49% of Labour voters do NOT think it's completely unacceptable.

Wonder if Farage had some idea on the polling when he rowed back on the policy saying it wasn't going to include women and children when he was insistent the day before that it would include them Saying what he thinks we want to hear, looking after his own interests Our very own Simpsons mayor

'Is it in fact, a good idea to give money to the Taliban, you know, the Al-Qaeda hosting guys?' - if you don't understand why this was obviously going to be a thing to attack Farage on, you just don't *like* the average British person very much. You think they're a fool!

On a legal basis, would they even be allowed to give them money, are the Taliban a prescribed terrorist organisation?

Do you think the 'man of the people' (millionaire) will let 'lefty lawyers' and 'elitist judges' tell him what to do if he's pm? If he has any kind of majority, he'll just change the law and force it through. I don't know if the Taliban are proscribed but if he's in charge they don't have to be.

Agree, but he will have to take it back to parliament. Same with many of his policies. Most will get tied up in parliament for years unless he gets a huge majority. Then HOL will tie it up. Maybe the beaurcracy might have some use. Maybe!!!

We can dream!

Wouldn't even proposing doing so be a crime. They should have Farage arrested for supporting the Taliban.

My brain is tired, I read the AI in Al-Qaeda as if the second letter was "i", and now I am imagining a terrorist LLM.

"Putting 'the Base' back in BASIC"

Mad that Starmer hasn't immediately led with this line. People might differ on specifics of immigration policy, but 'Dont vote for the guy suggesting UK help fund the Taliban' seems fairly straightforward.

Feels like Reform are going for the group of people who don’t like modern Britain and Labour are going for the same group of people, but don’t like them either.

I'd say the Conservatives are targeting this same group as well.

Grim isn’t it

I'm not mad keen on them myself, truth be told.

Sounds like a toxic relationship

as for the Conservatives jumping on this morning and saying, well in principle we could do a deal with the Taliban too. In PRINCIPLE???

The LibDems already took the high ground.

Taliban Tax is quite a good attack line.

They ALSO moaned that he had ruined anyone else's chances of deporting thousands of desperate people because of brexit rather than advocating for the asylum system to be improved and safe routes opened, so it's barely a whisker higher, truth be told.

They STILL think it's acceptable to other asylum seekers and create a hostile environment before sending them to potentially lethal situations instead of treating them with the respect they deserve considering WE had a hand in their desperation existing in the first place.

Add on the fact he’s murdering people who Helped Our Boys & at some point he’ll claim this was actually a Labour policy

I'm not sure we can rule out that it won't be at some point...

"Our heroes patriotically laid down their lives to protect the Afghan people from the intolerant, persecuting Taliban. Now, we're patriotically paying the Taliban for the privilege of sending fleeing Afghans back into their persecuting, intolerant arms".

"If you find this inconsistent, incoherent and/or immoral, have you considered that we've wrapped it in a flag and have it carrying a cross?"

'You can't see the flag right now because of the plastic potatriots humping it, but it's there, honest! Sweet Caroline! 🙌🏽'

Having said that, I noted that GMB this morning were asking, "is it that bad to do this", and then promptly argued with an MP who actually fought in Afghanistan. Put me right off my Weetabix!

I'm sure Robbie and Laura are working on a way of sanewashing this.

🤢

The only way it could be calculated to piss off the average Brit more is if it were somehow funded by raiding people's house price

otoh "Nigel Farage wants to give YOUR pension to the Taliban!" is, to a first approximation, true

Give money to the guys who blew the legs off British soldiers

A good yardstick for whether you respect somebody is whether you care enough to argue with them when they're wrong. By which yardstick, it's about a decade and a half since any UK politician demonstrated respect to the electorate.

This is a great observation. The other way around is to ask: Q: "1. Why are populists so alluring?" A: Because they offer quick fixes Q: "2. If fix is quick, why haven't we done it already?" A: Because it doesn't work. So go back to step 1 and choose someone "not alluring" who disagrees with you.

Politics died the day party leaders lost the right to call a bigot a bigot

We can’t send money to the Taliban It would break the fiscal rules!

"Reform councillor resigned after racist tirade threatening to murder consituents" "Farage wants to send money to the Taliban" Feels like this should not be a good week for them!

"The Taliban now learn they have an unlimited money trick"

UK being listed as a state sponsor of terrorism might make US relations a bit awkward

(BIG) Maybe it would have done last year... now? I think it would raise starver in dump's opinion if he did it first. Having somewhere he could send the people who are being disappeared by his goons off the street is just what he wants. He's one of the biggest terrorists on the planet right now,

fishing for a nobel! 🤯

I'm curious about the whole debacle as I don't think this is a line Farage would have taken a couple of years ago.

Some of this is the willingness to employ nutcases. His social media is done by a guy who got a Prevent referral at university and is on record as saying the UK was wrong to fight WWII

Yeah, think he is really trying to hold on to thr tail of a tiger he (and twitter) has created but doesn't understand.

Showing signs of struggling in the same way "mainstream" politicians have over this issue. Trying to appeal to a very vocal and aggressive group, that he indeed created, but stuck between the rock that is needing to sound tough enough and the hard place of needing policy that isn't completely mad.

Farage is in an end game he can no longer control. His environment is photo ops and one on one broadcast interviews. Not social media. He doesn't get it and he's not exactly good at due diligence.

