The West doesn't understand the extremism of Putinism. They keep imagining that there's a deal to be done, that if we just give Crimea to Russia, then he'll stop fighting. I don't think they understand that his goals are much broader and more ambitious. That those goals involve the destruction of the transatlantic alliance and maybe even of the European Union.
© John Entwistle, 1968
It is better to eat the dog than to be eaten by the dog.
(William Montagu, 1330)
Let's go back to England's mountains green and pleasant pastures today, with The Who's seminal live album of 1970, Live At Leeds. The Who recorded two full shows for a live album, one on 14 February 1970 at the University of Leeds, and one on 15 February 1970 at Hull City Hall. The Hull recording was marred by technical glitches, shelved, and did not see the light of day until 2012 as Live At Hull, patched with unglitched bits from the Leeds recording. Both concerts consisted of an hour-long opening set, a full performance of Tommy, and encores. The original Live At Leeds LP cut that to six tracks, none from Tommy, and the full performance was made available only in 2001. In the meanwhile the first CD reissue, in 1995, included the full opening set and encores, with just one Tommy track in between. That's the version I'm offering you now, and it is fucking wild.
You're still strongly advised to click on the images for larger and better versions.
There is one historical character Nigel Farage hasn't appropriated yet and tried on for size as his revamped persona. Oliver Cromwell. That's surprising because, when you think of it, Ollie is the only one who ever achieved true revolutionary change against the English establishment. But maybe the part about chopping off the King's head is too much for Nigel. Who knows? Or is it because Cromwell was one of Winston Churchill's personal heroes, and iconising him would sound like second-hand appropriation? By the way, did you know that, during his first tenure as First Lord of the Admiralty, Churchill proposed to have one of His Majesty's battleships named after Cromwell? Twice. Once with the Iron Duke-class, then with the Queen Elizabeth-class. King George V, who already had his own namesake battleship, was not amused and let it be known that third time would not be a charm, and Winston would lose his job. But I digress, as the question now facing Nigel is whether or not he would be more of a popular hit if he channelled his inner Cromwell rather than his inner Powell.
The current trends of voting intentions say that the Turquoiseshirts are back in the low 30s in most polls, the temperature at which the iceman cometh on the Fahrenheit scale, or at which ScotGov should declare a National Heatwave Emergency on the Plantigrade scale. And that minor third is almost enough to transmogrify into a majority of seats for Reform UK, unfortunately not the best USP for FPTP. It doesn't help that even Mikey Ashcroft has awoken from his slumber, to regale us with another report about his focus groups whining that nobody listens to the silent majority they fancy themselves to be. When the problem is actually that too many inside the political bubble listen to them and the alternative reality where Alien vs Predator has become Aliens Are Predators. How do you turn around people who have chosen to dwell in a conspiracy theory multiverse where the only answer to fact-based arguments is "I don't believe you"? But where do these nutters come from? Polls are telling us that too in their crosstabs. Average voting intentions, sex and age data are an aggregate of More In Common and Find Out Now, social grade data are from YouGov and Lord Ashcroft.
Nobody is immune to the Reform mind rot, as it has hit quite a wide cross-section of the British electorate, but some are more likely to fall than others. Focus on the most represented demographics and your ideal Reform voter is an elderly working-class man. Are we witnessing the return of Emily Thornberry's legendary "white van man"? What can we do about that in the 47 months left before the next general? Parroting Reform's talking points is certainly not the answer, unless Keir Starmer wants to sound ad perpetuum like a second-hand Robert Jenrick. But systematically saying the exact opposite isn't either, unless you want to sound as trapped in the entitled metropolitan middle-class bubble as Zack Polanski. I guess the proper answer is, and has probably always been, to stop listening to Farage and only say what you genuinely stand for. Which might be actually unachievable for the shapeshifting ectoplasms Labour and the Conservatives have both become. For these and many other reasons, today's snapshot of voting intentions shows Reform still leading the popular vote, though slightly down from ten days ago, and now predicted to miss a working majority by just one seat, Or get one by 41 seats if you prefer Electoral Calculus.
This snapshot is the mash of the last six polls, conducted between the 14th and the 22th of August by Lord Ashcroft, More In Common, YouGov, Focaldata, Find Out Now and Opinium, with a super-sample of 13,776, the full load displacement of the French cruiser Algérie in short tons. We're still on Summer Break for a few days, with lots of stuff to fill the news cycles, but what do we get? Hours of Lucy Connolly celebrating her extremely early release from prison, after less than a third of her sentence served, and we didn't hear Nigel Farage whining about the justice system being too lenient and kinder to criminals than to their victims. A whole sur mesure page in The Torygraph, which I won't give you a link to because enough is enough, as they say, allowing the convicted felon to double down on her racism and cosplay political prisoner when she is just low-grade fascist scum. Lots of speculation about the next Budget being the stuff nightmares are made of, and how a wealth tax would ruin the future of the working class, or summat. Just the media playing their usual game and giving us a double dose of hostile environment, one for migrants and asylum seekers, one for Labour and the government. And you really expect the Freakshow Fascists to not prosper on that kind of fertile ground?
Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it.
(Mark Twain)
© Pete Townshend, 1964
Break free to where? Any show of resistance would be futile.
(Mr Spock, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, 1979)
Have you noticed that the newly-enforced Online Safety Act has the same initials as the Official Secrets Act? I'm surprised that neither Owen Jones nor Nigel Farage mentioned that, seeing how this OSA triggered so much controversy. Let's just stipulate first that there is a lot of hypocrisy poured into that debate, from both loopy corners of the political compass, to stoke the fires of faux outrage and disinformation. The fascists would be better advised to shut the fuck up, when their poster lass for free speech is a self-confessed racist convicted felon who incited arson and murder. Likewise the woke should stop painting low-maintenance thugs who broke and entered into a military base to sabotage equipment as political prisoners and martyrs for the cause of freedom. The woke whining and squealing about attacks on freedom of thought would also be more credible if they didn't have a decade-long backlog of witch-hunts, abuse, smear and threats against wrongthinkers who refuse to take the knee to the transcultist doxa. Of course, the instant bone of contention was age verification, or how to prevent pre-pubescent basement wankers to access zoophile BDSM porn online, or summat. More In Common (MIC) and Ipsos polled that and found, quite expectedly, that the Great British Public are massively in favour, regardless of their political persuasion.
