.
That's true, but since then, he blew a lot of his cachet on a quixotic POTUS run (and the gubernatorial run—always likely to fail in a Democratic midterm—didn't do him any favors either).
Are the reports of Colin Allred polling with a two-digit lead over Paxton credible? Should Allred run again? Is he our best shot? (I’m wary of Beto, fear he may be used up.)
Texas has always shifted blue each election even in midterms since Dubya ran for President, one election doesn't mean the trend will reverse. Did you guys see Trump's negative approval in Texas and his polling with Latinos now?
Even 2022 Gubernatorial election results were closer than the 2018 one.
Seems highly unlikely. Most pollsters sucked in figuring out Texas in 2020 and 2024 and I suspect they're still way off. But even if we assume the poll is 10 points off, it's still a good number.
I dunno...I think our chances in Texas really come down to whether or not Tejanos have really left the Democratic party or if they just liked Trump (for some inexplicable reason). If they come back home (or even mostly do), we could actually have a shot in a Trump midterm. I've long been a Texas skeptic, but if the demographic breakdowns return to what we're used to, this could actually be doable...
Right. Any scenario where Allred was competitive meant that the Tejanos had already "come back home" to the Democratic side. A Democratic win. let alone a double-digit landslide, would require more than getting back to 2018 numbers with Tejanos.
I mean...a double digit landslide is silliness - no one really expects that. What seems possible is recreating Beto's 2018 coalition with a slightly lower Tejano vote share, a higher college white vote share and a slightly more beneficial midterm electorate mix. Someone should run the math, but it seems like that could be enough to overcome Beto's 3 point loss....
I mean, it's crazy that the co-founder of Code Pink, Medea Benjamin, was cheering Trump when he went after Jeb Bush. She was the same persistent protestor in Congress against the Iraq War and in front of President Obama during his time over the wars.
True although Democrats really have nothing to lose here by bringing it up in the narrative of government overspending and the debt (the Iraq War as well as Afghanistan War blew up the debt). Cornyn did nothing to stop this debt is what the Democratic Senate Candidate can argue, not just the bankrolling the wars. It's so obvious.
Cornyn can still be tied to the dysfunctional system the GOP makes Congress as although it depends on how the Democratic Senate campaign sells this message.
(She also ran much more standard, black-and-white attack ads against Akin's main rivals, John Brunner and Sarah Steelman; sadly, those ads don't seem to be available online anymore.)
Results are still coming in, but local elections in England are looking to be a massive win for Farage and his merry band of fascists at Reform UK. Several councils have fallen, including both Labour and Tory strongholds.
Labour's defeat in Runcorn was entirely avoidable - and is the direct result of the party
leadership's political choices. By pushing policies like cuts to disability benefits and scrapping the winter fuel allowance, the leadership is driving away our own voters - and
letting Reform squeeze through. The Labour leadership must urgently change course and govern with real Labour values
Which high profile Tory MPs do you think will defect to Reform UK after yesterday?
You have to believe that Suella Braverman is going to make the jump sooner rather than later since her husband is a Reform UK member and she'd love to serve as Nigel Farage's Home Secretary where she'd be unleashed like Tom Homan in Trump 2.0.
I don't know where it's been proven that neoliberalism inevitably leads to fascism, but I just don't understand a labour party acting this way. It's absurd and absolutely anti-socialist.
Because of decisions made during the Tory government and by voters themselves (Brexit) the UK is arguably in an economic death spiral with no obvious levers to pull to arrest the decline. They are increasingly unable to support the NHS in its current form with a rapidly aging society.
One astute observer of UK politics, Robert Peston, has this take on that:
"…the UK’s vote to leave the European Union demonstrated, that we live in an age where voters’ grievances and aspirations can’t neatly be packaged up as tribally Labour or Tory.
"The great paradox of all this can be summed up in a word: “Trump”.
"It is a paradox because the polls show that British people dislike him personally and his chaotic policies. But a significant proportion of British voters yearn for something Trumpian that would break a political system which - they feel - ignores and even harms them."
