Simple dumb populist/man down the pub, 'let's have a vote on it' suggestion, I should just stop reading here. But I won't. You've phrased the description of such an issue in a way that would never make it past the first screening of any reputable poll company, let alone a voting commission. Fortunately we have a poll on the very issue which gives us an idea of the actual levels of such support in the UK.

 

@1892512828579615067

 

That's just one question on a broader theme, but it's clearly a majority support the levels of funding we are giving to Ukraine - should that number increase, they might be reticent with only 24% saying 'more' but that is such a hypothetical right now that saying 'I think we know the result of this vote' is stupid, given the incredible cross-party support to Ukraine that is almost unanimous among MPs and the public. Except those Reform scammers, I notice with annoyance that after hearing idiotic braying from them on every other subject, they're suspiciously quiet on Ukraine. But even then Reform voters are split.

 

so shove right off out of here with 'democracy has spoken'. Even in the US, the Republicans have been split on whether to aid Ukraine, Trump is certainly against it, but many Senate and House Republicans were advancing aid packages with no issue up to and during the election.

This is a relatively acceptable scenario, and I see no reason the EU leaders wouldn't accept that in the short term given how Trump's torpedoed anything better. Long-term, it will only cause issues as new generations of leaders take power and want to reassert their preferences. The only correct way to sort the fate of these territories for good, other than Ukraine just keeping them as is their sovereign right, which is what they should do, is an actual honest-to-goodness 'let's have a vote' plebiscite (you do this for important constitutional changes) that is administered by the international community, without any military force and accepted by both the Russian and Ukrainian state.

 

Of course if you ask people stupid questions like “should we help you Ukraine” people will say yes. If you ask real questions with real choices you get real answers.

 

@1891437366667042831

 

You’d never get a deal done let’s be honest. If you want to twist reality into your bias you can do it but the objective reality is the majority of people do not want to spend money on an unwinnable war and the more you push it m(drag it on, keep on spending) the more that will become clearer.

 

BTW your man in the pub thing is funny because they do that for most major decisions in Switzerland and it works pretty well.

 

https://kyivindependent.com/51-of-americans...ine-poll-shows/

 

And in the poll you put it said only 24% of Britains support sending more aid.

Edited February 22Feb 22 by Liam sota

I generally balk at increases on defence spending too, that's why I'm not a policymaker. People on the street do not react in the way that we need them to react on policy questions, which is why we don't do that in politics.

 

Ben Wallace, one of the few Tories I trust on his specific subject, made good points on QT that actually do make me uncomfortable to hear in reality but need to be addressed, in a conversation on defence spending he pointed out that the increase to 2.5% that Labour have planned is not enough, and you can't include money such as that we are sending to Ukraine in those figures - that should be over and above and they are important as our strategic ally whatever happens. While I think Trump's suggestions of increased military spending for European nations are ridiculous and many European countries are already in the upper echelons of countries on GDP defence spending, it is clear that we need to raise it up for the time being while the Americans are being unreliable arses.

 

(I do not know enough about Switzerland's internal policies to comment but they have a rather unique political system that may be hard to translate)

And in the poll you put it said only 24% of Britains support sending more aid.

 

I also said this!

 

It's combined with 41% who think we should maintain our level of support.

 

I also said this!

 

It's combined with 41% who think we should maintain our level of support.

 

Okay but look at this

 

Readiness to support Ukraine “until it wins” has fallen sharply across western Europe at a critical time for the country, a survey suggests, as Donald Trump’s forthcoming return to the White House raises questions over the future of US military assistance to Kyiv.

 

December polling by YouGov in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Denmark and the UK found public desire to stand by Ukraine until victory – even if that meant prolonging the war – had slumped in all seven countries over the past 12 months.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/...gov-poll-survey

 

Don’t you see the trajectory? The longer it goes on and the more it negatively affects citizens of other countries the less people will sympathise with Ukrainians. Considering the Russian stances you guys have wouldn’t that be easy propaganda for Russia to exploit?

 

It’s not enough but ultimately it’s not a priority given the financial position the UK is in. At some stage it becomes classism in a way because we all know who is really going to be hit to afford these two things and to be honest the majority of those vehemently acting Ukrainian tend to be a specific kind of person more than not(not meaning here but on social media I certainly notice it)

 

So if defense spending is increased then it should be via borrowing not cuts

Yeah Liam that "let's have a vote" is ridiculous. :lol: If we applied the same logic to everything people would say no.

 

I think the argument that Ukraine won't win the war so they should give up is such a weak one. By that logic if any larger state invades a smaller one, should they just give up? The loss of life is pointless, of coruse it is, but Russia can't face a war forever - they are running out of money, their economy is in the tatters and they are needing to conscript new recruits. At some point they would give up and come to the negotiating table. I think what has really pissed off most people is Trump has his his small dick energy to think he could end the war in days.. peace deals take a long time to thrash out. It's not an episode of Shark Tank or Dragon's Den where you can just present an offer and its a take it or leave it.. it's why this administration will ultimately come unstuck as I don't think it is possible to run foreign policy or a state as a business.

