To think we're about to witness a repeat of Labour's wrong Miliband brother moment?

[KenAdams]

How Liz will won above Rishi is beyond me. I mean, I know they're both Tories and we are where we are but her interview with Laura K on Sunday really worried me.

I feel like the country is on a knife edge waiting to see what she will announce and I'm 99% sure it just won't be enough and it will start a chain of events that will make for such a difficult time for this country.

I do think it would be stopped if Rishi were PM or at least kerbed but I feel that the Tory party are about to make the wrong decision with who they chose and with it will bring dire consequences for the country.

I would think it would make them unelectable but if they've selected an ERG PM then who knows any more? Maybe I'm just a cynic but I'm so concerned about the next few weeks and months.

I assume Tartan Girl is objecting to the term "separatist". It's a legitimate term to describe the aims of separatist parties.

I refuse to dignify the delusions of the separist supporters by using the idiotic, over- emotional "independence" or the even worse "freedom!' because both are inaccurate and demonstrate a lack of understanding of history and economics. Those who have a large chip on both shoulders seem to be comfortable with them.

I assume Tartan Girl has no problem with "pop" or "pet"

The UK is supposed to be a union of free and independent countries, thats not the same with Catalonia etc.

The voters of Scotland keep voting SNP, so as a voluntary union, the current Scottish Govt should be free to question that unuion whenever they want, if the voters don't like that, they can all vote for pro union party.

A former NATO Secretary General (and former Prime Minister of Denmark) really doesn't hold back:

www.businessinsider.com/former-nato-chief-rips-into-macron-over-approach-to-ukraine-putin-2022-7

The Russians are laughing at his efforts:
www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2022/06/16/macron-has-become-ukraine-s-most-hated-ally_5987056_4.html

Truss and her cronies are essentially fascists
I'm no fan of Liz Truss, but this is a ridiculous comment and libellous to boot.

Time for the dictionary I think!

Yes, do have a look in the dictionary. Factual rather than libellous. She wants to remove just about every right we have, if that’s not fascism I don’t know how you’d describe it.

Bannon is pure Bond villain evil and with his rich backers, the billionaire Mercers in particular, Breibart as an infowar clearing house and cohorts of others have helped to shape these disrupter candidates in Europe and beyond.

Without them, there probably wouldn't have been Brexit, or Trump or Johnson - their aim was to subvert democracy, exploit the chaos of failing capitalism and weaponise discontent. The Russian has been no slouches in the past years at joining that bandwagon with covert money and bot support all at very little cost. These are the real traitors organising in plain sight.

Calling someone/government fascist is not libellous as it is in part opinion-based. I can deem an array of things fascist, some of which are things this Tory government has implemented e.g. the Rwanda policy, resticting protest, restricting access to legal representation, restricting right to protest.

I would like to see the Conservatives take someone to court for calling their government fascist as the policies would then be publicly scrutinised!

I do consider the government to be extremely concerning and moving the country in a direction which is taking us closer to fascism. I consider the restrictions on protest to be 'fascist' in nature. They are not 'liberal'.

Because he attempted to resolve matters diplomatically rather than simply declaring war on Russia?

I mean, it didn't work, war with Russia happened anyway, and now everyone is facing an energy crisis.

But I don't see what this has to do with your claim that France has caused problems for the UK. Macron's attempt to find some common ground with Putin to try to avert war has nothing to do with Anglo-French relations, does it?

Johnson's COVID policies were not liberal - the £10,000 fines imposed on students while he paid a little FPN of £50 were a disgrace.

Johnson is not a liberal. He says he is a liberal because stupid people fall for lies. His word is meaningless, his actions are clear.

Did anything ever happen about those 10,000 fines?

Surely anyone who had to pay one should be starting a class action to have them cancelled, given what subsequently transpired.

There are plenty of people in France - I have spent all summer there - that do not support Ukraine. I found it alarming that people could openly publicly say they don't support the sanctions and don't especially want to support Ukraine. All they can see is rising energy costs and living costs, and seem to have very little grasp on the long term consequences of a Putin win. You suggest that Putin once done with Ukraine would simply move onto the next country and you get a very gallic shrug. Ukraine enjoys massive support here in the UK and elsewhere in Europe. But it is not a done deal in France (and Italy)

France were blindsided by the invasion, they did not see it coming at all, and were still chatting around the table to Putin pretty much as the tanks moved over the border.
Putin has played them for fools.