. And:
"Do the Tories or Labour yet appreciate the magnitude of the threat to them this represents? And what will their survival instincts ultimately force Labour and Tories to do: remain proudly independent till death, or make common cause and form coalitions with like-minded parties?
"Big change is coming. Its shape is yet to be determined."
Labour must switch to a Proportional system like Germany or Poland to stop Farage from decimating every party in the next election. Labour, Tories, Lib Dems and Greens can form coalitions with each other.
Poland isn't exactly a model that the UK nor our brethren Anglosphere nations should follow given the lack of anti fascist sentiment there. Not to mention that Germany uses a Mixed Member system as does New Zealand. They don't use full blown PR as that was the system Weimar used.
It's not full blown PR though as half of the MPs in Germany are elected to individual constituencies. Also the Australian House of Representatives uses preferential voting or ranked choice voting. Not MMP.
It's cruel but Conor Lamb likely knew this, he registered his website for 2028 Senate in the third week of April as I reported. When asked if he would primary Fetterman, he said he wouldn't and remarked "Just watch" to a local reporter.
Reading through the article, it's clear he needs serious help. I doubt he's going to have that seat by his reelection, let alone by the end of the midterms.
I like Lamb, but he gives off a bit too much of a "Bob Casey III" vibe. I hope he can develop a bit more of a brand.
The bigger problem in Pennsylvania, though, is that the voter registration numbers are shifting the wrong way (and have been doing so for quite a while).
I read through the article in detail as well. It's worse than I thought, especially considering Fetterman's wife Giselle has been impacted by this and has seen Fetterman on the deep end in ways she hasn't before.
Fetterman I think made a mistake running for the Senate as it's clear he doesn't have the mindset or dedication to the job like other Senators do. If he didn't run and the race back in 2022 was between Conor Lamb and Malcolm Kenyatta, Lamb would have likely been the frontrunner for winning the primary and Senate election. He'd also have made the campaign and serving in the Senate to be more straight forward by contrast to Fetterman.
The other problem is that Fetterman is being impulsive in eating fast food and has in recent years been observed by doctors to have clinical depression. This kind of combination isn't good, especially considering depression can have a lasting impact on the body if there isn't sufficient nutrition. I specifically try to stay away from fast food as much as I can and stick to a lean protein diet + fruits + vegetables so that I'm managing my health normally.
Conservative MP-elect for Battle River—Crowfoot Damien Kurek is resigning his seat to allow Conservative Party Leader, Pierre Poilievre, to run in a forthcoming by-election.
Quite literally one of the safest Conservative seats in the nation. In Alberta of course.
The conservative party should move past him, his net approval was still negative and Canada has shown that they don't like a politician who's right of centre-right. Time to anoint an eastern Progressive Conservative as as the leader.
Funnily enough, Poilievre doesn’t look like a cult leader. Whereas Trump perfectly fits the part of a sociopathic Mafia leader – the kind whose Brown Shirt lieutenants you wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley.
Over the past 24 hour voters up and down England have said in unison they don't like the kind of change Labour has delivered over the past 10 months. Labour cutting the winter fuel allowance as one of their first acts in government, which was meant to signal they'd be tough on spending even if it saved pennies came up over and over again as something voters were angry about.
I do feel partially sympathetic to Labour's position since they don't have a magic money printer like we do so they have to do all their promises without any money, but at the same time they've done a lot to validate why their landslide last year was "loveless."
It's normal for the ruling party to lose seats in local elections in the UK. But because the UK is so much more centralized than we are, the councils don't really have all that much power. It's basically just perpetual midterm elections without any real consequences.
The main issue is a lack of growth from years of underinvestment due to Tory austerity, Brexit shocks and increased immigration to tackle it without solving the root causes.
Just like with Republicans here, over a decade of Con governance in the UK left Labour with a completely shitty fiscal situation. And then they get blamed for making the tough decisions.
I'm not an expert on the UK budget, but I do know that, contrary to some left-wing claims, a government/economy the size of England can't simply ignore international currency markets and just pretend they don't have an aging society. To boot, if you go to the only verified way to combat that aging (immigration), it produces its own backlash.