Likewise, implying that Starmer is no better than Putin because Russia has enforced massive surveillance of its citizens on the internet is also fucking bullshit. Starmer hasn't sent 10,000 people to prison without a trial, murdered political opponents, journalists and prisoners of war, all of which Vlad the Butcher has done. This kind of fake analogy is as repugnant as it is cretinous. I am just surprised that Starmer has not tried and played his Trump card here. Simply saying, "it's not my law, it's Cameron's law... err, Johnson's law... err, Truss's law... err, Sunak's law", seeing how it was first floated as a government commitment before Brexit, put in the bottom drawer by Theresa May, and then took three years and three Prime Ministers to go through the standard Parliamentary process, leading to Royal Assent eight months before Starmer moved to Number Ten. And, after that, it was enforced by Ofcom, not the Labour government. But why let facts get in the way of converging attacks by loonies of all hues, who are joined at the hip by their determination to vilify Labour and bring real fascists to power? The MIC poll also shows that the Great British Public definitely want the law to err on the side of caution, rather than to let loopholes wide open for bad faith actors, and even Reform voters agree.
Interestingly, the New Model OSA has raised some interest far far away from the Home Counties, in Australia. Probably not from the common people, who have more crunchy stuff to deal with, but from newbie pollster Freshwater Strategy, who are polling us from there. And they added a question to their latest voting intentions poll that no British pollster had asked, though they should of. Aye, I think that's how they say it Down Under. Anyway, the question is whether or not the OSA will achieve its most important stated goal, keeping kids away from harmful content. Of course, the porn sites owners and the FSB troll are telling you that it won't, because 5yr-olds can still use a VPN to watch Vladimir Putin fucking a bear, or summat. And the answer is not as conclusively convincing as you might have thought, given the people's clear support for the Act. Always see the bright side of life, though, we have a plurality thinking the Act will work, with a visible and predictable political divide. Just what you need to fully expect that the right-wing parties will tell you that the Act is a failure even if it works, as I personally expect, conveniently blanking out that it was their side who got that ball rolling.
Of course, the OSA has all the conspiracists of all shades frothing at the mouth, from the one who claims the Iraq War caused the genocide in Gaza to the one who claims climate change is a hoax. Uncoincidentally, these are also the two wanting you to believe that calling for murder is free speech. Nobody should be indifferent to the obfuscation and misrepresentation, as we all have a dog on this flight. It's the eternal dilemma of freedom vs protection, and the legitimacy of pre-emptive censorship of deliberately inflammatory hate speech. Which I believe is appropriate, unless we subscribed to Elton Muck's hyper-libertarian dream of opening the floodgates to anti-vaxxer propaganda and Holocaust denial, among others, because "these are just opinions". But we know that opinions kill, that's at the core of all hate crimes, and a very good reason to raise protections, even if sometimes a wee smitch higher than strictly necessary. So our concern should also be how far down the rabbit hole of conspiracy theories the British public is ready to dive, given the massive online presence of opponents to the OSA. Polls also enlighten us about that, and it is not always a pretty sight, as even people of good faith seem ready to fall for the most absurd arguments.
Each minute you waste on social media, you could be solving differential equations.
(Isaac Newton, maybe)
© Allen Toussaint, 1962
I frankly confess that I am sometimes surprised by the indignation of some people against the grip of normality.
More than anything, what we see and hear in the debate about the OSA and in these polls proves that we have a very serious problem with the definition of "free speech". The loony far-right want to normalise neo-Nazi propaganda and climate change denial. The loopy woke left want to normalise perverted "queer" fetishes and radicalised Islamo-Nazism. Both want to normalise calls for the murder of people they don't like. This is happening because we have allowed the debate to be hijacked by US-based influencers fed on free speech absolutism, when we should have told them to fuck off because our laws are none of their fucking business as the UK is not the 51st state. This is alive within both the far-left and the far-right, the tribes who want you to believe that Lucy Connolly, Stephen Yaxley-Lennon and probably soon Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh are political prisoners and persecuted victims of a government crusade against free speech and the right to protest. Which they are not, and fully deserve to be all treated as ordinary criminals. But what the public has been led to believe, by fabricated paranoia, is illustrated quite well by another poll from Ipsos, about the anticipated effects of the OSA.
It is quite odd to see a third of the British public opining that the OSA will "prevent victims of crime discussing their experiences online", when we have already seen this years ago, and obviously not because of the OSA. Likewise, believing that one isolated Act of Parliament might trigger a tsunami of government censorship is either deliberate bad faith or cretinously naïve. As if any government needed that, when they already have hugely effective means of pressuring the media into relegating inconvenient news to page 37 under the stuffed macaroni recipe. The only ones who have any reason to fear censorship of online content are the spreaders of fake news, like Elton Muck's "citizen journalists" and the FSB's posse of bribed influencers. And the "puppies" promoting zoophile BDSM unchecked on BlueShite. Another question in the MIC poll also reflects these unfounded fears.
I can't even believe that MIC agreed to ask that first question, which totally drips of far-right propaganda. Of course we have witnessed the chilling effects of the woke-enforced omerta about the grooming gangs, perverting the course of justice and increasing the victims' suffering. But I don't think this is what the question alludes to. More likely it has to do with the far-right propagating fake news under the guise of "truths the establishment want to suppress". To assess the question's credibility, you would have to ask for the definition of "critical of immigration", and I have a very strong hunch you would discover it is code words for xenophobic hate speech. Does that imply we should reframe our notion of free speech to include protection of fearmongering dogwhistles? Or extend it to grant a free pass to the translobby peddling suicide ideation? Surely not, protection of free speech does not mean protection of fringe fanaticism. Likewise, the question about "age-restricted" content is hugely hypocritical and manipulative, because obviously no adult would miss anything because of that. Does that imply we want kids to watch the same contents as adults, like eviscerated corpses in Gaza and Kharkiv? Or Andrew Tate wanking an incel German Shepherd? I certainly hope not. Fortunately, the MIC poll also exposed the main weakness of all polls, the British public's uncanny talent for contradicting themselves.