Macon sacked his intelligence chief after the invasion, but it has not changed the French mindset that this little squabble can and should be 'managed'. There still appears to be an idea that Macon can broker a deal, despite the embarrassing humiliation of his last efforts. The French mindset is that there can be a some kind of agreement between the two countries, and somehow everyone can walk away with something, and hopefully the energy supplies can be restored and we can all move on. It does not work like that with countries like Russia, they can not be trusted to honour any agreement, they have no interest in doing so and we are in the depths of a new cold war. France and some others, have yet to realise the scale of the new war in Europe.

If Russia pull out now, they will simply be back in a few years. They have to be defeated - and so badly they simply will not have the means for a generation to come back for another go. There the war needs to be conclusive and Ukraine have to succeed. The alternative simply is not even worth thinking about. Ukrainians would be destitute indefinitely, living in what would become an open air prison camp controlled by Russian soldiers and all of Ukraine would be a living hell. You can expect the war crimes to continue unabated for as long as they occupied the country, and Putin would not stop there.

The stakes could not be higher. And Macron is out of his depth. So far out of his depth as to be a total fucking liability. Scholz isn't much better, but at least he seems to grasp the reality of Russian ambitions and historically will not underestimate them in the same way France is doing.

It does not work like that with countries like Russia, they can not be trusted to honour any agreement, they have no interest in doing so and we are in the depths of a new cold war.

Said the Brexiter apparently defending the statement that France is not our ally, without a trace of irony.

Putin is not Hitler and has fatally shown his failing hand by invading Ukraine. The Nazis under Hitler had the support of fanatically inspired millions of Germans humiliated by the loss of WW1 and the punishment of the Versailles Peace process which led to the collapse of their economy and hyperinflation and built in these ruins some of the best industrial and military technology of their time something Putin evidently does not have and never will.

Western leaders need to crank back the talk of we are all under an existential threat of his imperial ambitions and this is another 1938, it is not and never was. Russia would no doubt be satisfied by keeping the Donbass and Crimea, areas that are distinctly favourable to life under Putin's Russia particularly now ethnic hatred has been fomented, probably irretrievably on both sides.

This has now become as much a proxy war that neither side can win and as the west is not prepared to go to the next stage, which let's not forget Ukraine is literally begging for and says we are already in, is the beginning of WW3 with a nuclear-armed adversary.

Tragic and monstrously unpalatable as it may be, encouraging Zelensky to sue for an imperfect, bloody peace is the best way forward not just for Ukraine but for the peace and security of the western world.

What we are doing now is pushing Russia into a greater alliance with hostile states like Iran and China and sowing the seeds of WW3. If Putin gets an off-ramp, however hateful that is to many I am almost certain he will take it and an imperfect peace and rebuilding can begin. The alternative seems to be to partially destroy our economies and prepare for WW3 and from talking to family and friends there is precious little appetite for that.

If he goes for Finland or the Baltics then NATO kicks in and we are at war plain and simple and you can kiss your pensions, savings and children's mental health goodbye. It's that bleak so everything that can be done towards an imperfect peace should be the priority.

There are plenty of people in France - I have spent all summer there - that do not support Ukraine. I found it alarming that people could openly publicly say they don't support the sanctions and don't especially want to support Ukraine. All they can see is rising energy costs and living costs, and seem to have very little grasp on the long term consequences of a Putin win

France and the UK have taken in similar numbers of refugees & has given 2 billion euro's worth of aid, mostly humanitarian but 200m euros worth of weapons, thankfully long range artillery which they wanted the west to provide for months.

France has not see the rise in energy costs that the UK has and support for Ukraine is very wide spread in both countries, around the 70% mark, so plenty in the UK also don't support Ukraine either, in a democracy people should be free to express opinions you may disagree with.

You are just trying to sow division to distract from a disaster Brexit policy which Putin helped fund and wanted.... so if anyone has aided Putin, its the UK and the Tory party.