The failure of many Britons to accept that the Empire is gone and that they can no longer ignore "the continent" (we Americans inherited our isolationist traits from them) continues to hurt the UK.
I seriously doubt the U.S. "inherited our isolationist traits from them." That even strikes me as ahistorical, though I would consider an elaborated explanation of what you mean by that and how it could be true. But it was precisely British expansionism that caused them to conquer territory and build colonies in North America, and the U.S. then continued as an imperialist power, most prominently but not only by conquering all the Indian Territory to its west.
What I observe a strain of in the UK and the U.S. is not so much isolationism as such but a refusal to accept that they can no longer dictate terms to the world, need partnerships with other countries and multi-country organizations based on reciprocity and lasting commitments that can't be abrogated on a whim, and that they need immigrants and need to stop fixating on where they came from, what they look like, what their native languages and religions are, and how they got there.
It's probably way too simplistic to say that empires can fall either the soft way or the hard way, but at least in relative terms, the hard way seems more common, when we think of how severe a loss of empire was for Spain, for example, or for Rome. And in elective systems, I think that the people believing the bullshit we've been taught about how our nation is uniquely great and, to quote Borat, "All other countries are run by little girls," makes things worse.
Oh we definitely inherited isolationist sentiment from them. That's a major reason - not to mention having to suck up to German and Irish Americans - why we entered both World Wars later than we arguably should have. The difference between us and the UK is that the UK had a channel to separate themselves from mainland Europe. We had an ocean. Thus British involvement in mainland European affairs was more imminent than American. Not to mention "manifest destiny" was basically our way of justification of territorial expansion. Just as they believed they were the rightful rulers of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, and much of Africa, we believed we were the rightly rulers of what is now the continental USA, and there were some who wanted us to conquer all the British and Spanish ruled territories of the Americas.
You've just contradicted yourself. Supporting expansionism and conducting it on a huge scale is not isolationist. If we go back to Washington, what the U.S. was wary of was "entangling alliances" - not attacking countries and peoples on our own. That's not isolationism; it's unilateralism.
The British and American governments of the 19th century would have disagreed with that statement. Until the Entente Cordiale of 1904, the UK was considered to have practiced "splendid isolationism." And by American standards, not interfering with countries in the Americas but not Europe was "isolationism."
Going by the raw numbers, it seems Labour primarily bled over to LibDems and Greens while Tories primarily bled to REFUK. I can see the economy being the reason for the former and immigration being the reason for the latter as those are probably the two biggest issues in the UK right now.
Thanedar also flip-flopped from being pro-Palestine to being pro-Israel immediately after visiting Israel without having a desire to get a balanced view of the conflict on both sides.
I was brought up for a good part of my childhood in India and my gosh, his English is horrible. Even small business owners in India speak much better English than him. Did he even participate in the primary debates?
Ro is a progressive intellectual more than a politician and a born and bred Philadelphian, so he isn't the apt comparison with Thanedar. He practiced law in the Bay Area and ran in an Indian American plurality district unlike Thanedar who carpetbagged.
We need to first figure out how to tell every Detroit Democrat that believes its their god given right to be in Congress a lot of them should step aside so there isn't a clown car where Thanedar can slip through with 20ish percent of the vote.
The whole thing is obviously entirely about winning his primary election. All he's going to succeed in doing, other than embarrassing himself, is undermining a serious impeachment effort later.
A federal judge ruled on Friday that an executive order President Trump signed in March targeting the law firm Perkins Coie was unconstitutional and directed the government not to enforce its terms, which had threatened to upend the firm’s business.
The ruling was the first time a court had stepped in to permanently bar Mr. Trump from trying to punish a law firm he opposes politically.
Canadian election: Liberals back to 169 seats after recount in an Ontario riding.
Ontario’s Milton East—Halton Hills South riding has flipped to the Liberals after a vote validation process.
Elections Canada’s validated results indicate that Liberal candidate Kristina Tesser Derksen received 32,130 votes, while Conservative candidate Parm Gill received 32,101 votes — a difference of 29 votes.