So our two greatest fears are government censorship and compromising our personal data. That's two charts up, mates, just scroll back to check. But, and that's a pair of big buts, we trust the government to identify harmful content correctly, and we trust online platforms to keep our data safe. What the fuck, mates? Which one is it? Only Reform voters go against the rest of Britain on both, so are we just seeing the effect of far-right propaganda slowly infecting the rest of the population? I am quite content with that explanation for now, seeing how the Faragists were the main machete-wielders against the OSA, even promising to repeal it because their tiny brains haven't yet grasped it is not a Labour Act. Then you have to wonder what the loopy far-left had to prove by choosing this hill to die on. We already knew that they have such an open mind that their brain fell off and a squirrel ran away with it. Do they really want their contribution to this debate to be remembered as that of people who think that the moral high ground is theirs because they were there first, like Russians in Alaska, but are just walking and quacking proof that even a broken record can be wrong all the time?
Social censorship is not where we forbid, but where we coerce to speak.
(Roland Barthes)
© Pete Townshend, 1967
If your belief system is not based in objective truth, you should not be making decisions that affect other people.
Opinium then hammered the nail of contradiction home, just by dropping any question about morals and philosophy, and homing in on the practical side of the OSA. Which sites do we think should be a no-fly zone for minors, enforced by age-verification? They tried to cover all bases with a sextet of the most obvious categories, from furry porn to promotion of Tommy Robinson. And, to nobody's surprise, Brits get all censorious all of a sudden if you mention kids, gambling and porn in the same sentence. Interestingly, Reform voters are more likely than average to be OK with their kid draining their ISA dry on online poker, and Reformers and Greens alike are more lenient on porn. The meeting of the minds of Andrew Tate and the Rainbow Dildo Monkey, I guess.
The song does not remain the same if we move on to online platforms allowing minors to see "mature' or 18+ content, and that's not your Nan petting her kitten. Though that could be her petting her pussy. But Brits are generally less inclined to be censorious of that kind of stuff. Now the most hypocritical of all sites named here is, in my lived experience, BlueShite. Well, they obviously don't specialise in high-octane porn, though I have seen a furry in full costume sucking dick there. Only because I had specified an interest in dogs when they asked which posts I'd like to see most, and the lad at the sucking end of the shaft self-identified as a "puppy". No shit, mates, they walk among us. Most of BlueShite's zoophile porn is actually not videos, but drawings and cartoons, usually atrociously drawn by totally untalented wankers. I guess that not being real, but just a fantasy, makes it OK to distribute it widely without control, though it does not make it less offensive. But that's part of BlueShite's "woke heaven" persona, innit?
Finally, Opinium revealed that Brits are more likely to want their kids shut out of the Reclaim Party than out of Dutch Barn. Which is only fair, as there are still videos of the lovely late Anti up there, a far better influence on kids that Lozza Fox. The only problematic part here is the use of "hateful", because you would have to submit an official definition of "hateful". Does "Trump is a cunt" qualify as hateful, being uttered by a person we shouldn't be speaking ill of by bourgeois standards, but was nevertheless quite a hateful harpy on her own right? Does "Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest" qualify too, even if it is merely a quote from a revered 18th century writer? It is so easy to reopen a debate about the "working definitions" the woke are so obsessively fixated on, as an excuse for cosplaying permaoffended and waging neverending witch-hunts on wrongthinkers. And so tempting, just for the fun of taking the piss.
As a temporary conclusion, we should reflect on John Stuart Mill's words of wisdom in On Liberty. They deserve to be quoted at length, when he says that "reflecting persons perceived that when society is itself the tyrant – society collectively, over the separate individuals who compose it – its means of tyrannizing are not restricted to the acts which it may do by the hands of its political functionaries. Society can and does execute its own mandates, and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practises a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself". This was written in 1859, and quite presciently describes the way "cancel culture" works, what Jamaica Kincaid called "the art of shunning", but should be more appropriately be described as what it really is, the culture of smearing. The malevolent fringe of radicalised fanatics who enforced this reign of terror of mob rule via coerced woke groupthink, similar in motivation to McCarthyism and Stalinism, and the cowards whose silence emboldened and enabled the thought vigilantes, are far worse threats to free speech and free thought than anything their imprecations accuse our government of, and their fabricated faux outrage should be dismissed as the self-serving bullshit it is.
Great, well, the governments all listened to you. You won. Everyone you hate is miserable. Now shut the fuck up about it.
© Mose Allison, 1957
Young man, there's no need to feel down, I said. Young man, pick yourself off the ground, I said.
(Victor Willis, Y.M.C.A., 1978)
Thank Dog for Australia devoting their attention to the most pressing issues in life, and not the frivolous ones we Brits love so much to squabble about. So let's forget about free speech now, and focus on the predicament of the most oppressed and marginalised minority in British history. White men. Seriously, mates. An outfit called Spear Media, whose web site has been vaporised because they did not pay to renew the domain registration, has hired J.L. Partners to poll the British public about it. In the name of the defence of traditional British values. After all, if Jordan Gray qualifies as a member of a marginalised oppressed minority, why doesn't the average white man too, when he has to pick up the pieces of his shattered identity? Scottish pun fully intended. If you know, you know, and you get a bonus point. You really can't imagine the abyss of distress white men are facing in today's Britain because of discrimination, wokeism and... err, checks notes... women. No shit, Sherlock.
Why are white men denied the unalienable right to affirm and validate their whole true self in the eyes of the world? Possibly, just possibly, because they already do. But, if you calculate an aggregate of these five items, all up close and personal, as summat like a White Man Distress Index, it sends back a devastatingly appalling picture. A third of British white males feel that society is unfair to them, and the pungence of their distress is smelt all across British society, which is quite a shame. It is also quite revealing that white male Reform voters are twice as likely to feel that way as white male LibDem voters. Surely society has been manipulated to add political discrimination on top of systemic androphobia, or Reform voters are fucking paranoid and making an Everest out of an anthill that was never there in the first place. These are not mutually exclusive, you know.
There is something of a culmination with two items that J.L. Partners tabled pretty much as black-and-white questions, which I had to transition into red-and-green for the clarity of the chart. And they may have the only unquestionably valid point of the whole poll here, about self-censorship. We do know it does exist, don't we? We have all done it, haven't we? Well, probably not all of us, or even half of us all the time as the poll says, but we have done it on occasion. Of course, nobody would dare tell a black woman she is a fucking moron.... err... wait... even Kemi Badenoch? Diane Abbott? Sue-Ellen Braverman? Always exceptions to the rules, aren't there? Then it gets even worse if you add some concerns about future generations to the broth. Because it's always all about the future generations, innit?
