Where I live it’s either Braverman or whoever can beat her, so I’m not sure I’m going to say I’m not voting Labour next time out.

But even reversing the lorry searches wouldn’t necessarily bring people back on to that route. The boats are now the profitable and working route for the people-smugglers.

Yeah, it is basically just this. A story about boat-load of people arriving on British shores and then being taken to various facilities to be processed is far more useful as rage-porn than individual refugees hopping on lorries in Calais without any clear indication of what happens to them next.

You know, it’s almost like “prevent any people at all from crossing the English Channel ever” is actually not an easy problem to solve, and the cast of those who’ve tried to do it and failed includes Napoleon Bonaparte and the Wehrmacht.

I still don't know who this is even supposed to be *for*.

There's the constituency of 'I just don't like visible and audible difference' which Labour can't appeal to. And there's the 'I don't like that this has measurably made my area worse by introducing an insecure, economically detached class of people', which this policy makes worse.

I wish this government had a clear idea of who it is *FOR*, because I only ever see it as something exercising policy against groups I may or may not fall in to.

Instead there seems to be a lot of posing about tough decisions without actually taking any tough decisions. There seems to be weird technocratic proposals that weren't even in the manifesto (ID cards). There is a lot of talk about a focus on growth but pitifully little action.

Who is this for?

I keep coming back to this poster I saw near where I live: she knows who votes for her and does things designed to appeal to them. Does Labour under Starmer know who votes for them and do they have any plan at all to do anything designed to appeal to them?

It's the most basic thing in politics.

It's 3.5 years to the election. At this stage Cameron and co. were behind in the polls but nowhere near this badly. I mean, there's still time to turn things around but the basic lack of any idea as to what it is they should actually be doing in power is the problem and I don't see that being fixed.

Compare/contrast with ravioli which is typically treated as an uncountable in English (Italian is a different language to Polish, obvs my fellow pedants).

I know the boat sailed here long ago, but pierogi should be uncountable, not countable. Pierogi is the plural form, so “a pierogi” makes no sense.

Starmer has positions. He’s got plenty of them. The issue is they don’t fit together in any particular way and don’t appear directed to any particular end, still less to appealing to any particular person.

I keep coming back to this poster from Braverman. Like, at least she knows who votes for her.

I don’t know, maybe ask someone who actually likes Starmer?

A government that was governing effectively would have no need either of poetry or of furiously online defenders.

Well, at least they spare us their poetry, I guess there’s that…

Poledouris’s score was brilliant.

I do wonder about the mindset of people who do things like this, but then I recall even Christopher Lee indulged in a bit of exaggeration about his wartime service despite having a good record.

Counterpoint: that was awesome.

I mean this was the wider context that the Graun felt would be useful to the reader for this story. Not anything about Russia. Not even anything about the progress of the war or the fact that the Russians have been doing this repeatedly, over and over.