Preliminary results showed that Gill had won the riding with 32,186 votes, with Tesser Derksen coming in second with 31,888 votes — a difference of 298 votes.
Don't listen to Cornyn, TX Republicans! Listen to Trump and elect Paxton!
This TX Senate race is going to be a hoot if Paxton unseats Cornyn.
Yep, we have absolutely nothing to lose here.
Best case scenario: Paxton loses to his Democratic opponent.
Worst case scenario: Paxton wins and votes the same way Cornyn would.
Does anyone think having Paxton on the ticket with Abbott will drag down Abbott or will there be ticket splitters?
There will be ticket splitters.
If only reverse coattails were a thing. Sigh…
I'd love to imagine Abbott getting what he dreamed of -- the private school voucher scam into law -- but then he loses re-election because of angry rural and suburban parents.
I just wish the voters would FINALLY tire of this guy. At the end of his fourth term he will have been in charge of Texas nearly as long as Pinochet was in power in Chile.
Hopefully Texas MAGA will up their game – Mothers Against Greg Abbott!
https://mothersagainstgregabbott.com/
The Democratic opponent could be Beto O'Rourke, who says he is thinking about entering the race.
Nope he won't be, the primary is going to be crowded with Allred, Nirenberg, Nathan Johnson and Astronaut Virts.
No thanks. I like the guy, but we have other options (and he—like Stacey Abrams in Georgia—seems better-suited to organizational roles).
I would not dismiss him peremptorily. He has come closer to winning a Senate seat from Texas than any other Democrat since Lloyd Bentsen in 1988.
That's true, but since then, he blew a lot of his cachet on a quixotic POTUS run (and the gubernatorial run—always likely to fail in a Democratic midterm—didn't do him any favors either).
If he hadn't run for governor, he would have been dismissed as a has-been who let his party down in a time of need.
Are the reports of Colin Allred polling with a two-digit lead over Paxton credible? Should Allred run again? Is he our best shot? (I’m wary of Beto, fear he may be used up.)
For me, it sounds too good to be true. But then again, Ken Paxton is Mark Robinson-levels of toxic.
Texas has always shifted blue each election even in midterms since Dubya ran for President, one election doesn't mean the trend will reverse. Did you guys see Trump's negative approval in Texas and his polling with Latinos now?
Even 2022 Gubernatorial election results were closer than the 2018 one.
https://www.270towin.com/states/texas
Seems highly unlikely. Most pollsters sucked in figuring out Texas in 2020 and 2024 and I suspect they're still way off. But even if we assume the poll is 10 points off, it's still a good number.
I dunno...I think our chances in Texas really come down to whether or not Tejanos have really left the Democratic party or if they just liked Trump (for some inexplicable reason). If they come back home (or even mostly do), we could actually have a shot in a Trump midterm. I've long been a Texas skeptic, but if the demographic breakdowns return to what we're used to, this could actually be doable...
Right. Any scenario where Allred was competitive meant that the Tejanos had already "come back home" to the Democratic side. A Democratic win. let alone a double-digit landslide, would require more than getting back to 2018 numbers with Tejanos.
I mean...a double digit landslide is silliness - no one really expects that. What seems possible is recreating Beto's 2018 coalition with a slightly lower Tejano vote share, a higher college white vote share and a slightly more beneficial midterm electorate mix. Someone should run the math, but it seems like that could be enough to overcome Beto's 3 point loss....
There are more naturalised Tejanos in Texas today than 2018 and the cities have grown with snowbirds since then.
Hoffman, Soros, Gates, Jamie should fund this guy Paxton through their dark money groups just like they did for Kari Lake in the 2022 primary.
I am still mystified as to why all of the Democratic challengers to John Cornyn in previous Senate races don't bring up his pro-Iraq War votes.
If I were any of them, I'd give Cornyn the same treatment that Trump gave Jeb Bush over Dubya.
Probably the one thing I ever agreed with Trump on.
I mean, it's crazy that the co-founder of Code Pink, Medea Benjamin, was cheering Trump when he went after Jeb Bush. She was the same persistent protestor in Congress against the Iraq War and in front of President Obama during his time over the wars.
