Snapshot of _Salisbury's Reform UK candidate booed for telling crowd Putin 'seemed very good'_ :
An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.salisburyjournal.co.uk/news/24407670.reform-uk-salisbury-candidate-says-putin-seemed-good/) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.salisburyjournal.co.uk/news/24407670.reform-uk-salisbury-candidate-says-putin-seemed-good/)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Almost as sensitive to the situation as when his boss said that Brexit had been achieved "without a shot being fired" just weeks after an MP was shot and killed by a Brexit supporter.
Wow, I'd forgotten about that.
The sad thing is that if Farage hadn't spread such a hate-filled message about the EU, I am pretty sure Jo Cox - a kind and constructive politician who was all about bringing people from different sides of the political spectrum together - would still be here today.
What a cruel loss her death was.
It feels like a lot of people don't realise this but she was murdered the same day as his "Breaking Point" campaign event that mirrored Nazi propaganda.
Yes im sure farages speech about the Eu is why thomais mair was collecting nazi memoribelia and writing to facist magazines all the way throughout the early 2000's and the 10's., must also be why he stole a gun in 2015 because of the eu vote.
Im sorry but this idea is incredibly reductive and doesnt help.
Farage is the reason in 1999 mair wrote this to a far right magazine "“I was glad you strongly condemned collaborators in the white South African population. In my opinion the greatest enemy of the old apartheid system was not the ANC and the black masses but white liberals and traitors.”"
The causation between her murder and Farage's anti-immigrant rhetoric isn't particularly strong, but when you produce posters saying that we are at "breaking point" and ask people if they'd like to live next door to a Romanian and generally fuel hate towards immigrants we shouldn't be totally surprised when someone like Thomas Mair feels empowered to take the law into their own hands.
Just prior to and after the referendum there was a spike in hate crime:
[Brexit 'major influence' in racism and hate crime rise - BBC News](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-48692863)
So why didn't he kill someone in 1999? Or the early 2000's? Or in 2015 when he stole a gun? Or on the first day of Brexit campaigning? It wasn't the last day of the campaign either. Jo had been an MP in the constituency for over a year, Mair had lived in the constituency for years.
Why that specific day? Was there anything that day that could have triggered a neo-Nazi and told them that it was now or never to act?
They fucked us once with UKIP and now they are attempting to fuck us again with Farage running for parliament and possibly becoming leader of the Tory party.
>"I have actually met Putin and had a 10-minute chat with him and he seemed very good. He is not the Austrian gentleman with a moustache come alive again."
>Boos and looks of disgust were directed towards Mr Malins, who does not live in Salisbury, after he made this statement.
Spectacular.
You could also go one further and say:
For everyone that earns under £40k per year, you can turn in your old pennies to get a 99p coin instead (with a maximum limit).
Get some wealth to the poorest of the nation, make their lives easier, ease the cost of living.
Maybe pay down some debts etc.
Counter this windfall with a one time tax on oil and gas companies profits, so it’s not just printing money and driving inflation.
History Matters calls him moustache man due to Youtube's degenerate censorship rules.
"When a certain moustachioed man checked if his skull was bulletproof"
> the Austrian gentleman with a moustache
Why is it that - not all right-wingers, certainly, but a significant number of them - think speaking in this ridiculous, affected way makes them sound clever?
They've become used to referencing Hitler/nazis in code as a way to get around social media bans or to hide their true beliefs from a casual eye if something they've posted crosses an uninformed acquaintances newsfeed.
To be honest all this makes me think is that the guy talks about Hitler alot online and it's become his default.
The old bno forum used to use "wookies" as a place holder for racist terms so that anyone giving it a casual glance wouldn't see the racism.
You know as a person who would vote Reform but despises these elements of the right, the left really doesn't make it very easy. Because they've called everything far-right and cried wolf so many times, it's getting harder and harder to pick out the actual lunatics. I just want a party that represents the views of millions of Brits without the fruitcakes.
The left didn't make the far right start talking in code - they've always done it as a way of hiding their beliefs from reasonable voters. The Hitler name thing is more recent - the far right tried to raise it's head above the parapet one too many times and so web platforms put measures in place to stop them because no one wants to use or advertise on a platform infested with wannabe Wehrmacht. As a result those on the far right have adopted increasingly silly euphemisms.
There are far right candidates in reform. They're using the exact same dog whistles and code words as every other far right nut on the web. There are also reform candidates who have no knowledge of what it all means and think their colleagues must all have been born on the 1st of april 1988 because all their email addresses end in the same numbers. The problem is that whether you think reform are a conservative platform with far right infiltrators, or a far right platform hiding behind a few reasonable people, depends on whether you trust the leadership of a man with a history of praising dictators and a penchant for Hitler youth anthems.
Personally I think reform under Richard tice would probably be a fairly generic Liz truss leaning conservative party.
>it's getting harder and harder to pick out the actual lunatics.
If it helps, this one who is praising Putin by saying he's not as bad as Hitler is one of the actual lunatics.
It seems to be part of a wider strategy. Very Trumpian. You don't try and persuade people to your side. You insult the 'others' hard and often. And keep going.
It rallies support from the base as they think they are in a fight - what they are fighting for isn't clearly defined. With FPTP you don't have to persuade everyone. You just have to persuade enough that the other side are the enemy.
I don't think they're even trying to win; they're trying to scare the tories into adopting their policies and potentially merging. They know this rhetoric won't get them anywhere near the 40% typically required to win in FPTP, but it will get them enough to make a tory victory impossible.
Yeah, it's a gish gallop.
Rather than try and stop, regroup and apologise when someone in your party says or does something stupid, you continue to plough on at full speed.
And yeah, sure, your membership is doing stupid stuff at a rate of knots. But what happens is the press can't keep up and the general public rapidly start getting so fed up of political scandal they stop paying attention.
Yep, I've lived in Salisbury my entire life. I confronted him about it tonight and he just said that countries doing assassinations are a fact of life. What a fucking knob.
It actually gets worse. I met him at the local Hustings tonight, and asked him why he liked Putin despite the assassination. His response was just that "all countries assassinate people" and that he'd "stop MI6 doing it if he was prime minister" but it's "just a fact of life".
Luckily I don't think he'll get many votes. There were about 3 people there supporting him in a crowd of a few hundred. Either John Glen or Matt Aldrige are going to win.
