[Tubby Isaacs]

Put it like that, and I can see there's a bit more for Sir Keir in it than I thought.

[Tubby Isaacs]

[Crabcakes]

Also, this - Johnson was lying through his teeth. He wasn’t furious at the behaviour because he knew he’d been part of it. He was furious to be found out because he knew what was coming. Garden parties. Leaving parties. Booze Fridays. Birthday parties. Parties before funerals. Big wedges of cash to his mates. His health Secretary banging his assistant. His dad fucking off to his villa. His advisor going on day trips and length journeys to avoid childcare while ill. And he’d had bloody covid, and had it bad - he *knew* how awful any of this would look. And he let it all happen because he didn’t care and he thought he would get away with it. It’s all been a lovely boozy holiday for him, and fuck everyone else.

This is why I want him to stay on, and limp through a no confidence vote. Because he’s absolute cancer now. Every day he’s there, every time he has to pretend he doesn’t know up from down he sprays more shit over *all* the Tories. The longer he stays, the more damage he does, the more Labour benefit.

[kreuzberger]

Welcome to a new week!

Systemic racism, another ministerial resignation, spectacular knees-uppery in Number Ten. It's still only Monday, right?

It feels so normal now and, from afar, it looks like a country which thinks of its trafficker as "Loverboy". It's alarming.

[Boiler]

It feels so normal now and, from afar, it looks like a country which thinks of its trafficker as "Loverboy". It's alarming.

You've been reading about the Romanian traffickers, haven't you?

[kreuzberger]

It's been a major strand on the World Service news all day. The parallels are stark.

[mattomac]

Russia will start to make us realise we have very little voice.it’s not particularly the get out he would hope.

Merkel stands down
Biden struggling
Johnson in his own mess
Macron has an election

I think that is why Putin fancies flexing his muscles.

[Crabcakes]

All that, yes, but he also desperately needs a distraction back home. The Russian economy is awful, covid hit hard, and public dissent against him is increasing.

[Youngian]

Russia will start to make us realise we have very little voice.it’s not particularly the get out he would hope.

Merkel stands down
Biden struggling
Johnson in his own mess
Macron has an election

I think that is why Putin fancies flexing his muscles.

Counting the West’s rifles. Putin has very little else to play with apart from hard power, its GDP isn’t much bigger than Australia. And Oz doesn’t have to budget for being a military superpower menacing its neighbours. If NATO supplied Ukraine with whatever weaponry it needed, Putin will never win a war of attrition with the West anymore than his Soviet predecessors could. And there’s something else important at stake here; Ukraine gave up nuclear weapons and no one else is going to if territory is ceded to Putin under threat.

[Andy McDandy]

@Crabcakes, yes, it's all getting rather reminiscent of John Major's tenure from 1995 onward. No moral authority, no real fight left, just a grim determination to hang onto the keys to No. 10.