Sadly, that's an old issue for Americans now and very unlikely to garner any appreciable number of votes.
True although Democrats really have nothing to lose here by bringing it up in the narrative of government overspending and the debt (the Iraq War as well as Afghanistan War blew up the debt). Cornyn did nothing to stop this debt is what the Democratic Senate Candidate can argue, not just the bankrolling the wars. It's so obvious.
Cornyn can still be tied to the dysfunctional system the GOP makes Congress as although it depends on how the Democratic Senate campaign sells this message.
Nobody really cares about overspending or the debt.
If the GOP wants to claim they care, we use their arguments against them.
That would be getting sidetracked. Democrats should not campaign on balanced budgets, etc.
That wouldn't fly with Texas Republicans the way it would in a national primary.
Well, either way, Democrats should have a better strategy than having to wait for Ken Paxton to primary John Cornyn out of office.
Democratic groups should secretly intervene and label Paxton "too conservative for Texas" and call him "Ted Cruz's political twin"!!
"Texas's TRUE conservative is just TOO conservative."
(Apologies to Claire McCaskill)
I didn't get the reference?
Claire McCaskill wanted Todd Akin to be her opponent in 2012, so she ran this "attack" ad before the Republican primary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ec4t_3vaBMc&list=UUh-9jmww2oKE-ObzNmZ4m3w&index=2
(She also ran much more standard, black-and-white attack ads against Akin's main rivals, John Brunner and Sarah Steelman; sadly, those ads don't seem to be available online anymore.)
CAT FUD! Love to see it (on the GOP side).
Results are still coming in, but local elections in England are looking to be a massive win for Farage and his merry band of fascists at Reform UK. Several councils have fallen, including both Labour and Tory strongholds.
As well as a House of Commons seat. As I posted in the last thread:
UK: Labour loses a seat to Reform it had won by nearly 15,000 last year.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/may/02/reform-runcorn-and-helsby-byelection-local-elections
A Labour MP reacts:
Labour's defeat in Runcorn was entirely avoidable - and is the direct result of the party
leadership's political choices. By pushing policies like cuts to disability benefits and scrapping the winter fuel allowance, the leadership is driving away our own voters - and
letting Reform squeeze through. The Labour leadership must urgently change course and govern with real Labour values
https://bsky.app/profile/richardburgon.bsky.social/post/3lo6ice7bj223
Which high profile Tory MPs do you think will defect to Reform UK after yesterday?
You have to believe that Suella Braverman is going to make the jump sooner rather than later since her husband is a Reform UK member and she'd love to serve as Nigel Farage's Home Secretary where she'd be unleashed like Tom Homan in Trump 2.0.
It's disgraceful for a Labour Party to behave like Margaret Thatcher. What in the world are they thinking?
They think it’s the 1990s. And haven’t learned the lesson that neo-liberalism leads to fascism.
No, that was PM Cameron being an imbecile that started it.
I don't know where it's been proven that neoliberalism inevitably leads to fascism, but I just don't understand a labour party acting this way. It's absurd and absolutely anti-socialist.
Your last claim is pure hyperbole.
It's hard but necessary as they don't have an American style printer due to our exorbitant privilege.
Because of decisions made during the Tory government and by voters themselves (Brexit) the UK is arguably in an economic death spiral with no obvious levers to pull to arrest the decline. They are increasingly unable to support the NHS in its current form with a rapidly aging society.
Lots of skilled Poles and Romanians also went back to their countries with their experience gained.
I can't believe it. How much have taxes been raised on the wealthy and big corporations?
Reeves did raise some taxes on them, it was a tax and spend bill.
It doesn't sound like they raised taxes enough on the wealthy, if the alternative is making the poor freeze.
Seems like no Trump-backlash in the UK . . .
One astute observer of UK politics, Robert Peston, has this take on that:
"…the UK’s vote to leave the European Union demonstrated, that we live in an age where voters’ grievances and aspirations can’t neatly be packaged up as tribally Labour or Tory.
"The great paradox of all this can be summed up in a word: “Trump”.