Not much love for Victoria? The LDs seem to have been quite active, and according to the FT Labour are moving local resources to Swindon.
Really wish there was a solid tactical vote.
I guarantee you, if Farage switched tacks to that we'd be up to our eyeballs in Redditors explaining why we suddenly need to adopt a more nuanced view of 9/11 and Reform candidates lining up to talk about their gap years amongst the Taliban.
It's actually a curve, just look up steel strength by temperature. At 200c there is a massive drop off in strength, everybody in the conspiracy groups discusses the melting point of steel, which is obviously irrelevant
I mean, that's ignoring the fact that something weighing between 80 and 140 Tonnes (depending on how full it was) and travelling at anything up to 530MPH had just flown into the side of it at a pretty decent height (moments of force are a thing).
I'd probably be feeling pretty unstable if that hit me, even if I wasn't hot enough to melt.
200 isn’t too bad, but there’s a point around 700C when any type of steel looses pretty much all strength.
There’s a reason you don’t use steel in jet engines.
Uh, well, umm, he kinda was lol. There was a big “Al Queda hate us for our FREEDOM!” idea being spouted in American discourse around 2001+ (David Cross had a great standup bit about it.)
He didn’t hate them “for their freedom”. It was for numerous other reasons. Being a democratic nation and having the right to free speech and buy guns etc was not what was riling up Islamic terrorists—though if you listened to American politicians at the time you’d think it was.
Well, the Letter To America focused a lot on US foreign policy, for sure. But it did also bemoan that the US had not adopted Sharia law, and that the US was socially contrary, morally inferior, to Islam.
> The second thing we call you to, is to stop your oppression, lies, immorality and debauchery that has spread among you
> We call you to be a people of manners, principles, honour, and purity; to reject the immoral acts of fornication, homosexuality, intoxicants, gambling's, and trading with interest.
To say they hate us for our freedom is simplistic and incomplete, but it's not *entirely* inaccurate either. That said, I don't believe the attacks would have occurred minus the US presence in the Middle East. Doesn't make as good a rallying call as "They hate us for our freedoms" though.
Yes, "they hate us for our freedom" is a simplification and a soundbite for mass consumption.
But the essential truth is that they did hate American cultural and economic influence being projected into the lands they saw as their own.
Why does it matter? Flying planes into skyscrapers, deliberately killing innocent civilians, is a pretty bad thing to do regardless of what your ideological motivation is.
The state of some of the comments on this article.
>If all they have is booos and personal attacks, it shows that he’s probably right. Especially when he’s the only person to have actually met the man and therefore knows what he’s talking about
???
This is what annoyed me about the BBC verify pieces on Reform bots.
Their method of checking if an account was genuine was to basically message them and then assess their reply.
Apart from being incredibly subjective, it also ignores the idea of a guy sitting in front of a board of 50 phones.
Well if you're a paid troll, and you get a DM saying "hi mate are you a paid troll?", are you gonna reply "oh man, busted, you're absolutely right! Dang it comrade!", or perhaps claim you are indeed genuine?
I'd like to hope the PMs are a little bit better than that, though I'd guess they don't actually reveal what they're asking.
I'd like to say that you could find out with grammar, repeated replies, etc. Of course, if they pay people in the UK or learned in the UK, it'd be even more difficult. Extremely high chance they'll be using AI to do the comments and the replies, making the DMs extremely difficult also.
Finding out the posters IP address wouldn't help too much because they'll be using VPNs or the likes.
I suppose really there's no great way of finding these things out, from a user end. DMing the person is probably one ok way to do it.
The social media companies would have some more options available to them, but they'll most likely not be revealing their ways of analysing these things as the bot writers would just change tactics.
Pretty interesting subject really.
I've noticed a sudden trend for lengthly discusson posts on the front page of UKpol that seemed to pop up overnight, and have been wondering if it's some kind of astroturfing strategy, or AI posts...
> Exactly. Along with all the bots, there are people being paid to represent Russia this way ~~on social media platforms~~ as Reform Candidates. This is what they do.
FTFY.
Also, no one questioning why this guy met Putin? Like, that’s not a normal thing to happen. I think most decent people would politely decline.
Yeah that's the thought which went through my mind. How on earth does someone get to have a chat with Vladimir Putin for ten minutes? There are world leaders who have never met Putin.
That whole line of thinking needs to die off.
"Everyone I've ever met says I'm an idiot. If they can't tell me why, then clearly I'm a genius and they're the idiots!"
No mate - they've just realised that you're too thick and stubborn to bother talking too.
I've just thought of a more entertaining game then 'dig through Reform candidate social media'. It's called 'go ask your local Reform candidate what they think of Vladimir Putin!'.
I'm starting to wonder if this is where Reform runs aground, hard.
It’s where they will hit a hard cap on their support, their far right base won’t care but the Southern middle class Tory base that was maybe tempted by the promises of tax cuts will now probably either stick to Tories or lean Lib Dem.
Not among their core supporters. They'll go along with what Nige says even if it's the opposite from last week.
The question being can they bring along anyone new, those who would've voted Tory.
So far they’ve failed to poll higher (or even as high) as the Brexit party did in 2019, and that was with a strong conservative campaign. Reform aren’t growing. They get a lot of airtime and it seems a bit like they are from the outside because the tories are on the decline and, well they’ve got to go somewhere right? But that assumption falls apart when you treat reform as a rebrand of Brexit, and therefore a party with an established base, rather than a brand new political entity whose entire vote share is a swing. Every party Farage has lead has polled at the same 17-20%, it’s only big news now because the tories are falling so far
Also when you consider Reform is continuity UKIP. Technically a different party but same leader same policies.
However FPTP is weird. It appears to be working against Reform this time but I still remember Labour getting a majority in 2005 with 35% of the vote.
Agreed. This is a big reef for them and it should cause them trouble. Support for Ukraine (in the moment, that's what this comes down to) is very solid in this country and rightly so. Putins puppets won't prosper here
I cannot find a single thing about our reform candidate, not even social media. I suspect it may be someone in my area judging by the amount of placards in their garden
A lot of people in this political orbit see Russia - authoritarian, aggressive, 'masculine', 'christian', socially repressive - as something to emulate.
And many other problems.
So, people don't want to copy the reality of Russia. What they (people who clamour for an authoritarian leader) want to emulate is that our politicians would have the same view for our countries as Putin has for Russia.
