I looked at that article and it quotes Trump as saying:

We’re going to cut off all trade with Spain. We don’t want anything to do with Spain

Surely this is a reason why Europe should unite in order to protect its interests. Imagine if the EU were to deny the Americans permission to use any EU air base for strikes on Iran. Would Trump then say “we’re going to cut off all trade with the EU”? It would be much more costly for the US economy if they were to cut off trade with the entire EU, rather than just one EU country.

Yes the same issue has brought about Conservative governments. In 2015 the Tories got only 36.8% of the vote but this gave them 50.8% of the seats.

I’d like score/rank voting based mixed member

I will admit that I don’t know the details of the different kinds of proportional voting. As long as a system would result in a House of Commons that more accurately and proportionately reflects voters, I think that would be a good thing

I don’t want the UK to murder people, or create a new empire. I think keeping British nukes makes sense though. If the UK and France both gave up their nukes then I think Russia would probably increase their invasion of Europe. In the future China and the US might try to take parts of Europe too.

I don’t necessarily think the UK should give up its nukes, they’re an unfortunate necessity in the world we live in

They might well be. Also yes, I think the US treats the UK as a bit of a lapdog. I think the UK should do more to partner with European allies. Europe together has more bargaining power than the UK alone. Europe together has more leverage than the UK to say to the US “actually we’re not doing what you want us to do”.

I think the Greens are right to oppose very wealthy people who just want to accumulate more wealth and power at the expense of everybody else. But I don’t think I agree with them if they want to “immediately begin the process of dismantling our nuclear weapons”.

Sure it would be good to reduce reliance on the US, e.g. by replacing Trident missiles with British missiles for delivering nukes. But that web page from the Greens I linked to talks about intending to “immediately begin the process of dismantling our nuclear weapons”. I think the UK should keep its nuclear weapons for now, while exploring a future possibility of non-American missiles to deliver them.

Personally I don’t think this political polarisation is a good thing

The Greens apparently want to “immediately begin the process of dismantling our nuclear weapons, cancelling the Trident programme” which I think is the wrong move when Russia poses such a big threat to Europe. China and the US could pose threats in the future. Nukes deter those big powers from invading the UK. We could also work with our allies in Europe to try and create a nuclear deterrent which covers all of Europe.

Then on the other side you have Reform who want to blame brown people for everything, and I think that’s also a wrong move.

it would be a project taking years if not decades to disentangle from our US military and intelligence alliances, and we’d be exposed the entire time

Perhaps true, so I guess we shouldn’t try to cut our ties with the US straight away. Instead we can work with European allies to build up Europe’s defences. Then if the US continues to diverge from Europe, Europe will have its own defences in place.

If you join a club for your own interests, and the members of the club (including yourself) agree to appoint leadership for the club, which is renewed by elections every few years, I don’t think that means you become a vassal of the leadership of the club.

For example let’s say you’re in a band. The members of the band agree to have a manager, to handle certain tasks. That doesn’t mean the band members are vassals of the manager. The band members can replace the manager if they think the manager is doing a bad job.

I think the German system looks pretty good. Their voting system leads to a much more representative legislature. Another example when looking at proportional representation is the Netherlands, but their system seems to lead to lots of lengthy coalition negotiations and squabbling before they form a government.

Germany, for much of the last 20 years, has had a coalition government between the big centre-right and big centre-left blocs. E.g. in the 2005 election, 69.4% of voters backed either the Union or SPD, who together made up the subsequent coalition government. Compare that to the UK where we have a Labour government who, whether you like them or not, were only voted for by 33.7% of voters.

Yes the voting systems of both the UK and US are broken because they’re unrepresentative. Hillary Clinton in 2016 got about 3 million more votes than Trump did. In many countries that would have made her the president. But the anti-democratic electoral college system in the US meant that Trump was made president instead.