"It is a paradox because the polls show that British people dislike him personally and his chaotic policies. But a significant proportion of British voters yearn for something Trumpian that would break a political system which - they feel - ignores and even harms them."
. And:
"Do the Tories or Labour yet appreciate the magnitude of the threat to them this represents? And what will their survival instincts ultimately force Labour and Tories to do: remain proudly independent till death, or make common cause and form coalitions with like-minded parties?
"Big change is coming. Its shape is yet to be determined."
https://nitter.poast.org/Peston/status/1918207911333179680#m
Labour is being Pasoked as we speak.
Being what?
Greece.
Oh right. But Pasok was put under external duress. What's Labour's excuse?
Yup. Far better if Labour is Varoufakised.
Labour must switch to a Proportional system like Germany or Poland to stop Farage from decimating every party in the next election. Labour, Tories, Lib Dems and Greens can form coalitions with each other.
Poland isn't exactly a model that the UK nor our brethren Anglosphere nations should follow given the lack of anti fascist sentiment there. Not to mention that Germany uses a Mixed Member system as does New Zealand. They don't use full blown PR as that was the system Weimar used.
Mixed Member system is also used in the lower or maybe upper chamber of Australia and is a form of PR.
It's not full blown PR though as half of the MPs in Germany are elected to individual constituencies. Also the Australian House of Representatives uses preferential voting or ranked choice voting. Not MMP.
They have bonus legislators in Germany and Nordic for equalising it when MMP isn't exactly proportional to the vote share.
Except the Nordic countries use full blown PR. Germany does not. And as I said earlier Germany does not because of Weimar.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/john-fetterman-struggle-mental-health-clinical-depression.html
Praying for his family and his recovery 🙏, I hope he retires...
It's cruel but Conor Lamb likely knew this, he registered his website for 2028 Senate in the third week of April as I reported. When asked if he would primary Fetterman, he said he wouldn't and remarked "Just watch" to a local reporter.
Edit: 2028 not 2026.
2028.
Reading through the article, it's clear he needs serious help. I doubt he's going to have that seat by his reelection, let alone by the end of the midterms.
He needs to retire and let Shapiro appoint Lamb but Shapiro is his archenemy, and he's obsessed with Shapiro.
Lamb would be perfect for Pennsylvania, union backer, old Catholic roots, liberal not a centrist or progressive and suave.
I like Lamb, but he gives off a bit too much of a "Bob Casey III" vibe. I hope he can develop a bit more of a brand.
The bigger problem in Pennsylvania, though, is that the voter registration numbers are shifting the wrong way (and have been doing so for quite a while).
Don't underestimate 4 years of Trump.
Liberal in what sense?
Supporting the party line 100% of the time.
That's a loyal Democrat. But really 100%?
Yes.
I read through the article in detail as well. It's worse than I thought, especially considering Fetterman's wife Giselle has been impacted by this and has seen Fetterman on the deep end in ways she hasn't before.
Fetterman I think made a mistake running for the Senate as it's clear he doesn't have the mindset or dedication to the job like other Senators do. If he didn't run and the race back in 2022 was between Conor Lamb and Malcolm Kenyatta, Lamb would have likely been the frontrunner for winning the primary and Senate election. He'd also have made the campaign and serving in the Senate to be more straight forward by contrast to Fetterman.
The other problem is that Fetterman is being impulsive in eating fast food and has in recent years been observed by doctors to have clinical depression. This kind of combination isn't good, especially considering depression can have a lasting impact on the body if there isn't sufficient nutrition. I specifically try to stay away from fast food as much as I can and stick to a lean protein diet + fruits + vegetables so that I'm managing my health normally.
He would do well by having Dr. Oz shop for some crudite for him.
Erudite beats Crudite.
Or Dr Oz knows of a supplement maestro in New Jersey who he partners with that can tell Fetterman he’s got what ails him.
I just hope he doesn't pull a Zell Miller and speak at the 2028 Trump Party Convention.
Canada:
Conservative MP-elect for Battle River—Crowfoot Damien Kurek is resigning his seat to allow Conservative Party Leader, Pierre Poilievre, to run in a forthcoming by-election.