Now, if we peel the layers of paranoia and political bias off the onion of distress, what remains is the current approach to masculinity, which cannot even be mentioned today outwith a pairing with 'toxic'. As a gay man who has never had to pretend I was a girl to protect myself from homophobic transcultist schoolyard bullies, because there weren't any when I was a kid despite 'gender' having already been invented on some faraway post-structuralist beach next to a Californian university, I can argue that calling masculinity 'toxic' is both egregiously androphobic and gregariously homophobic, and call Freddy McConnell as my expert witness. Which could be fun, actually, as she sounds like the perfect Hipstershire Agony Aunt. Now, if we look at this more seriously, and without the prism of a possibly biased poll fielded for the benefit of a traditionalist right-wing client, there may be a wee veneer of truth in all this. Otherwise, why would we witness such a resurgence of incel-propelled genuinely toxic masculinity, with a reaction to perceived androphobia as its root cause, as Vladimir Putin would say? One that offers both the perfect echo chamber for self-pity and the perfect bubble of kindred souls to maximise confirmation bias. Because it's no longer a man's man's man's world and some find it hard to cope, in the humdrum.
Before he can become a wolf, the lycanthrope strips naked. If you spy a naked man among the pines, you must run as if the Devil were after you.
© Pete Townshend, 1966
It is a mistake to judge today’s politicians by speculations about how those from earlier generations might have behaved if they were operating in today’s different conditions.
(Martin Kettle, The Guardian, 31 July 2025)
Do you remember when the terminally cretinous loopy woke far-left had a hissy mantrum when a tiny subsample of a poll suggested that Reform UK voters have a better opinion of Jeremy Corbyn than of Keir Starmer? And didn't even realise that the poll had been commissioned from Merlin Strategy by one of the most prominent loopy woke far-left influencers, Novara Media. While it was fun to see them trembling with virtuous faux outrage against one of the pillars of their own community, its is equally fun to look at what the poll actually says, the full sample of 2,000 and not just the Reform subsample of 450. Merlin Strategy selected seventeen items of diverse relevance, from the genuinely political to the shamelessly up close and personal. Interestingly, neither Starmer nor Corbyn get a tsunami of praise or a tornado of rejection, as both have become kind of Marmite politicians.
There are some hilarious replies in there amidst all the apparent seriousness, like people finding Starmer more fun than Corbyn. Who'd have thunk? On average, Starmer wins, but not by a tremendous margin. The British public even think, albeit by the narrowest of margins, that Starmer is more principled than Corbyn. Which is probably the price Jezza has to pay for aligning himself with the fashionable luxury beliefs of the metropolitan middle-class youth. I must say I thoroughly enjoy the delicious irony in this, that Jezza seeking excuses for Mo Chara, the same way Nigel Farage seeks excuses for Lucy Connolly, makes him look less principled than Keir Starmer reneging on anything that could still make New Model Labour look vaguely social-democratic. I guess it is actually safe to conclude that the British public do not miss Corbyn, at least not the way Owen Jones wants us to believe we do, probably because we feel in safer hands with Starmer than with the obvious disaster-waiting-to-happen Corbyn Party.
For additional fun and cringe, Opinium ran a three-way contest a few days later, between Corby, Starmer and Farage. They selected a much shorter list of items than Merlin Strategy, cutting the options to the bear's essentials. I definitely feel distinctly amused by some of their findings, like Farage considered better at representing change than Corbyn. Though there is also an element of worry in it, as we all know that Farage's version of change is change for the worse. There is the same mixed feeling about the idea that Farage would represent the UK better on the world stage than Corbyn, as if we were willing to choose between the bloke supporting two genocides out of imported ideological prejudice, and the bloke opposing one and turning a blind eye to the other out of dinosaurian ideological prejudice.
The average ratings from this three-dog race are pretty much a three-way tie when you factor in that the margin of error is about 3%, so the confidence intervals would overlap. The public's view that Farage better represents change is quite sobering for the far-left, who should certainly find another angle of attack. Like stop focusing on "Labour traitors" and start fighting the actual public enemy, the Flatpack Fascists. The Loopy Lefty might have a problem with that, though, as he actually agrees with the fascists on more than he or his minions are willing to admit. You can define that as a political goal of almost philosophical nature, the dismantling of social-democracy, which both have identified as the main obstacle to their success. You can also be more pragmatic, and closer to the truth, and hit where it hurts, by pointing at the means both are ready to employ. Complicity with, and backing from, Russia. It is solidly established that Russia has been supporting and funding both the far-left and the far-right in other European countries for years, because they need all variants of useful idiots to destabilise our democratic institutions. Corbyn and Farage are just the two cheeks of that arse on British soil. And that's why "anything but either of them" is the only choice that puts you on "the right side of history"™. Just don't fall for either's self-serving revisionism.
That’s a mug’s game. It is as unhistorical in its way as attempts to wag your finger too relentlessly at the past for its inevitable failings.
(Martin Kettle, The Guardian, 31 July 2025)
© Pete Townshend, 1966
There are, of course, echoes of Attlee’s agenda in Starmer’s. But they reflect radically changed times.
(Martin Kettle, The Guardian, 31 July 2025)
Jeremy Corbyn has just set up the first Scottish branch of the still officially-unchristened Their Party, duly celebrated by The Scottish Pravda. In Glasgow, where else? Can we expect Jezza to take a walk on the Southside, promoting a Loopy Left List at the next Scottish Parliament election? That surely would be quite a fucking sight. And Scotland could be fertile ground for them, as the polls tentatively including Their Party credit them with a higher vote share in Scotland than in England, probably because Jezza looks a wee smitch like Local Hero Keir Hardie. But The Scottish Pravda should have asked what Jezza has done for Scottish Independence over, say, the last two years. And the answer is "fuck all", or "as much as the SNP", depending on your dog's mood, which totally justifies celebrating the event. Surely we can now expect Jezza to promise a second Independence referendum within two years if he wins the next general election, just as he did the last time he lost a general election. Which won't solve our current problem, the continuous surge of Reform UK on Scottish soil, to second party now, that could soon match their performance in England.
Of course, Reform still does a whole lot better in the English North and Wales, who voted for Brexit, than in Scotland, who did not. Which is not much of a consolation, as their current predicted vote share would still grant them a handful of Scottish seats. The most dramatic polls even say it could be as much as ten, with the added embarrassment of the SNP still stagnating in votes, and reaping a massive harvest of seats only because Scottish Labour are totally falling apart. This could actually be the least of Keir Starmer's worries, as we now have strong evidence that the Scottish swing towards Labour at the 2024 general was totally tactical and unlikely to be repeated, but also recurring hints that the swing towards Reform in the English North may be here to stay.