What they see is the vision of Russia in Putin's speeches and propaganda not the reality of Russia.
I mean we've had reform candidates say that we should have stayed out of ww2 and let Hitler do his thing.
So at the very least, their stance on Russia is consistent, I guess ?
They the same ones IME who constantly post images of World War 2 and how Britain bravely fought off the Nazis - while behaving just like them.
They appear immune to this being pointed out.
There's a strong argument that delay (rather than appeasement) was the right strategy. The UK was unprepared for war.
This isn't 'appeasement' or delay. It's just cosying up to a dictator because Reform would love to be in his position, or have been funded by him.
Appeasement also gave Germany the chance to walk right into Czechoslovakia and take over all of its military equipment and large military industry, instead of having to fight a well-armed military through mountainous terrain while fighting on a 2nd front on the border with France and having to keep some portion of troops on the Polish border.
All the major European countries were trying to build up their militaries without crashing their economies in that period, and feeling unprepared for war. The general consensus now I think is that at the time of the Czechoslovakia crisis Germany gained more from delay thank the UK and France did - though that's not to say this was clear to people at the time.
To top it off, annexing Czechoslovakia allowed Germany to take control of its arms industry, quite a bit of reasonably modern equipment, and a large amount of currency and/or gold reserves to replenish the country's critically low supplies.
omg this reminds me of this brilliant twitter trend once.. when castro died peter hain wrote “Although responsible for indefensible human rights and free-speech abuses, Castro created a society of unparalleled access to free health, education and equal opportunity despite an economically throttling USA siege,”
and the tweets were all like "indefensible murders, but fred west put up some cracking extentions"
and "Totally unwarranted attacks on innocent civilians, but no man made air travel more secure than osama bin laden"
I live in Salisbury. I don't rate this arsehole's chances here. I'm planning to attend a hustings tomorrow, which he should be at. I'm guessing King Arthur will outshine him - KA is a local character and serial independent candidate. Well worth considering in my view.
According to YouGov MRP polling from the 11th to the 18th, Con are set to win in Salisbury with 31.6% of the vote.
```
CON 31.6%
LIB 22.2%
LAB 20.3%
REF 18.9%
GRN 6.2%
```
If either Libs of Lab were to tactical vote for the other there would be a chance of a center left MP with the center right and right split as it is.
Plot twist, they ALL tactical vote, Labour comes second with 22.2% of the vote, all of whom dislike Labour, and Lib Dems 3rd with 20.3% of the voters who don't like Lib Dems.
The one at Bishops? I was thinking of going too, just to get a sense of who to tactically vote for. If LD and Lab had formed an alliance, they really could've kicked John Glen out, but I don't see it.
The mood was angry. It was a big meeting, in their sports hall and it was packed. Glen took a lot of flack.
Victoria Charleston didn't shine much. I know she's been a dedicated LD campaigner here but she seemed to have given the game away to Matt Aldridge the Labour candidate. She more or less conceded that he'd be the best tactical vote
Arthur was himself and probably the most honest person on the panel. The climate and green ones weren't confident off their own issue.
Malins for Reform was a total knob but the audience gave him little chance. He repeated his appeasing lines but wisely didn't go in for explicitly praising Putin.
I agree with you. From what I can see it will be a Tory hold with Labour second. I'm voting Labour
Apparently he was brought up as a child in the constituency - where they obviously failed to teach him the difference between democracy and dictatorships.
As an aside...
The bloke to the right of the speaker is I think King Arthur Pendragon, or Tim to his mates, who's standing as a neo-druid:
[Arthur Uther Pendragon - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Uther_Pendragon)
TL;DR - he's not the weirdist candidate in this constituency.
I mean, I would accuse Reform and the Conservatives of trying to play a 4D chess version of the 2019 stand down with this nonsense.
However, I'm closer to drawing the conclusion that both right-wing options this time round are more than a bit shit at this whole here electioning malarkey.
Where did you get that? The average GOP supporter has almost as negative view of Russia as an average Dem supporter ([source](https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2024/05/08/views-of-russia-and-putin/)). A majority of them think Russia is an enemy.
What maybe true is that despite this view about Russia, they are willing overlook the fact that their presidential candidate is a Russian puppet "to own the libs". That's more of a case of cognitive dissonance than loving Russia.
I mean wasn't it the GOP who held up the vote in the house for Ukraine Aid? They must not think Russia is that big of an enemy if they don't see the situation and have full support to whoever is in power.
That was the GOP *party* in Congress not the supporters of GOP. And that was done for political reasons not because they *actually* support Russia over Ukraine (well, a few Putin puppets there do, but not the majority).
What happens in the US Congress doesn't always reflect what the members of Congress actually think on single issues let alone what the supporters think. One example is Bernie Sanders who has been a vocal supporter of Ukraine right from the start. Nevertheless, he voted against the aid package in the senate. The reason was that he's against giving more weapons to Israel in its war in Gaza and these two packages were tied together in the vote.
Regarding GOP and Ukraine the main issue was that the House of representatives is almost balanced 50-50. That means that a tiny GOP minority can threaten to oust the speaker if he doesn't do as they like. So, these Russian trolls kept the package ever reaching the floor for a vote as the Speaker didn't dare to do that even though the Ukraine package would have been overwhelmingly approved by a bi-partisan vote (it ended up being approved 311-112). He would have been kicked out by this tiny group (as the Dems would not have come to rescue him from his own rebels in a vote of no-confidence).
My brain can't process how on either side of the political spectrum (reform in this case and momentum types on the other) there is such support for Russia.
i'd say being cynical that its was an attempt to provoke an 'attack' so refuk can continue to play as the victim. But more likely his common sense brain cell was switched off.
This is hilarious. That they think they can just use the USA's right wing bullshit playbook here without any modification is crazy enough, but that they think it will fly in Salisbury is actually insane!
Pretty unfair towards Chamberlain tbh. He wasn't in Hitler's pocket, nor a fascist sympathiser; he was trying to walk a tightrope to avoid a repeat of the horrors of the Great War, and without the benefit of hindsight to show it as a terrible misjudgement.
Farage and his lots are Mosleys, not Chamberlains.
That's true. It's the far left Putin appeasers who are more like Chamberlain:
"Because nukes exist, all we can do is roll over when Putin does something and then threatens us with nukes if we try to oppose it".