Quite literally one of the safest Conservative seats in the nation. In Alberta of course.
They won it with +80% of the vote this election
https://bsky.app/profile/canadianpolling.bsky.social/post/3lo7aztjefs2q
The conservative party should move past him, his net approval was still negative and Canada has shown that they don't like a politician who's right of centre-right. Time to anoint an eastern Progressive Conservative as as the leader.
Apparently he has a Trump-like hold on the party.
The base is holding everyone else hostage yet again
Funnily enough, Poilievre doesn’t look like a cult leader. Whereas Trump perfectly fits the part of a sociopathic Mafia leader – the kind whose Brown Shirt lieutenants you wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley.
Not going to happen. Red Toryism is basically dead in Canada. Even Kim Campbell has thrown them under the bus.
Keir Starmer's 2024 election slogan was: CHANGE.
Over the past 24 hour voters up and down England have said in unison they don't like the kind of change Labour has delivered over the past 10 months. Labour cutting the winter fuel allowance as one of their first acts in government, which was meant to signal they'd be tough on spending even if it saved pennies came up over and over again as something voters were angry about.
I do feel partially sympathetic to Labour's position since they don't have a magic money printer like we do so they have to do all their promises without any money, but at the same time they've done a lot to validate why their landslide last year was "loveless."
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp8jdr900r7o
33% of the vote. For a Tory-lite party.
It's normal for the ruling party to lose seats in local elections in the UK. But because the UK is so much more centralized than we are, the councils don't really have all that much power. It's basically just perpetual midterm elections without any real consequences.
I've seen some UK comedies and the running joke with councils is that they're like the office in "Dilbert."
The main issue is a lack of growth from years of underinvestment due to Tory austerity, Brexit shocks and increased immigration to tackle it without solving the root causes.
Just like with Republicans here, over a decade of Con governance in the UK left Labour with a completely shitty fiscal situation. And then they get blamed for making the tough decisions.
Fair enough, but why are -these- the first "tough decisions" they make?
I'm not an expert on the UK budget, but I do know that, contrary to some left-wing claims, a government/economy the size of England can't simply ignore international currency markets and just pretend they don't have an aging society. To boot, if you go to the only verified way to combat that aging (immigration), it produces its own backlash.
The alternative, of course, is for England to "export" its aging population – e.g. to Spain’s Costa del Sol and Portugal’s Algarve.
Oh, snap! England is already doing that. Although that only applies to the older people of means.
The failure of many Britons to accept that the Empire is gone and that they can no longer ignore "the continent" (we Americans inherited our isolationist traits from them) continues to hurt the UK.
I seriously doubt the U.S. "inherited our isolationist traits from them." That even strikes me as ahistorical, though I would consider an elaborated explanation of what you mean by that and how it could be true. But it was precisely British expansionism that caused them to conquer territory and build colonies in North America, and the U.S. then continued as an imperialist power, most prominently but not only by conquering all the Indian Territory to its west.
What I observe a strain of in the UK and the U.S. is not so much isolationism as such but a refusal to accept that they can no longer dictate terms to the world, need partnerships with other countries and multi-country organizations based on reciprocity and lasting commitments that can't be abrogated on a whim, and that they need immigrants and need to stop fixating on where they came from, what they look like, what their native languages and religions are, and how they got there.
It's probably way too simplistic to say that empires can fall either the soft way or the hard way, but at least in relative terms, the hard way seems more common, when we think of how severe a loss of empire was for Spain, for example, or for Rome. And in elective systems, I think that the people believing the bullshit we've been taught about how our nation is uniquely great and, to quote Borat, "All other countries are run by little girls," makes things worse.
Oh we definitely inherited isolationist sentiment from them. That's a major reason - not to mention having to suck up to German and Irish Americans - why we entered both World Wars later than we arguably should have. The difference between us and the UK is that the UK had a channel to separate themselves from mainland Europe. We had an ocean. Thus British involvement in mainland European affairs was more imminent than American. Not to mention "manifest destiny" was basically our way of justification of territorial expansion. Just as they believed they were the rightful rulers of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, and much of Africa, we believed we were the rightly rulers of what is now the continental USA, and there were some who wanted us to conquer all the British and Spanish ruled territories of the Americas.