It doesn't even matter any more that Farage based his whole Brexit campaign on lies, and is now feeding his general election campaign with fake news and disinformation. What was originally a protest vote against the mythical "elites " and the Establishment has now become a vote of adherence to his ludicrous proposals, most of which would actually work against the interests of the very people who are contemplating voting for him. This the same kind of evolution as in the country of my birth with the National Front and then the National Rally. Part of the traditional right becomes open to lift the firewall against the far-right. Part of the left concedes they may be sometimes right, as if we hadn't seen the futility of appeasement a thousand times already. More importantly, the media shift to a strategy of platforming the far-right after years ignoring them, thusly helping to undemonise, or disdemonise, them, depending on how you choose to transpose the very French dédiaboliser. It worked there so it is working here, when the basic reality that it worked there should have been an incentive to not let it work here. Instead, we are encouraging it, for fuck's sake.
Attlee grasped that from the moment that Labour accepted the responsibility for governance, it could not afford to think in terms of utopias.
(Martin Kettle, The Guardian, 31 July 2025)
© Pete Townshend, 1966
Today is a different world. A prime minister with Attlee’s no-nonsense briskness is as inconceivable as one with Churchill’s alcohol consumption.
(Martin Kettle, The Guardian, 31 July 2025)
It doesn't get better for Labour when you cross the Humber-Mersey Line from the North into the Midlands. It actually gets worse. What was a Lab-Con battleground for a long time now looks more like a shooting range for Reform, with Labour incumbents and hopefuls as the pheasants. Even the defections, resignations, factionalism, cronyism and incompetence within the Councils Reform conquered at this year's locals haven't driven the voters away from them. Yet. If you cross the English Mason-Dixon Line, the Wash-Severn Line, you see that the wealthy suburbs in the leafy South are now turquoisening too, in pretty much the same proportions as the North and Midlands. A recent poll for The Torygraph has shown that Southerners are significantly more likely than Northerners to believe the far-right soundbite that "immigration makes the UK less safe", which is as much a myth as "trickle-down economics work", but is bought by gullible voters as Farage is an expert at distorting facts and fabricating fake news.
The only obstacle to Reform gains in the South being as spectacular as those in the North and Midlands remains the Liberal Democrats' resilience. But even them are now in the firing line and threatened with losses from their 2024 intake in the South West. Ed Davey relishing in what you could call "extreme centrist common-sense populism". no matter how many layers of oxymoron that entails, may have reached its limits now in the face of a seemingly unstoppable Reform tsunami. It is even more appalling when you consider that the Reform vote was receding in the early summer months, but has gone up again during the Commons Recess for no obvious visible reason. Or it may be the cumulative effect of a thousand little things, like Chinese torture or the building up of an avalanche, that has led us to this. I guess that the government upping their game to look less fumbling and amateurish would be a good way to start countering the threat.
It is sadly not looking that way in Starmer's own backyard in the Imperial Capital. Not wholly through any fault of their own, though, but more because of their uncanny habit of dealing with difficult situations the wrong way and at the wrong time. In a totally predictable way, the most recent faux outrage from the faux Left has come from London, where the Labour Party is already trawling for candidates to replace Diane Abbott in Hackney North and Stoke Newington, a Red Keep of eighty years and Abbott Manor of forty years. Which is at least hugely premature, and obviously done in the most awkward way. All the whining and squealing is nevertheless hugely hypocritical because, as I said before, it is obvious to anyone with a brain that Abbott self-engineered her second expulsion from the Parliamentary Labour Party, so she can make the morning rounds whining and squealing she is the victim here, a reboot of the the well-oiled Talcum X routine, and how much better she feels in the all-inclusive hug of Jezza, Shitweasel, or whoever is Alpha Of The Week in that party. Abbott may have denied any intent to join Their Party, but they still will exploit her situation and weaponise it against Labour, totally predictably.
Modern politicians, Starmer included, feel they must be at the media’s beck and call, while simultaneously avoiding saying anything of substance. Attlee felt no such need.
(Martin Kettle, The Guardian, 31 July 2025)
© Pete Townshend, 1966
To achieve success in the elections, Donald Trump relied on certain forces to which he has corresponding obligations. And as a responsible person, he will be obliged to fulfil them.
I expected jack shit from the Hitler-Stalin summit... oops, sorry, the Trump-Putin summit, but nothing had prepared me for what we got, that Capitulation Day ended in fucking failure. The Orange Baboon may have channelled his inner Quisling, but the talks lasted less than half as long as announced and the subsequent presser was wrapped up in twelve minutes, when the Orange Baboon loves to ramble on for hours, praising himself and answering questions he made up and nobody asked. No deal was reached, none was even hinted at, and everybody seemed relieved to see the back of Vlad The Butcher on his unexpectedly early way out. But that fiasco and Trump's humiliation did not change the basic reality, that the clock is ticking for Ukraine, that it is time for Keir Starmer to channel his inner Churchill, turbo-charge our aid to Ukraine, and carry the rest of Europe with him. The British people expect just that from him, as evidenced by YouGov's update of their perennial omnibus Ukraine polling, the first in six months, released on the eve of the Day Of Infamy. And Ed Davey too. YouGov's poll first reveals that we still feel that the Global West has not done enough to stop Russia winning the war, to use their blunt wording, and more so now than six months ago.
If you look at the starboard side of the chart, you will see that Scotland is the most adamant of the Three Nations that we haven't done fucking enough. Keep an eye on that side for the next charts. Of course, every pollster worth his salt has to crosscheck the question that pretty much sets the foundations with another that asks the same thing a different way. YouGov chose to actually ask the exact opposite like in, "OK, mates, you think we haven't done enough, so what about telling us if we should do more?", and we get a confirmation. A conclusive majority of Brits think we should either maintain or increase our level of support for Ukraine. Maintaining the same level is already a really supportive position, as the poll mentioned the nature of our support, including the options that cost, in a context where our economy is not in the best of shapes and lots of people suffer from the cost of living crisis. So it's even more remarkable that a quarter of Brits do want to increase our support.