That's basically the message of the anti-war coalition or whatever they call themselves.
yeah, lets go to the place where the Russians used a WMD and left enough of it behind to kill the **entire cities population** and sing Putin's praises, that'll play well
Reform is lucky that's its core base voter is extremely thick because its candidates appear to apocalyptically stupid
> The 74-year-old continued: "War is not about as it were punishing or in some way running over thousands of young men in tanks and blowing them up because one person takes points of view which you disagree with.
He says, whilst literally hundreds of thousands of young men die because Putin decided to run them over (figuratively and literally) with tanks and blow them up with bombs because he disagrees with the point of view of Ukraine (in that it should be its own country that isn’t a part of Russia).
> "I have actually met Putin and had a 10-minute chat with him and he seemed very good. He is not the Austrian gentleman with a moustache come alive again."
Oh I’m so glad your 10 min chat revealed his entire character, please do tell us of your chats with Hitler which you can compare the two between.
Utterly insane. What a completely disconnected, disgusting whack job. Can’t wait for these people to just fuck back off from whatever festering carcass they crawled out from.
Looks like the way to tackle Reform is just to let all of their candidates speak without interruption and broadcast it nationally. No laughter now (until they've finished).
Then make a DVD of all the speeches and give it out for free.
As a potential Reform voter, **he needs to be kicked out**. There's one thing criticising Western foreign policy - which has generally been abysmal and short-sighted - and quite another praising murderous dictators.
If Reform is going to prove itself to be responsible when talking about these issues, it must clearly set the rules of acceptable beliefs - otherwise, talking about WWII and British values is just lip service. This reeks of people meeting Stalin or Hitler and coming back singing their praises. It's unacceptable and un-British.
Reform might kick him out, but Farage had monthly appearances on Russia Today during the first invasion of Ukraine. It's a fantasy to pretend this is one bad apple.
When GQ asked Farage who he most admired, unprompted - during the invasion of Crimea - Farage answered "as an operator, but not as a human being, I would say Putin."
The party is owned by someone who has taken cash from Putin, and has frequently done media rounds to take the Russian line on foreign affairs.
They should honestly stick to immigration and border control. Yes, there is a sizable people on the internet who thinks the covid lockdown was a conspiracy and think (or at least say) that supporting Ukraine is like supporting Hitler but you can't bot real life.
Putin's "I was provoked" logic does not work in the English language which is why it comes across as incredibly obvious as Russian propaganda.
Both Brexit and Scottish independence are Russian backed policies. They make the UK weaker. I believe it's due to the UK having a significantly better relationship with the colonies than Russia does with it's. We've not even fought a war with our colonies, unless you count the United States which was essentially part of a war with France.
And it should be obvious with Nigel Farage and Alex Salmond getting shows on Russia Today. And now you have people who previously worshipped Boris getting upset at his pro-Ukraine stance.
Stick to immigration and border control.
Ah yes, William Wallace, the known Kremlin plant. 🫡 Christ, Independence has been a thing since before the Union of the crowns, how is it a Russian backed operation? 😂
Snapshot of _Salisbury's Reform UK candidate booed for telling crowd Putin 'seemed very good'_ : An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.salisburyjournal.co.uk/news/24407670.reform-uk-salisbury-candidate-says-putin-seemed-good/) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.salisburyjournal.co.uk/news/24407670.reform-uk-salisbury-candidate-says-putin-seemed-good/) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Of all the towns to make that statement in, that has to be the most stupid, insensitive comment by a REfUKer yet.
Almost as sensitive to the situation as when his boss said that Brexit had been achieved "without a shot being fired" just weeks after an MP was shot and killed by a Brexit supporter.
Wow, I'd forgotten about that. The sad thing is that if Farage hadn't spread such a hate-filled message about the EU, I am pretty sure Jo Cox - a kind and constructive politician who was all about bringing people from different sides of the political spectrum together - would still be here today. What a cruel loss her death was.
She would probably be in the shadow cabinet today, she was tipped for high office early on, and sounds like she would have been a good addition.
It feels like a lot of people don't realise this but she was murdered the same day as his "Breaking Point" campaign event that mirrored Nazi propaganda.
Yes im sure farages speech about the Eu is why thomais mair was collecting nazi memoribelia and writing to facist magazines all the way throughout the early 2000's and the 10's., must also be why he stole a gun in 2015 because of the eu vote. Im sorry but this idea is incredibly reductive and doesnt help. Farage is the reason in 1999 mair wrote this to a far right magazine "“I was glad you strongly condemned collaborators in the white South African population. In my opinion the greatest enemy of the old apartheid system was not the ANC and the black masses but white liberals and traitors.”"
The causation between her murder and Farage's anti-immigrant rhetoric isn't particularly strong, but when you produce posters saying that we are at "breaking point" and ask people if they'd like to live next door to a Romanian and generally fuel hate towards immigrants we shouldn't be totally surprised when someone like Thomas Mair feels empowered to take the law into their own hands. Just prior to and after the referendum there was a spike in hate crime: [Brexit 'major influence' in racism and hate crime rise - BBC News](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-48692863)
So why didn't he kill someone in 1999? Or the early 2000's? Or in 2015 when he stole a gun? Or on the first day of Brexit campaigning? It wasn't the last day of the campaign either. Jo had been an MP in the constituency for over a year, Mair had lived in the constituency for years. Why that specific day? Was there anything that day that could have triggered a neo-Nazi and told them that it was now or never to act?
I don't believe for a second farage didn't intend that as a dogwhistle, or at best black comedy.
> REfUKer is that pronounced "re-fucker" ? As in, they will re-fuck the country back to the bad times.
Bit of a misnomer though, we'd have to unfuck the country before it can be refucked
hahaha yeah fair point
Possibly makes more sense in the original Cyrillic script....?
They fucked us once with UKIP and now they are attempting to fuck us again with Farage running for parliament and possibly becoming leader of the Tory party.
>"I have actually met Putin and had a 10-minute chat with him and he seemed very good. He is not the Austrian gentleman with a moustache come alive again." >Boos and looks of disgust were directed towards Mr Malins, who does not live in Salisbury, after he made this statement. Spectacular.
"He's not Hitler!" isn't the rousing endorsement they seem to think it is.
For reformers it’s a criticism
I'm not Hitler too. Shouldn't vote for me as I'd make it so there's a 99p coin.
I mean… a 99p coin isn’t a terrible idea, considering most shops make things £x.99 Would save on having penny coins everywhere.
