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If the anonymous briefings in this article are to be believed, Starmer couldn’t defend this policy to his own Cabinet, so I don’t see how he can expect to defend it to anyone else.

I don’t see how this is political news. I take a light touch to modding, so I’m going to leave it up, but I do request that you try and keep posts here to UK politics, please.

Oh, 100%. The America-brained fools and dupes have all too much influence, but most of the MPs, members and voters of the Tories also hate Trump. Bear in mind they elected Badenoch out of sheer stupidity rather than conviction, and when they forced the invidious choice of Badenoch v. Jenrick on themselves, they picked the less Trumpy of the two.

I hate on the Tories a lot but I’m glad they’re not the Republicans.

EDIT: To be very clear: you don’t gotta hand it to them.

I would think it mostly uses their infrastructure.

Yes. Again, I did start my comment with ‘You’re right’. But it’s also the case that what you - and I - are advocating for would, in the short term, be a boon to terrorism and organised crime, and may well have knock on effects for the economy, too.

My point is not that we shouldn’t do it, but that it would have massive, unpredictable consequences!

No, it isn’t, because the first thing I said was:

You’re right

And the rest of my comment simply pointed out that it would be complex and risky - which is true.

I’m afraid there is, because Trump’s vindictiveness won’t stop with intelligence! Tariffs would be just the start.

You’re right but it would be enormously complex. We’d actually have to set up a new, separate system, first, then leave, and do that without upsetting a notoriously thin-skinned sociopath, who would still, during the process, have all our secrets.

I watched a few of the clips and it’s honestly just surreal, the whole thing is so fucking weird. Lammy looks like he’s going to vom, Trump looks like he genuinely doesn’t remember calling Zelensky a dictator, Starmer looks like he’s been in a different meeting - with a sane president, possibly? - it’s mental.

Build houses on the mountain peaks and treehouses in the forests, all linked together with a series of zip wires. I see no downsides to my plan.

Yeah, it was very much built in the car-is-king era, which has left its scars. I’ve never lived there but I visit fairly regularly. It’s not perfect but it’s got a lot going for it. Cycle provision seems to be getting a lot better, for one thing!

He’s been consistently right on this and much better than any of the alternatives in or out of Labour except Ed Davey, who has the same attitude and so deserves the same (qualified) praise.

So, there are some caveats here, as Starmer acknowledged when he announced that the target has been hit, but it’s worth noting that not only have they succeeded, they’ve succeeded months ahead of a schedule.

Also, part of that caveat is we’re partly comparing with a period during which doctors were on strike - but it’s partly thanks to Labour that those strikes ended.

Yes, I’m willing to give a lot of leeway to Starmer because he won, but his comms are just terrible. Hostile media, sure, but why are they talking about benefit cuts and deportations instead of this stuff?

Yes, this. And studies like this shouldn’t make us complacent about our ability to identify or avoid misinformation!

This is a weird experience for me. Normally when I demonstrate that things are, in fact, the case, people just go very quiet. This is the first time I’ve had ‘that’s too much proof’ used against me, so you at least get some marks for originality.

I do indeed get my information about the news from the news; again, it hadn’t previously occurred to me to do it another way, so I guess I’m learning a lot! I’m not learning things like ‘Why does this person I’m talking to on a website think websites are objects of scorn?’ or ‘Where do they get their news if not from the news?’ but, still. It’s not nothing.

Nevertheless, you’re straying into ‘not even wrong’ territory, here. The things I said are happening, are happening, and while you can believe anything you like, including that things that are happening, aren’t happening, that doesn’t change the fact that they are, actually, happening. Since you’re not amenable to things like evidence (about the news… from the news), I hope you’ll forgive me for ending this conversation. Feel free to get in one last shot, but I don’t intend to reply.

I was asked to prove first that Labour are moving us away from oil dependence, and then that they are investing record breaking amounts, approving record numbers of green projects, that they have eased planning law to build more green infrastructure, and that they’re planning to do more.

The sources more than prove this. For example, when we have more solar power, we will be less dependent on oil. Labour are making this happen. I refer you again to the many different sources discussing other ways Labour are making this happen through the record investments that are also cited in the sources.

I acknowledged that there’s some repetition. One for each of the claims would suffice, but I added more because I felt that ‘record breaking’ is a bit vague (record for this country or for a fiscal year or…?) so I used more than one source to show that this was a valid interpretation of the facts.

Your latter critique, that all the sources discuss what Labour ‘will do’ is just false. Some of them do, of course - because that’s one of the things you asked me to prove.

I actually have a folder of saved tabs called ‘good things Labour are doing’ because I frequently have conversations with people determined to ignore these things. Could they do more? Yes, of course, and they should. Are they doing the things I’ve said they are doing? Yes.

I’m not especially keen on googling things for you, as it’s publicly available information which is easy to find. I think a better question, given that these are straightforward facts widely reported in both the mainstream and specialist press, is why you don’t think they’re doing anything.

Might not be obvious, but every highlighted word above is a different link to evidence that Labour is, in fact, all what I claimed on climate change - and more. Some repetition, inevitably, but I wanted to use multiple kinds of sources. And I could keep going!