You've just contradicted yourself. Supporting expansionism and conducting it on a huge scale is not isolationist. If we go back to Washington, what the U.S. was wary of was "entangling alliances" - not attacking countries and peoples on our own. That's not isolationism; it's unilateralism.
The British and American governments of the 19th century would have disagreed with that statement. Until the Entente Cordiale of 1904, the UK was considered to have practiced "splendid isolationism." And by American standards, not interfering with countries in the Americas but not Europe was "isolationism."
Going by the raw numbers, it seems Labour primarily bled over to LibDems and Greens while Tories primarily bled to REFUK. I can see the economy being the reason for the former and immigration being the reason for the latter as those are probably the two biggest issues in the UK right now.
That certainly isn't true on a constituency by constituency basis. Loads of Labour seats fell to reform, especially up here in the North.
Oh, I was just looking at it by numbers only.
REFU*k – interesting acronym. Very fitting.
https://www.axios.com/2025/05/01/house-democrats-impeachment-thanedar-trump
Thanedar misled House Dems on the introduction of the impeachment articles.
Primary this phony out of office, never trusted him. No seriousness or credibility.
That safe D district in Michigan needs a credible fighter!! 💙🇺🇲
100%!
Thanedar also flip-flopped from being pro-Palestine to being pro-Israel immediately after visiting Israel without having a desire to get a balanced view of the conflict on both sides.
He does not lead with true convictions.
I was brought up for a good part of my childhood in India and my gosh, his English is horrible. Even small business owners in India speak much better English than him. Did he even participate in the primary debates?
I don't know. However, even Ro Khanna is better than Thanedar and shows more intelligence and intellectual curiosity than he does.
Ro is a progressive intellectual more than a politician and a born and bred Philadelphian, so he isn't the apt comparison with Thanedar. He practiced law in the Bay Area and ran in an Indian American plurality district unlike Thanedar who carpetbagged.
Point being, Khanna has more firmly held convictions than Thanedar. That is not saying a lot considering I am not a fan of Khanna.
EDIT made to add clarity.
We need to first figure out how to tell every Detroit Democrat that believes its their god given right to be in Congress a lot of them should step aside so there isn't a clown car where Thanedar can slip through with 20ish percent of the vote.
The whole thing is obviously entirely about winning his primary election. All he's going to succeed in doing, other than embarrassing himself, is undermining a serious impeachment effort later.
I GUESS THEY FIGURE IF THEY CAN PUT AN ASSHOLE IN THE WHITE HOUSE, STUPID REPUBLICANS WILL ALSO VOTE FOR HIS MICKEY MOUSE CLON
Who in particular are you talking (or YELLING) about?
I'm guessing Paxton
Sure, I'm sure many of them believe that, and I wouldn't put it past Texans to elect him to the Senate.
https://abc7chicago.com/post/former-illinois-gov-george-ryan-dead-house-republican-leader-jim-durkin-says/16304241
Former Illinois Governor George Ryan dead at 91.
A federal judge ruled on Friday that an executive order President Trump signed in March targeting the law firm Perkins Coie was unconstitutional and directed the government not to enforce its terms, which had threatened to upend the firm’s business.
The ruling was the first time a court had stepped in to permanently bar Mr. Trump from trying to punish a law firm he opposes politically.
Canadian election: Liberals back to 169 seats after recount in an Ontario riding.
Ontario’s Milton East—Halton Hills South riding has flipped to the Liberals after a vote validation process.
Elections Canada’s validated results indicate that Liberal candidate Kristina Tesser Derksen received 32,130 votes, while Conservative candidate Parm Gill received 32,101 votes — a difference of 29 votes.
Preliminary results showed that Gill had won the riding with 32,186 votes, with Tesser Derksen coming in second with 31,888 votes — a difference of 298 votes.
Rumors from Michigan is that Kalamazoo state senator Sean McCann is interested in running for Huizenga's seat.