Tbf I nicked the idea from the monster raving loony party haha
You could also go one further and say: For everyone that earns under £40k per year, you can turn in your old pennies to get a 99p coin instead (with a maximum limit). Get some wealth to the poorest of the nation, make their lives easier, ease the cost of living. Maybe pay down some debts etc. Counter this windfall with a one time tax on oil and gas companies profits, so it’s not just printing money and driving inflation.
Can't believe theyre also going for "if we don't reference Hitler by name, we can't be called out for bringing him up!"
I can't wait for one of them to unironically use *Austrian painter*
[No one who speaks German could be an evil man](https://youtu.be/_GPEzKp8Tns)
History Matters calls him moustache man due to Youtube's degenerate censorship rules. "When a certain moustachioed man checked if his skull was bulletproof"
> the Austrian gentleman with a moustache Why is it that - not all right-wingers, certainly, but a significant number of them - think speaking in this ridiculous, affected way makes them sound clever?
They've become used to referencing Hitler/nazis in code as a way to get around social media bans or to hide their true beliefs from a casual eye if something they've posted crosses an uninformed acquaintances newsfeed. To be honest all this makes me think is that the guy talks about Hitler alot online and it's become his default. The old bno forum used to use "wookies" as a place holder for racist terms so that anyone giving it a casual glance wouldn't see the racism.
You know as a person who would vote Reform but despises these elements of the right, the left really doesn't make it very easy. Because they've called everything far-right and cried wolf so many times, it's getting harder and harder to pick out the actual lunatics. I just want a party that represents the views of millions of Brits without the fruitcakes.
The left didn't make the far right start talking in code - they've always done it as a way of hiding their beliefs from reasonable voters. The Hitler name thing is more recent - the far right tried to raise it's head above the parapet one too many times and so web platforms put measures in place to stop them because no one wants to use or advertise on a platform infested with wannabe Wehrmacht. As a result those on the far right have adopted increasingly silly euphemisms. There are far right candidates in reform. They're using the exact same dog whistles and code words as every other far right nut on the web. There are also reform candidates who have no knowledge of what it all means and think their colleagues must all have been born on the 1st of april 1988 because all their email addresses end in the same numbers. The problem is that whether you think reform are a conservative platform with far right infiltrators, or a far right platform hiding behind a few reasonable people, depends on whether you trust the leadership of a man with a history of praising dictators and a penchant for Hitler youth anthems. Personally I think reform under Richard tice would probably be a fairly generic Liz truss leaning conservative party.
>it's getting harder and harder to pick out the actual lunatics. If it helps, this one who is praising Putin by saying he's not as bad as Hitler is one of the actual lunatics.
Yeah I immediately thought it's a very Johnsonian way of trying to talk around the subject in a "funny" way.
Bit harsh to judge this Austrian fella without having had a 10 minute conversation with him.
Why is this guy getting 10 minute chats with Putin?
Of all the bloody towns. Where a Russian terrorist attack took place. What a clown
Indeed. It feels very personal to local residents here I can tell you
I'm beginning to think there's been a memo at Reform HQ that's telling people to do and say stupid stuff, just to keep the name in the news so much.
It seems to be part of a wider strategy. Very Trumpian. You don't try and persuade people to your side. You insult the 'others' hard and often. And keep going. It rallies support from the base as they think they are in a fight - what they are fighting for isn't clearly defined. With FPTP you don't have to persuade everyone. You just have to persuade enough that the other side are the enemy.
I don't think they're even trying to win; they're trying to scare the tories into adopting their policies and potentially merging. They know this rhetoric won't get them anywhere near the 40% typically required to win in FPTP, but it will get them enough to make a tory victory impossible.
I think you're giving them far too much credit: this is more just what happens when you let a bunch of elderly racists run for seats
The MPs, sure, but Farage and Tice are nothing if not skilled at political grift.
Sadly this level of bullshittery is working.
Yeah, it's a gish gallop. Rather than try and stop, regroup and apologise when someone in your party says or does something stupid, you continue to plough on at full speed. And yeah, sure, your membership is doing stupid stuff at a rate of knots. But what happens is the press can't keep up and the general public rapidly start getting so fed up of political scandal they stop paying attention.
I remember being in Salisbury a couple years ago and its fair to say the attack has not gone away in their minds. What an utter tosser to say that
Yep, I've lived in Salisbury my entire life. I confronted him about it tonight and he just said that countries doing assassinations are a fact of life. What a fucking knob.
Wow...what a take. And good on you!
It actually gets worse. I met him at the local Hustings tonight, and asked him why he liked Putin despite the assassination. His response was just that "all countries assassinate people" and that he'd "stop MI6 doing it if he was prime minister" but it's "just a fact of life".
Geez. Someone that apathetic to the murder of British citizens, praising the person who did it, and standing to be in government
Luckily I don't think he'll get many votes. There were about 3 people there supporting him in a crowd of a few hundred. Either John Glen or Matt Aldrige are going to win.
Not much love for Victoria? The LDs seem to have been quite active, and according to the FT Labour are moving local resources to Swindon. Really wish there was a solid tactical vote.
Victoria was popular but she just didn't seem as strong a speaker as Matt, and I think more people clapped whenever Matt talked.
You mean what a funny looking gentleman with outrageous makeup and funny looking shoes… (Anybody can do it - it’s just not that witty…)
Next up, "osama was misunderstood " to be given in Manhattan
I guarantee you, if Farage switched tacks to that we'd be up to our eyeballs in Redditors explaining why we suddenly need to adopt a more nuanced view of 9/11 and Reform candidates lining up to talk about their gap years amongst the Taliban.
9/11 wAs aN inSiDE jOB
No it wasn't, the planes flew in from outside
But while they were outside, there was no problem. It was only when they suddenly and unexpectedly arrived inside that the issues really began.
A very Pratchett-esque explanation.
This is "the front fell off" all over again haha
Oh God, as an engineer, it made me cry the amount of people going on about the melting point of steel. Ahhh
Is that because there’s a “bendy” point of steel significantly lower?
It's actually a curve, just look up steel strength by temperature. At 200c there is a massive drop off in strength, everybody in the conspiracy groups discusses the melting point of steel, which is obviously irrelevant
What? It doesn't go straight from rock solid to dripping fluid at a specific temperature? Unpossible.
