Sidling on prime time television now

Other jurisdictions do have alternatives though. Germany uses two lay judges. This provides the same control function more efficiently. The disadvantage is finding enough suitable people willing to sacrifice their time as it’s not just for one trial.

I'd argue that if the Trump administration keeps going at this rate the transatlantic foundations of NATO will be gone by 2027 anyway. We are then left with a primarily Euro-Mediterranean alliance system with a few Canadians thrown in

According to the account by a fellow pupil on R4 today, these aren’t just things he said and did, they were the main thing about him. And indeed they still are because he is the leader of a far-right party. This is bears shitting in woods territory.

Being conservative meant chugging along with what everyone was used to, most people accepted and considered respectable. Authoritarianism wasn’t required. Today’s right are just thugs spoiling for a fight by opposing things that are widely accepted. They aren’t respectable and have no charity.

That’s more sadistically motivated. You don’t get any respectability points for that any more.

I don’t see any of our cultural or moral traditions in the right.

The right were conservatives. They wanted to be respectable, which involved religion and a place in the class system. Now they are far-right and just want the state to be sadistic on their behalf. It’s funny they should consider themselves part of some Judeo-Christian civilisation.

I, for one, am happy to leave all toilet questions to toilet experts.

Without claiming to be one, I’m guessing that normal people would rather not think too much about toilets, except when urgently needed.

What did the turkey do in the insurrection?

What’s that going to do for public acceptance of the legitimacy of the result? What if Reform gains a parliamentary majority and pursues a majoritarian policy against the rule of law? It would certainly try. It would depend on electoral legitimacy where none is felt.

This is how we oiks always imagined the private life of the aristocratic elite.

The high Reform polling points to a combination of actually racist far-right voters and frivolous voters. Publicising this could lose then a few of the latter. Many will be happy to see a Farage who is racist but denies it because that is also how they handle it.

This shows that the defence issue is not just defence against Russia without the US, but defence against the US. The UK is quite obviously partially governed by the US and unable/unwilling to defend its citizens against the wrath of a foreign head of state.

Even in the Cold War, we did deterrence and it never came to defence. It never used to worry me that the enemy was less than 2 hours drive to the East and the North as the Cold War had become a ritual. We have to relearn defence.

The trouble with taking the US as a benchmark is that they had worldwide responsibility and used considerable overkill to minimise their own casualties to make foreign missions palatable to the public. Defence of the homeland is a different matter. We haven’t done it for a long time. We’ve forgotten