@vera99 Nobody has said Putin is Hitler as far as I am aware. But Putin is an imperialist, and he is open about that.
Agreeing a peace by agreeing he can invade Ukraine simply means he will invade a Nato country in a year or two.

As Danish Prime Minister Rasmussen, ex-Nato chief quoted up thread strongly supported the 2003 Iraq War so like Boris he obviously got all the big calls right.

And according to one war hawk source within the US Johnson scuppered potential peace talks in April which if true is beyond the pale and reveals how much the west cares for peace in Ukraine.

dailysceptic.org/2022/09/01/did-boris-scuttle-talks-between-ukraine-and-russia/

@vera99

At last someone is talking sense. We all loathe what Putin is doing. But how long is this war going to continue? Neither side seems to be interested in peace talks.

I am not even going to bother to reply to your post. It is so way off the mark,

Putin is often disingenuously compared to Hitler by many and the parallels of 1930s appeasement are invoked as to why we should up our military aid to Ukraine. By their own accounts, the Ukrainians have taken out more than half of Russian military capacity with little ability for them to replenish with both experienced personnel or kit.

Putin would have to stark raving mad to attack Nato indeed if he attempted that I feel that he would most probably be taken out by his own people. It's time to try to increase the peace now and encourage all sides to that end rather than ploughing on to a very uncertain quagmire of possibly hugely dangerous outcomes. Have the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (or indeed Vietnam) taught us nothing?

www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/putin-hitler-stalin-poland-nato-b2076304.html

@vera99 are you just here to preach? You are ignoring people disagreeing with you.
You are the ONLY person here mentioning Hitler. Putin is not Hitler.
Putin is an imperialist. He is open about wanting to invade other countries. It is not a secret or people guessing. He is also open that he thinks the West is decadent and will soon stop supporting Ukraine because of short-term pain.

We are currently at war. Ukraine is the front line. If we stop support for Ukraine the front line will simply get closer. And the war will get larger and the impact much greater on us.

Presumably they were legal

@antelopevalley but we are not at war Ukraine is. That has been made very clear by our leaders. I don't want to go into whataboutery but our own wars this century could certainly be labelled imperialist and certainly were not about self-defence.

Appeasement has never ever worked.
It has never worked in the past, and certainly won't work now.

Putin sees diplomacy as weakness, he will not even consider to the table until his army is broken beyond repair and the operation has all but died in name.

Russia are currently recruiting homeless people and convicts from prisons as cannon fodder to be used in Ukraine. Promising to erase the prison sentences of those signing up - which is a good deal for the Kremlin, as it is doubtful those convicts will ever be going back to Russia alive, so it will save money as well given the fiscal situation. It does however highlight just how desperate the 'operation' has become, when all thoughts of replacing fallen soldiers turn to the homeless, and so we can not expect to see a slicker and renewed operation from Russia anytime soon. Indeed Ukraine are now winning back fallen towns and cities, and they are motivated to fight to the end. They have nothing to lose unlike Putin.

We can not stave off Putin by throwing him scraps of Ukraine, in some vain hope he will stop and be happy with his slice. Even the most basic understanding of psychology will indicate that this man will stop at nothing to achieve his aims and goals. He won't sit back and be content with the Donbas, that is wishful thinking. Nor will it make the rest of Europe any safer.

Depleting the military assets of Russia, stripping their army bare, and reducing them to nothing more than a tattered rag tag army (which we are fast approaching) is the only way forward. Anything else will be simply kicking the can down the road.

The alliance you speak of with Iran and China etc, this alliance has been around for years. It is interesting that China have resolutely stood back from this war, refusing to get involved. And why would they wish to be linked to such a failure and disaster? China only cares for one thing: China and its own interests. Russia have not done themselves any favours.

Ukraine can reach it is own conclusions, and decide its own fate. It is now steaming ahead and I wish them all the success in the world reclaiming their country.

You sound like a Jeremy Corybyn apologist vera through and through. Appeasement with dictators never works. History is littered with similar mistakes.

Our pensions and mental health will be the very least of our worries if Putin is allowed to win.

CockingASnook · Yesterday 08:56
Maybe I’m naive but do many “thick” people end up graduating from Oxford, especially having attended state school

“Yes. I did and I’m pretty thick.“

🤣🤣🤣

Absolutely 100% spot on antelopevalley