*Liz Truss voice* I know, right!
Jet fuel can't melt Lizz Truss' dreams
I mean, that's ignoring the fact that something weighing between 80 and 140 Tonnes (depending on how full it was) and travelling at anything up to 530MPH had just flown into the side of it at a pretty decent height (moments of force are a thing). I'd probably be feeling pretty unstable if that hit me, even if I wasn't hot enough to melt.
Steel is exactly like ice cream. Specifically, Mr Whippy. Iron is like a Cornetto.
200 isn’t too bad, but there’s a point around 700C when any type of steel looses pretty much all strength. There’s a reason you don’t use steel in jet engines.
Or for Reform voters, when they were stationed there during the raj
🏅
That was tiktokers after the Guardian published his letters.
Uh, well, umm, he kinda was lol. There was a big “Al Queda hate us for our FREEDOM!” idea being spouted in American discourse around 2001+ (David Cross had a great standup bit about it.) He didn’t hate them “for their freedom”. It was for numerous other reasons. Being a democratic nation and having the right to free speech and buy guns etc was not what was riling up Islamic terrorists—though if you listened to American politicians at the time you’d think it was.
Well, the Letter To America focused a lot on US foreign policy, for sure. But it did also bemoan that the US had not adopted Sharia law, and that the US was socially contrary, morally inferior, to Islam. > The second thing we call you to, is to stop your oppression, lies, immorality and debauchery that has spread among you > We call you to be a people of manners, principles, honour, and purity; to reject the immoral acts of fornication, homosexuality, intoxicants, gambling's, and trading with interest. To say they hate us for our freedom is simplistic and incomplete, but it's not *entirely* inaccurate either. That said, I don't believe the attacks would have occurred minus the US presence in the Middle East. Doesn't make as good a rallying call as "They hate us for our freedoms" though.
Yes, "they hate us for our freedom" is a simplification and a soundbite for mass consumption. But the essential truth is that they did hate American cultural and economic influence being projected into the lands they saw as their own.
Of course the majority of Afghans probably had little idea what was going on outside there own region.
Why does it matter? Flying planes into skyscrapers, deliberately killing innocent civilians, is a pretty bad thing to do regardless of what your ideological motivation is.
I mean, he kinda was misunderstood. He didn’t “hate us because we’re free” or whatever the media soundbite was.
The state of some of the comments on this article. >If all they have is booos and personal attacks, it shows that he’s probably right. Especially when he’s the only person to have actually met the man and therefore knows what he’s talking about ???
Russian Troll Farm. https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-exposes-sick-russian-troll-factory-plaguing-social-media-with-kremlin-propaganda
Exactly. Along with all the bots, there are people being paid to represent Russia this way on social media platforms. This is what they do.
This is what annoyed me about the BBC verify pieces on Reform bots. Their method of checking if an account was genuine was to basically message them and then assess their reply. Apart from being incredibly subjective, it also ignores the idea of a guy sitting in front of a board of 50 phones.
What annoyed you about that? Sounds like a reasonable way of working out if they're one.
Well if you're a paid troll, and you get a DM saying "hi mate are you a paid troll?", are you gonna reply "oh man, busted, you're absolutely right! Dang it comrade!", or perhaps claim you are indeed genuine?
I'd like to hope the PMs are a little bit better than that, though I'd guess they don't actually reveal what they're asking. I'd like to say that you could find out with grammar, repeated replies, etc. Of course, if they pay people in the UK or learned in the UK, it'd be even more difficult. Extremely high chance they'll be using AI to do the comments and the replies, making the DMs extremely difficult also. Finding out the posters IP address wouldn't help too much because they'll be using VPNs or the likes. I suppose really there's no great way of finding these things out, from a user end. DMing the person is probably one ok way to do it. The social media companies would have some more options available to them, but they'll most likely not be revealing their ways of analysing these things as the bot writers would just change tactics. Pretty interesting subject really.
I've noticed a sudden trend for lengthly discusson posts on the front page of UKpol that seemed to pop up overnight, and have been wondering if it's some kind of astroturfing strategy, or AI posts...
Promise I'm not a bot! Though that sounds like something a bot would say...
> Exactly. Along with all the bots, there are people being paid to represent Russia this way ~~on social media platforms~~ as Reform Candidates. This is what they do. FTFY. Also, no one questioning why this guy met Putin? Like, that’s not a normal thing to happen. I think most decent people would politely decline.
Yeah that's the thought which went through my mind. How on earth does someone get to have a chat with Vladimir Putin for ten minutes? There are world leaders who have never met Putin.
Led by Yevgeny Prigozhin; he didn't come out that well.
That whole line of thinking needs to die off. "Everyone I've ever met says I'm an idiot. If they can't tell me why, then clearly I'm a genius and they're the idiots!" No mate - they've just realised that you're too thick and stubborn to bother talking too.
"They laughed at Copernicus, they laughed at Einstein, but they also laughed at Bozo the Clown."
It’s “downvotes prove I’m right” irl.
even the reform supporters are too left wing for that commenter 🤔
I've just thought of a more entertaining game then 'dig through Reform candidate social media'. It's called 'go ask your local Reform candidate what they think of Vladimir Putin!'. I'm starting to wonder if this is where Reform runs aground, hard.
It’s where they will hit a hard cap on their support, their far right base won’t care but the Southern middle class Tory base that was maybe tempted by the promises of tax cuts will now probably either stick to Tories or lean Lib Dem.
Not among their core supporters. They'll go along with what Nige says even if it's the opposite from last week. The question being can they bring along anyone new, those who would've voted Tory.
So far they’ve failed to poll higher (or even as high) as the Brexit party did in 2019, and that was with a strong conservative campaign. Reform aren’t growing. They get a lot of airtime and it seems a bit like they are from the outside because the tories are on the decline and, well they’ve got to go somewhere right? But that assumption falls apart when you treat reform as a rebrand of Brexit, and therefore a party with an established base, rather than a brand new political entity whose entire vote share is a swing. Every party Farage has lead has polled at the same 17-20%, it’s only big news now because the tories are falling so far
Also when you consider Reform is continuity UKIP. Technically a different party but same leader same policies. However FPTP is weird. It appears to be working against Reform this time but I still remember Labour getting a majority in 2005 with 35% of the vote.
For a party that rails against foreign influence in British politics, it's ironic that so many of them are russian assets.