Effectively we're in a period of elite rather than popular radicalisation. The people pushing for these policies are almost entirely within the Westminster Bubble. Its hermetically sealed politics with no relationship to actual popular opinion

I would caveat with the point that, whilst I agree on your assessment of elite vs popular radicalisation, the growing disengagement between the public and politics camouflages the radicalisation of the bubble.

The truly mad stuff doesn't filter down or gets internalised so Reform's polling reads as an endorsement of the entire platform rather than a broader national two fingers up to the establishment.

Feel like elite radicalisation as a response to mass disillusionment gets you to some weird places particularly electorally

Fish rots from the head

It wouldn’t suprise me if he still thinks he can get Musk’s cash without realising that the people not living on ket will also see him

I’m still amazed footage of Musk fucking an actual tiger for a dare has not been leaked. Like: it’s out there right? Some dumb shit filmed he did because he’s the sort of low grade pharma-up nerd with daddy issues that needs to impress his peers constantly.

This presumes he’s capable of having sexual intercourse. Signs all point the other direction

Eh? He’s sired more children than the average Amish family

Almost all by test tube

www.forbes.com/sites/alexzh...

The logical endpoint of the rights obsession with breeding while also being scared of girls

Everyone else on the right has drifted towards extremism because of who they hang out with, why not him too?

Of the Mitford Sisters it was Unity Valkyrie Mitford (who was conceived in the town of Swastika, Ontario) who went full fash As a 70s kid I can well believe NF was always NF, NF was ubiquitous on bus shelters and walls Reverse Nominative Determinism

“People loved Rishis Rwanda plan, how do we do more of it?”

Barnsley chops and custard and pints - alien food So Farage must be an alien whisperer

the British sent their young in their thousands to Afghanistan only for this lot to turn around and GIVE THEIR MONEY TO THE TALIBAN This is such a low-hanging fruit I demand to be made Morgan McSweeney right now

"Not a penny of British soldiers and veterans income tax should be given to the Taliban" should be a slam dunk visible from space

Happy to nominate you.

I’ll second it

But, you know how to wear a suit…

Would add to that if you work for a guy and you dont know what he thinks enough that you are sincerely unsure what side he would go in this scenario both you and that guy should find another job

Nobody wants the voters they actually have, it’s so sad

You seem to think that the voters have a conscience, and moral standards. They don't. Regardless of what they say here, most will vote for a party that implements their preferred policies, regardless of the cruelty involved.

It's like they *know* that they don't understand the voters, but think that Reform somehow do, and so operate as though what the Reform leadership thinks is a useful proxy for voter sentiment

How on Earth does this poll with service personnel, I wonder?

Feels like the Labour leadership bought their imagined voters from the same shop Chuck Schumer went to for his.

Even if your brain is completely muddled and X’ified - Reform want to pay the Taliban to send back migrants they want to execute is such an obvious attack line….maybe someone wrote it but Keir hasn’t had time to read it yet.

bsky.app/profile/mike...

You don't understand, the clever clever way to activate the hero voters is to complain about the *impracticality* of the policy, not to challenge it on moral grounds. That would be disrespectful, ideological, virtue signalling see?

The British taxpayer shouldn't be funding the Taliban. I thought that would have been a simple thing to understand.

I'm coming around to "Elites don't know enough Reform voters", not in any kind of reaching-across-the-aisle sense, but solely because a lot of people in politics and media seem to have some very strange ideas of what Reform voters actually think

"You liberal snobs don't understand the average Reform voter. I on the other hand am an expert - why, I follow Based St George🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿, RETVRN Yookay and Kick Em All Out 88 on X!"

When they say "silent majority" it's more of an instruction.

I just read @joelbudd.bsky.social's book and the chapter on how people ventriloquise the working class to launder their own unpopular anti-migrant views (which are not in fact universally popular among white working class people) is brilliant

Yes but. You only need about 35% of the voters to form a government under FPTP. Reform play to their base.

I don’t understand the logic at all. Is it just an article of faith to never criticise Farage? They’re really going to bomb aren’t they. Terrible.

Well, that in combination with treating him as de facto LOTO and ensuring he has the platform that implies....

And, of course, the most pathetic of all - those just laundering their own opinion behind the shield of others/selected public opinion.

The 2029/30 UK thermostat

Some journo needs to ask him which of the proscribed terrorists groups who support the Taliban will be getting UK taxpayers money.

Farage will still be happy the media is still talking about immigration and small boats crossings He doesn't want to discuss the economy, workers rights fair taxation, Putin, Trump or Brexit etc Perhaps we should stop playing the game he wants on the pitch he wants and play a different game?

Being to the right of reforms own voters is surely a strategy that will pay off for Labour

Is Labour policy to the right of paying the Taliban? It's possible I've missed something or didn't understand your point.

Reform voters do not support paying the Taliban. Labour has said they are open to such a deal.

Labour are becoming overly obsessed with pandering to the mythical average Reform voter by refusing to challenge anything they say. That's a world apart from a policy of paying the Taliban, and no one seriously believes they want that. They are already in government, and aren't paying the Taliban.

I'm sick and tired of how the ordinary white working class Briton sneers - sneers! - at our right-wing political commentators.

I hope that we can get some Guardian reporting about Sunderland-supporting plumber apprentices spending a day around Islington coffee shops, just really listening to their fears and concerns for a change.