What I said in the comment you first responded to is that NATO membership, and British nuclear weapons, can help keep the UK safe. I don’t think I’m licking any boots when I’m talking about the security of my own country, the UK. I certainly don’t think the UK should lick the boots of the US. That’s why I think the Tories and Reform have been a bit ridiculous recently when they’ve said the UK should have helped the US with their attacks on Iran.

True. I think voters want to see politicians who embody values that voters like. The pitch of “vote for us just because we’re not quite as bad as the other guys”, without stating appealing values of your own, doesn’t really inspire anybody

Removed by mod

I’m not too bothered by drug policies. I’m just wondering about defence policies. I looked up Green Party policy on defence, and to be fair it doesn’t say they would pull out of NATO. It says “we would work within NATO”. However, it does say “elected Greens will… immediately begin the process of dismantling our nuclear weapons”. I don’t think that’s a good policy when the UK and its European allies are threatened by nuclear-armed Russia, and maybe in the future by nuclear-armed China.

You said the US is no longer a great ally, and yeah that might be true. Perhaps Europe should either form their own defence union, or kick the US out of NATO. Until such events though, I think it makes sense to stay in NATO. It means we get defence cooperation with many European allies and Canada, even if the US doesn’t want to help.

They hope to pay on “it is us, or Reform” which is party before country and could backfire and massively damage the country.

True. I don’t think it’s a popular message with the public. Clearly people in Gorton and Denton thought “actually we don’t have to vote for Labour as the only alternative to Reform; we can vote for the Greens instead”.

You all might hate me for this, but I think Keir is right about the NATO point. I think the UK should remain in NATO for now, and the UK should keep its nuclear weapons for now. Russia, a country with nuclear weapons, poses a big threat to the security of Europe and the UK. I think Britain’s nukes will help to keep the UK safe for the time being. Also China could pose a major military threat in the future. Even the US could potentially pose some form of threat to the UK; look at Trump’s strong dislike of European nations and the independence of those nations.

What’s great about those numbers is Con+Reform is soooo far behind Lab+Lib+Greens.

Because of our crappy first-past-the-post system though, the most likely next government (if an election were held soon) would be a Reform government, or maybe a Reform/Conservative government.

Reform’s support in recent polls has only been around 24% - 30%. So around 70% of British voters don’t support Reform. Nonetheless, because Reform polls better than any other individual party, they could run the next government. Like how Labour in 2024 only got 34% of votes, but this gave them 63% of seats.

If the anti-Reform vote continues to be split between Labour/Greens/LibDems/SNP (and even Tories, since there will be Tory voters who don’t like Reform) then Farage will be the next prime minister. Surely the best counter to Reform would be a big tent centrist or centre-left party with wide appeal.

You claimed that Epstein was “running a child raping blackmail ring on Israel’s behalf in order to manipulate world events”

Maybe Epstein raped children because of his own inclinations; not because Israel made him do it, or because they paid him to do it, etc

Which specific quotes from these articles do you think show that Epstein committed his crimes “on Israel’s behalf”? I suppose it’s possible that all his crimes were directed by Israeli intelligence or something like that. I would have thought it would be bigger news if that were true. Also surely possible is that he was just a wealthy criminal and abuser who didn’t have much to do with Israel.

I think it can easily be interpreted as antisemitism so the artist probably should have avoided it

You claimed Epstein was “running a child raping blackmail ring on Israel’s behalf” but that article doesn’t seem to mention sex or rape

If Epstein had conversations with Israeli officials then okay, but I don’t think that means his sex crimes were some sort of plot masterminded by Israel

You also said “criticizing the government of Israel does not equate to antisemitism” and yes I agree with that. But putting a Star of David on Epstein’s underwear in the artwork seems to me like an antisemitic dog whistle. Epstein was not known for links to Israel (as I said, maybe he had some conversations with Israelis, but this isn’t widely known). He is widely known to be Jewish though.

I just think criticism of public figures should be based upon facts (which seem to be horrible enough in this case) instead of bigotry or conjecture