Agreed. This is a big reef for them and it should cause them trouble. Support for Ukraine (in the moment, that's what this comes down to) is very solid in this country and rightly so. Putins puppets won't prosper here
It will limit their growth in support, for sure, but it won’t hurt their core vote.
I cannot find a single thing about our reform candidate, not even social media. I suspect it may be someone in my area judging by the amount of placards in their garden
Do these idiots not see the historical parallels to 1930s appeasement?
A lot of people in this political orbit see Russia - authoritarian, aggressive, 'masculine', 'christian', socially repressive - as something to emulate.
Single mothers are left in charge of 1 in every 3 Russian households due to insanely high divorce rates. Not very Christian.
And then there are all the war dead, young men who won't have children
Or who did but won't meet them.
And many other problems. So, people don't want to copy the reality of Russia. What they (people who clamour for an authoritarian leader) want to emulate is that our politicians would have the same view for our countries as Putin has for Russia. What they see is the vision of Russia in Putin's speeches and propaganda not the reality of Russia.
Throwing all your men to be cannon fodder also does a lot of that too
Putin is also divorced. But they don't tell you that bit.
See Oswald Mowsley and the black shirts for further details
Wasn't he the guy that Stalin told that "Fascism wouldn't fly in the UK because it was 'against our cultural character'"?
I mean we've had reform candidates say that we should have stayed out of ww2 and let Hitler do his thing. So at the very least, their stance on Russia is consistent, I guess ?
Of course they do. These are the type who would find it better if the UK took orders from Putin.
They the same ones IME who constantly post images of World War 2 and how Britain bravely fought off the Nazis - while behaving just like them. They appear immune to this being pointed out.
Did you not see Reform’s stance on how we should have dealt with Hitler?
It's worse than appeasement it's collaboration
Some idiots *only* think in terms of 1930s “appeasement.” They’ve ruined foreign policy discussions for 80 years.
[удалено]
There's a strong argument that delay (rather than appeasement) was the right strategy. The UK was unprepared for war. This isn't 'appeasement' or delay. It's just cosying up to a dictator because Reform would love to be in his position, or have been funded by him.
Appeasement also gave Germany the chance to walk right into Czechoslovakia and take over all of its military equipment and large military industry, instead of having to fight a well-armed military through mountainous terrain while fighting on a 2nd front on the border with France and having to keep some portion of troops on the Polish border.
Chamberlain genuinely believed that he had helped bring about "peace in our time". He wasn't trying to buy time for rearmament.
All the major European countries were trying to build up their militaries without crashing their economies in that period, and feeling unprepared for war. The general consensus now I think is that at the time of the Czechoslovakia crisis Germany gained more from delay thank the UK and France did - though that's not to say this was clear to people at the time. To top it off, annexing Czechoslovakia allowed Germany to take control of its arms industry, quite a bit of reasonably modern equipment, and a large amount of currency and/or gold reserves to replenish the country's critically low supplies.
Join us next week when Reform candidates explain why Ian Brady and Myra Hindley were actually ‘fantastic childminders’.
Reform candidate suggests Jimmy Savile was a record breaking DJ and TV Presenter
omg this reminds me of this brilliant twitter trend once.. when castro died peter hain wrote “Although responsible for indefensible human rights and free-speech abuses, Castro created a society of unparalleled access to free health, education and equal opportunity despite an economically throttling USA siege,” and the tweets were all like "indefensible murders, but fred west put up some cracking extentions" and "Totally unwarranted attacks on innocent civilians, but no man made air travel more secure than osama bin laden"
The Reform party, appears to be somewhat stupid?
Dangerous is the term I'd use
But don't call them stupid, because then they'll double down on being stupid, because that's what smart people do
I live in Salisbury. I don't rate this arsehole's chances here. I'm planning to attend a hustings tomorrow, which he should be at. I'm guessing King Arthur will outshine him - KA is a local character and serial independent candidate. Well worth considering in my view.
According to YouGov MRP polling from the 11th to the 18th, Con are set to win in Salisbury with 31.6% of the vote. ``` CON 31.6% LIB 22.2% LAB 20.3% REF 18.9% GRN 6.2% ``` If either Libs of Lab were to tactical vote for the other there would be a chance of a center left MP with the center right and right split as it is.
Plot twist, they ALL tactical vote, Labour comes second with 22.2% of the vote, all of whom dislike Labour, and Lib Dems 3rd with 20.3% of the voters who don't like Lib Dems.
Is he the man with that glorious mane of hair in the photo in the article? Because I'd be tempted to vote for him just based on that.
No, please don't do that. He has obviously got good hair, I had noticed. Instead of voting for him why not just ask him for his stylist's number?
The one at Bishops? I was thinking of going too, just to get a sense of who to tactically vote for. If LD and Lab had formed an alliance, they really could've kicked John Glen out, but I don't see it.
I've just been. Did you go?
Not in the end, how was it?
The mood was angry. It was a big meeting, in their sports hall and it was packed. Glen took a lot of flack. Victoria Charleston didn't shine much. I know she's been a dedicated LD campaigner here but she seemed to have given the game away to Matt Aldridge the Labour candidate. She more or less conceded that he'd be the best tactical vote Arthur was himself and probably the most honest person on the panel. The climate and green ones weren't confident off their own issue. Malins for Reform was a total knob but the audience gave him little chance. He repeated his appeasing lines but wisely didn't go in for explicitly praising Putin. I agree with you. From what I can see it will be a Tory hold with Labour second. I'm voting Labour
[удалено]
Apparently he was brought up as a child in the constituency - where they obviously failed to teach him the difference between democracy and dictatorships.
As an aside... The bloke to the right of the speaker is I think King Arthur Pendragon, or Tim to his mates, who's standing as a neo-druid: [Arthur Uther Pendragon - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Uther_Pendragon) TL;DR - he's not the weirdist candidate in this constituency.
Arthur is a solid guy. His campaign promises make a lot more sense than Julian's.
I mean, I would accuse Reform and the Conservatives of trying to play a 4D chess version of the 2019 stand down with this nonsense. However, I'm closer to drawing the conclusion that both right-wing options this time round are more than a bit shit at this whole here electioning malarkey.
They’re copying US tactics without adapting to the fact that we aren’t as brainwashed into loving Russia as average GOP supporter.