If you had a quick look to starboard, you may have noticed that Scotland is the most supportive of increasing our level of support, and cumulatively the most supportive of Ukraine. To nobody's surprise, Reform UK voters sit at the other end of the bench, with a third of them ready to cut support to an ally in need. There is an interesting contrast between the two, as Scotland has been targeted just as much as the other Two Nations, if not more, by all the fluff about "money better spent at home", "not our war" and whatnot, and we have resisted it. While Reform voters have been doused in the exact same bullshit by their Kremlin-funded representatives, and are pretty much buying it. Their bad. Now it's time for a quick incursion to the other side of The Mighty Atlantic, as the American branch of YouGov has been asking the same question, with one wee refinement, over there too. Here I have the sequence of what the American public answered over course of the last year.
Believe it or not, the American public's support for Ukraine has visibly increased this month, and reached its highest point since YouGov started polling it regularly a year ago. A few months ago, AmericaGov added an option that BritainGov don't use, stopping aid altogether. And that brute isolationist option is at its lowest now. This is just the kind of message that the usually poll-aware Orange Baboon will not listen to, as it is carried mostly by Democrats. In the July instalment of the poll, 55% of Democrats wanted the aid increased and 5% wanted it stopped, while 14% of Republicans wanted it increased and 25% wanted it stopped. And that covers the whole of the registered Republican population, so you can easily imagine the kind of numbers you would get from the decerebrated MAGA fanatics, the only ones that matter in Trump's eyes. The Orange Baboon just doesn't realise how much his already tainted image has been further tarnished by the humiliation he suffered at Putin's instigation, the appalling weakness he showed and the complete denial he indulged in afterwards. A whole nation has been humiliated by a bankrupt fascist ghoul, not just their demented President, and the scar will not fade away that easily.
When Trump is next to Putin, he melts, he loses his will, he can't control himself. He constantly smiles and rejoices, and plays the fool, and, in general, behaves like a schoolgirl in love with a hooligan.
(Anonymous American source, 16 August 2025)
© Pete Townshend, 1969
The tasks of the special military operation will be accomplished either by military or diplomatic means.
(Andrei Klishas, 15 August 2025)
Before the 15th of August, as I don't quite know where we are now, we had the option of a peace deal on the table. Or what Trump and Putin called a peace deal, and the rest of the sentient world a capitulation. It was still a possibility when YouGov conducted their poll, so they had to ask about it. The replies they got were indeed a wee smitch ambiguous, compared with the strong levels of support for Ukraine seen in other questions. Sure, the poll does show a plurality of Brits willing to support Ukraine to victory, marginally more than six months ago, but more than a quarter are considering the Trump Option. Peace at the cost of rewarding the Russian Reich with the annexation of illegally occupied territories. Probably, some aversion to risk, which is obviously a factor when standing up to a nuclear-armed rogue terrorist state led by a psychopath, played a part and eroded some of the solidarity with a criminally assaulted ally. Again, and we should take pride in that, Scots are the most supportive of Ukraine here.
But YouGov wouldn't leave it at that, and probed further. And quite easily baited their panel to contradict themselves, simply by asking their view of an outcome where Ukraine had to let Russia keep control of part of their territory. A clear majority of Brits, bigger now than six months ago, would consider that a negative outcome, and only a tiny minority a positive outcome, far fewer than were ready to strongarm Ukraine to accept just that. The starboard-most bar again shows that Scotland is far more likely to consider the coerced abandonment of territories a negative outcome. After all, the lived experience of being invaded, ransacked and annexed by a hostile foreign power is not that far back in Scottish history, so it just feels natural that we very strongly don't want to see another nation suffer the same ordeal.
There is a bigger umbrella issue behind these lines of questioning. Should we let the Orange Baboon, who has already proclaimed himself the Nobel Peace Prize of 2025, and Vlad The Butcher, who still wants to restore Josef Stalin's Empire, sit alone in a room and decide the future of Ukraine? That was definitely a legitimate key question before the failed Day Of Infamy, and plausibly remains one, even if the combination of Trump's dementia and Putin's arrogance drove them into abject failure. The British public clearly oppose any "negotiation" without Ukraine's presence, as do our government, the European Union and the whole civilised world outwith Trumpistan. We are less enthusiastic, though still a majority, about the European Union being in the room, which only Reform voters actually oppose. So they surely are very unhappy bunnies with Ursula von der Leyen's unexpected stunt. Providing Volodia Zelenskyy with a squad of human shields for his encounter with Trump at the White House on 18 August. Better safe than sorry, I guess.
In fact, both options are equally unacceptable, and are considered as such by all European governments including ours. Ukraine is Europe's Great Matter and Europe must be part of the solution. Even Trump admits it, albeit in a disingenuously double-edged way when he is seeking an excuse for the United States to withdraw from the process. Aye, Nigel Farage and the faux pacifist Brexiters in the far-left hate it, but we are still in Europe as Brexit hasn't changed geography. If anything, Keir Starmer should be more involved than he is in leading the Coalition Of The Willing, or Emmanuel Macron will steal his thunder. Manny had landed himself in deep shit with badly thought-out decisions over the last few years and needs a popularity boost. He also probably wants to leave some mark in history, just like the Orange Baboon is obsessively fixated on the Nobel Peace Prize, and what better way is there than being at the vanguard of the resistance against Russian imperialism? Beware of French bearing gifts, Keir, especially those trying to look totally transparent about their intentions, and totally devoid of ulterior motives. And don't forget that Ukraine expects that every ally will do his duty.
The war continues. It continues precisely because there is no order, nor any indication that Moscow is preparing to end this war.
(Volodymyr Zelenskyy, 15 August 2025)
© Eddie Cochran, Jerry Capehart, 1958
The discussions took place in a constructive atmosphere. We hope that Kyiv and Europe will not engage in provocations that could derail this progress.
(Vladimir Putin, 15 August 2025)
YouGov also polled the whole array of ways we can do more to fuck the Russian fascists, based on the same laundry list they have been using since the day of the imperialist aggression, thusly allowing us to clearly see trends, ups and downs. What Ukraine needs most is obviously more military hardware, when we haven't yet sent them all they need to just hold their positions on the frontline where they face violent continuous attacks from the Russian side. Of course, Ukraine has developed a credible strike capability with their drones, and have been really successful. Long-range drones strikes have caused Russia $74.1 billion in damages or 4.11% of GDP since the beginning of the year. The most affected are refineries and storage facilities, with every tenth strike occurring at a distance of over 1,000 km. 42% of the attacks targeted oil refineries, making them the single most-hit category. Storage facilities were the second most common target at 37%, followed by oil pumping stations at 10%, terminals and ports at 7%. This is huge, but only part of the solution, and fortunately the British public still strongly support the delivery of military aid.