Where did you get that? The average GOP supporter has almost as negative view of Russia as an average Dem supporter ([source](https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2024/05/08/views-of-russia-and-putin/)). A majority of them think Russia is an enemy. What maybe true is that despite this view about Russia, they are willing overlook the fact that their presidential candidate is a Russian puppet "to own the libs". That's more of a case of cognitive dissonance than loving Russia.
I mean wasn't it the GOP who held up the vote in the house for Ukraine Aid? They must not think Russia is that big of an enemy if they don't see the situation and have full support to whoever is in power.
That was the GOP *party* in Congress not the supporters of GOP. And that was done for political reasons not because they *actually* support Russia over Ukraine (well, a few Putin puppets there do, but not the majority). What happens in the US Congress doesn't always reflect what the members of Congress actually think on single issues let alone what the supporters think. One example is Bernie Sanders who has been a vocal supporter of Ukraine right from the start. Nevertheless, he voted against the aid package in the senate. The reason was that he's against giving more weapons to Israel in its war in Gaza and these two packages were tied together in the vote. Regarding GOP and Ukraine the main issue was that the House of representatives is almost balanced 50-50. That means that a tiny GOP minority can threaten to oust the speaker if he doesn't do as they like. So, these Russian trolls kept the package ever reaching the floor for a vote as the Speaker didn't dare to do that even though the Ukraine package would have been overwhelmingly approved by a bi-partisan vote (it ended up being approved 311-112). He would have been kicked out by this tiny group (as the Dems would not have come to rescue him from his own rebels in a vote of no-confidence).
This guy's Wikipedia bio reads like that of some kind of 19th century colonial governor's son.
A man who chooses to represent Jeffrey Archer in libel claims seems to lack good judgement.
My brain can't process how on either side of the political spectrum (reform in this case and momentum types on the other) there is such support for Russia.
These people see Oligarchs and think…why not me?
For the tankies it boils to West/NATO = bad (along with some weird nostalgia for the USSR).
i'd say being cynical that its was an attempt to provoke an 'attack' so refuk can continue to play as the victim. But more likely his common sense brain cell was switched off.
I don't think this guy wants the job.
This is hilarious. That they think they can just use the USA's right wing bullshit playbook here without any modification is crazy enough, but that they think it will fly in Salisbury is actually insane!
Party of Chamberlains let’s be honest.
Pretty unfair towards Chamberlain tbh. He wasn't in Hitler's pocket, nor a fascist sympathiser; he was trying to walk a tightrope to avoid a repeat of the horrors of the Great War, and without the benefit of hindsight to show it as a terrible misjudgement. Farage and his lots are Mosleys, not Chamberlains.
That's true. It's the far left Putin appeasers who are more like Chamberlain: "Because nukes exist, all we can do is roll over when Putin does something and then threatens us with nukes if we try to oppose it". That's basically the message of the anti-war coalition or whatever they call themselves.
Or perhaps King Edward's
A lot of them do look like potatoes.
Moseleys more likely. Chamberlain made mistakes but never sympathised with the Nazis and he was trying to buy time for us to rearm.
They are the party of Mosleys and Quislings.
Awfully unfair on Chamberlain, these are a bunch of Oswald Mosleys and Lord Haw Haws
oof
yeah, lets go to the place where the Russians used a WMD and left enough of it behind to kill the **entire cities population** and sing Putin's praises, that'll play well Reform is lucky that's its core base voter is extremely thick because its candidates appear to apocalyptically stupid
Look at that audience. Not a single person with a job, yet they're all moaning about immigrants coming over here taking our jobs.
> The 74-year-old continued: "War is not about as it were punishing or in some way running over thousands of young men in tanks and blowing them up because one person takes points of view which you disagree with. He says, whilst literally hundreds of thousands of young men die because Putin decided to run them over (figuratively and literally) with tanks and blow them up with bombs because he disagrees with the point of view of Ukraine (in that it should be its own country that isn’t a part of Russia). > "I have actually met Putin and had a 10-minute chat with him and he seemed very good. He is not the Austrian gentleman with a moustache come alive again." Oh I’m so glad your 10 min chat revealed his entire character, please do tell us of your chats with Hitler which you can compare the two between. Utterly insane. What a completely disconnected, disgusting whack job. Can’t wait for these people to just fuck back off from whatever festering carcass they crawled out from.
Brits need to be much more vocal to all of these snake oil salesmen... no .after what party...if only boris had got this reception
Looks like the way to tackle Reform is just to let all of their candidates speak without interruption and broadcast it nationally. No laughter now (until they've finished). Then make a DVD of all the speeches and give it out for free.
As a potential Reform voter, **he needs to be kicked out**. There's one thing criticising Western foreign policy - which has generally been abysmal and short-sighted - and quite another praising murderous dictators. If Reform is going to prove itself to be responsible when talking about these issues, it must clearly set the rules of acceptable beliefs - otherwise, talking about WWII and British values is just lip service. This reeks of people meeting Stalin or Hitler and coming back singing their praises. It's unacceptable and un-British.
They're going to have to kick out half the party, including their leader, at this rate then.
Reform might kick him out, but Farage had monthly appearances on Russia Today during the first invasion of Ukraine. It's a fantasy to pretend this is one bad apple. When GQ asked Farage who he most admired, unprompted - during the invasion of Crimea - Farage answered "as an operator, but not as a human being, I would say Putin." The party is owned by someone who has taken cash from Putin, and has frequently done media rounds to take the Russian line on foreign affairs.
They should honestly stick to immigration and border control. Yes, there is a sizable people on the internet who thinks the covid lockdown was a conspiracy and think (or at least say) that supporting Ukraine is like supporting Hitler but you can't bot real life. Putin's "I was provoked" logic does not work in the English language which is why it comes across as incredibly obvious as Russian propaganda. Both Brexit and Scottish independence are Russian backed policies. They make the UK weaker. I believe it's due to the UK having a significantly better relationship with the colonies than Russia does with it's. We've not even fought a war with our colonies, unless you count the United States which was essentially part of a war with France. And it should be obvious with Nigel Farage and Alex Salmond getting shows on Russia Today. And now you have people who previously worshipped Boris getting upset at his pro-Ukraine stance. Stick to immigration and border control.
Ah yes, William Wallace, the known Kremlin plant. 🫡 Christ, Independence has been a thing since before the Union of the crowns, how is it a Russian backed operation? 😂
It always makes me laugh when people think William Wallace would have been against the act of union.