Russia is obviously deeply worried about long range Ukrainian strikes against its energy sector. This is why they depict then as strikes against civilian infrastructure, when all the targets are definitely part of their military capability, and wanted Trump to force Ukraine to stop them. Every refinery that is blown up by Ukrainian drones is a major blow, as Ukrainian sources estimate that only four or five will still be fully operational at the end of the month, down from twenty-one at the beginning of the war. Sadly, British support for further arms deliveries is not as high as it was in the early stages of the invasion, even if it has increased in YouGov's most recent survey. Surely we can do better, especially by giving Ukraine increased means to defend their cities and the civilian population against deliberately genocidal missile strikes. Some countries have sent Patriot missiles, which the UK does not have. But our Type 45 destroyers use Aster 30 missiles, that are fully compatible with the French land-based SAMP/T batteries, which Ukraine uses. So maybe Sir Keir should send some to Ukraine, which would be a better use of their potential. It is also quite revealing to look at the crosstabs of British support for military aid to Ukraine, as seen from YouGov's latest poll.
The most important thing is that continuous military aid to Ukraine is quite consensual. The level of support may be quite different between generations, but only one political tribe opposes it, albeit by a very narrow margin. Aye, you got it, Reform voters. But maybe they're just people whose intentions are good, please don't let them be misunderstood, if they just anticipate we may need all that stuff to protect ourselves from a Russian invasion on the beach at Great Yarmouth. Or it may be just me being sarcastic. Other military options could be at our disposal, even if not all are popular with British public opinion. I have singled out two that YouGov has been tracking since the beginning of the war, one that we like and one that we don't.
Cyber attacks are an obvious choice. We know they can be fucking damaging, past Russian attacks on Europe have proved it, and there should be no restriction on responding in kind. Especially as we can easily plead plausible deniability, as the Russians do, by using hired mercenaries kept further away than the proverbial six degrees of separation from Kevin Bacon... oops, sorry... Cheltenham. The other option tracked by YouGov, taking part directly, even just as providers of expertise, in Ukrainian air strikes is not just unpopular, but also a definitive political no-go. Then we have another one, that was on the table in February 2022, and should be revived. The imposition, by a joint force of European powers, of a no-fly zone over Ukraine. You just stipulate it starts at the frontline, thusly avoiding contact with the orcs' aircraft over the war zone, and covers all the rest of Ukraine to its furthest borders. So you protect Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Kharkiv, Kyiv, Odesa, Lviv, all the cities the vatniks target in their deliberate genocidal war on civilians. No ambiguity here, you won't find any Russian plane aloft above those parts of Ukraine, only their missiles and drones. If, by a serendipitous twist of fate, one of our Typhoons is nevertheless forced to take down a SU-34 that inadvertently flew across the frontline as it was trying to get a better aim at a hospital, just say it was a honest mistake like MH 17. Vlad will understand.
Our partnership with the United States has potential. Donald Trump understands that Russia has its own national interests. He says that, had he been president, the war would not have started, and I agree with him.
(Vladimir Putin, 15 August 2025)
© Frederick Albert Heath, 1960
I won’t be happy if I walk away without some form of a ceasefire, and there will be severe consequences if Russia refused to cooperate.
(Donald Trump, 14 August 2025)
Another oven-ready type of direct action against Russia is sanctions, either maintained at the level they have already reached or increased. Just don't believe the false prophets from the faux patriotic far-right and the faux pacifist far-left, who keep telling you that the sanctions aren't working, because they are. Why else would Vlad The Butcher be so eager to see them lifted? The Russian economy is falling apart, facing stagflation at best, recession more probably. It has become a Potemkin economy, looking good from one side because foreign trade remains at a high level, but eaten from the inside by massive inflation and unsustainable interest rates. It is just like termites. It all looks fine to the naked eye until you flick the cupboard, and then it all falls to dust. How long will Russia, whose GDP is still in the same ballpark as Spain's, hold out? Moreover, the EU, in its 18th package of sanctions, replaced the fixed ceiling of $60 per barrel with a more flexible mechanism limiting the price of Russian oil to 15% below world prices. This is a sanction by ricochet, targeting the nations who still trade with Russia, and will have to reframe their stance. Thank Dog the Great British Public are not falling for the Putinist Fifth Column's propaganda, and still massively support sanctions, maintained or increased.
Independent and honest assessments all confirm it. Faced with falling revenues and tougher sanctions, the Kremlin must rethink its economic model, with decisive consequences for the continuation of its genocidal war against Ukraine. Putin may well not give a fucking shit about his own public opinion, but it could become a factor too if they are pushed to the breaking point. A war economy channelling 40% of the state's budget to the military, while cutting healthcare and education by half, is sustainable only for so long, even in a tightly controlled repressive dictatorship. We definitely can't rule out a Nichola I ending or a Gaddafi ending for Vlad The Butcher, both more likely than a Duke of Windsor ending. In the meanwhile, it is also important to look at how the various components of British society react to the concept of sanctions against the biggest threat to peace and democracy since Adolf Hitler. There are two questions about sanctions in the latest YouGov poll, with pretty similar results, so I took the average as a fair and meaningful representation of what the different demographics and politics stand for.
This is quite a show of resistance against the influence of all FSB-bribed bots, as the support for sanctions is fairly consensual. Even two thirds of Reform UK voters support them, which must make Nigel Farage livid and explain why he is foaming at the mouth with lies and extravagantly asinine proposals to remain relevant. After all, the British public still supported sanctions when the energy crisis of 2022 hit, leading the hugely incompetent Ofgem to more than treble the energy price cap. We did not relent then, so why would we now? YouGov also polled five options for the future, and I would say four of them remain on the table even after the farce at Anchorage and the inconclusive show at the White House. There is surely one in there that the FSB and their allies in the USA would consider an acceptable Endlösung der Ukrainefrage for now, until the Russian Reich gathers enough strength to launch another invasion in search of its Lebensraum. The survey is just about the likelihood of any of the options actually happening, and I agree that the worst is still as likely now as it was a fortnight ago, seeing how Trump has painted himself in a corner with his conversion to the most obscenely unacceptable variant of Putin's capitulation plan for Ukraine. But pragmatism doesn't mean acceptance, does it? More than ever, we just have to firmly nudge Kier Starmer to the side of the Resistance and keep him there.
The Orange Baboon wanted to keep the rest of the world in the dark about what was actually said during his brief encounter with Putin, but that couldn't hold for very long. He was obviously forced to let some of it surface during preliminary conversations with European leaders, which have been shared with The New York Times. Per their report, Trump has dropped his demand for an immediate cease-fire and believes a rapid peace treaty can be negotiated, so long as Zelenskyy agrees to cede the rest of the Donbas region to Russia, even those areas not occupied by Russian troops. Which is a carbon copy of Putin's core demands. In return, Putin reportedly offered a ceasefire along current front lines and a written promise not to attack Ukraine or Europe again. It is fucking laughable that Trump fell for that, as Putin has reneged on each and every "written promise" since he came to power, and he will obviously do the same in the future. And, like all bullies, he will not stop until punched in the face, kicked in the arse and thrown into a shit-filled ditch. Most of the Terms Of Betrayal may remain unseen so far, but it is still betrayal, and dementia is not an excuse.
There were many, many points that we agreed on. Most of them I would say a couple of big ones that we haven't quite gotten there, but we've made some headway. So there's no deal until there's a deal.
(Donald Trump, 15 August 2025)
© Pete Townshend, 1965
It would take Russian forces approximately 4.4 more years to gain 100 per cent of the four Ukrainian oblasts’ territory, and would lead to approximately 1,930,000 further Russian casualties, killed or wounded.
(Ministry of Defence intelligence report, 18 August 2025)
We can't say we hadn't been warmed. Hot on the heels of the farce at Anchorage, Vlad The Butcher's vodka-soaked sock-muppet and former President of Russia Dmitry Medvedev told us what had happened there. The Orange Baboon's subsequent statements and the non-conclusions of the non-event at the White House on the 18th only confirmed that Medvedev had got it all spot on, despite the fumes of alcoholic stupor. The only notable feature of the White House meet-and-greet was that Trump's pet Mark Rutte had the good grace to shut the fuck up, so there was only one advocate of the Russian positions in the room instead of two. It was a not-totally non-event, actually, as it showed the Orange Baboon something he should keep in mind. If his brain can, that is. The Coalition Of The Willing may still indulge in extensive arse-licking, because they don't want to face a hissy mantrum and burn their bridges before they come to them, but they have given up on nothing essential, quite the opposite in fact. We still have a meaningful option up our sleeve, British boots on the ground as part of a peacekeeping force. British public opinion is definitely in favour of this.
YouGov have not yet including this in their seasonal polling, as the option was put on the table by Keir Starmer only a few moths ago. So we have to rely on irregular polling by several pollsters, which goes against perfect continuity, but nevertheless shows a pattern. Despite Vladimir Putin vehemently opposing it, and the USA pre-emptively claiming they won't be part of it, the British public support our involvement. Let's be bluntly honest, then. Considering that "reassurance forces", as Emmanuel Macron calls them, can be deployed in Ukraine strictly outwith the combat zones is totally delusional. Simply because the Russian Reich would instantly turn any deployment zone into a combat zone, to continue squealing that they are the victim of "NATO aggression", against all evidence. Obviously, a peacekeeping force has to be as close as possible to the front line, with a clear mandate to shoot on sight anyone trying to cross it, and also protected by the aforementioned no-fly zone. It has to be conceived and deployed as part of a real plan for peace, putting the needs of Ukraine far above the demands of the Russian Reich. Especially now that another YouGov speed poll shows that the British public have doubts about the 18 August group therapy session and the likelihood of it ending the war within a year.
Unfortunately, we don't really know how YouGov define "peace" in that poll. After all, flattening Hiroshima and Nagasaki did bring peace, didn't it? But, rather than semantics, the real debate is now about what shape the proverbial "security guarantees" for Ukraine should take. Part of the scheme is to isolate Vlad The Butcher, mostly by awakening Trump to the basic reality that Russia is the aggressor and the obstacle to peace. And thusly get the USA's approval, if not their participation, for a strong European-led arrangement that involves more than an impotent UNIFIL-like token force. The British military have now progressed towards a more ambitious layout for the peacekeeping force, still avoiding possible eye contact with the orcs, but defending Ukraine's skies and seas. Or, in more direct terms, a no-fly zone above Western Ukraine and a massive minesweeping operation in the Black Sea. Which needs to have Turkey on our side, so they grant passage through the Straits to at least the five Ukrainian minehunters currently homeported in England and the Netherlands, and some Royal Navy minehunters and escort ships for protection. This could become tricky to implement, so we must always keep the pressure on our government to be bold and determined, and never let them forget which side the British people are on.
Three quarters of Brits care about who will win the war, and four out of five want Ukraine to win. Even if some of us may suffer from some Ukraine fatigue, with the prospect of a seemingly never-ending war, and have doubts about the best ways to show our support, the foundations for this support have not been shaken. Even Reform voters care about the outcome and want Ukraine to prevail, which should be enough for Keir Starmer to dismiss Nigel Farage's gesticulations in favour of Russia as irrelevant. The only road to a just and lasting peace is a massive show of force and resolve, exactly Trump's former concept of "peace through strength", which he seems to have forgotten after Putin's intense cuddling of his ego and vanity. This is why we, and the rest of Europe too, must use everything we have to convince the Russian Reich that we genuinely do have a dog on this flight and mean it. Because the last three-and-a-half years have taught us a lot about Russia and the kind of predatory rogue state they are. Putin himself spelt it out six months before the invasion of Ukraine, but we didn't listen. He expanded on it in his infamous interview with Tucker Carlson last year, and too many turned a blind eye again. Now the International Institute for Strategic Studies is issuing another detailed warning about Russia's strategy of dominance and submission, their dominance and our submission, through corruption, sabotage, division and exploitation of our weaknesses. Time to man up and let the Empire strike back, mates.
Before there's going to be any end to the war, Putin will have to lose it. Or he will at least have to be convinced that it can't be won. The path to peace is through convincing Putin that he won't win the war, that it's hopeless. Right now, if you really, really want peace, then you must arm Ukraine and defend it until Putin realizes the war is over.
© Pete Townshend, 1968
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