 

Everyone should watch that Newsnight interview with the head of MI6 (I suspect a few of us not lurching to the Far Right already have..) - clear as mud what the state of play is and what Russia see as a longer strategy post war.

 

The UK should hqve just given up in 1940, after France folded following the Sittelkrieg, don't you know!

 

War weariness is a thing, but stop Russia today, or stop them in a major war tomorrow. That's the choice. Sorry.

Okay but look at this

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/...gov-poll-survey

 

Don’t you see the trajectory? The longer it goes on and the more it negatively affects citizens of other countries the less people will sympathise with Ukrainians. Considering the Russian stances you guys have wouldn’t that be easy propaganda for Russia to exploit?

 

It’s not enough but ultimately it’s not a priority given the financial position the UK is in. At some stage it becomes classism in a way because we all know who is really going to be hit to afford these two things and to be honest the majority of those vehemently acting Ukrainian tend to be a specific kind of person more than not(not meaning here but on social media I certainly notice it)

 

So if defense spending is increased then it should be via borrowing not cuts

 

That it shouldn't be the poor who bear the burden of Russia's war is true and where borrowing is viable that should be done, but there are fewer greater priorities than ensuring the continuation of our democracy, and by extension the same for our close friends.

 

The numbers, to me at least, indicate some resilience on this subject, even in America where it's more polarised, an American president who wanted to could have continued spending without too much of a revolt, Ukraine financing wasn't top of most concerns in last year's election, it was a talking point among Trumpist demagogues but not a mainstream one.

Zelensky press conference on right now, he's going hard on security guarantees for Ukraine as he should and the eye-catching alert that went out is that he said he'd step down as president if it meant NATO membership, obviously not literally what is likely to happen, but a good rebuff to Trump both on his insane 'dictator' accusations and an indication of how important it is that Ukraine receive long-term safety as the result of any deal.

 

(any deal that doesn't do that isn't worth the paper it's written on)

If we have such a honourable democracy then let’s test it out. How about each country being forced to pay for this war lets people vote on it. UK citizens get to vote on whether they want to spend billions more funding Ukraine in a losing battle or do they want it spent on UK needs. I think we know the result of this vote. Partly Trump’s win was that vote in itself. Democracy has spoken in a way. It wants the war to end.

 

Using death as an excuse? So the alternative? It’s a pretty odd stance when you word death as an inconvenience to your face-off with Putin. There is an option to save thousands of lives and end a war and that option is more appealing than the never-ending alternative with no real direction or goal or means to win.

 

Russia are not honest brokers? Ok but who the hell is? Ukraine? Didn’t they blow up a pipeline and blame it on Russia, is Trump an honest broker? Don’t tell me you think the EU is?

 

The war has to end and IF everyone can accept that THEN everyone can work towards getting the best deal for Ukraine. But it seems some people would rather prolong the conflict than admit defeat on certain things such as NATO for Ukraine.

 

Best case scenario. Russia keeps Crimea and Donbas. Europe writes off Ukraine’s debt. They reach a sensible and not mafia type deal with the US to pay them back. They get proper security guarantees without NATO or anything threatening to Russia. Russia obviously know such conflicts will cost them trillions and hundreds of lives to get pretty much nowhere. That’s the best deal for all concerned. The EU is full of stubborn over educated simpletons who won’t work towards that and they’ll put Ukraine in a position where they get fleeced by the US or obliterated by Russia then they’ll sit back and talk like moral guardians of the world criticising both Trump and Russia when they were the main obstacle to peace from start to finish. Of course you keep the option to continue the conflict if Russia have no concessions and show no willingness to budge but I’m pretty sure they want a route out of this stalemate too.

Ukrainians opinions vary. And it’s hard to judge. War is an inflammatory time. Also nobody wants to believe their people died for nothing. US isn’t just money and weapons but they have a huge amount of anti-missiles that is maybe the main reason Russia can’t just blitz Ukraine. Europe could try but it’d be very costly and cause upheaval within those country and lose Ukraine a lot of support within those populations. There was an optimum time to make a deal but nobody showed an interest in making one. Now Russia have the upper hand not because of traitors but because of the situation on the ground.

 

Starting to realise the need for immigrants is lowkey dogma though I mean Japan has existed for how long? They’ve been a great culture and country for how long? But now they NEED immigrants? Huh. They have population issues but the causes and solutions don’t have to be related to immigrants. Nothing is absolutes. Migration has existed forever. The point is the scale at a point where it leads to a disgruntled society without any coherent identity is clearly negative and at this point overwhelmingly obvious and it just leads to extremes. You saw with the lines Britain drew throughout the Arab world created decades and decades of conflicts and violence. They didn’t understand you can’t just do that without any knowledge of sectarianism or disputes or ramifications. And yet in a different way it’s just the same thing again.

 

Wow, not a fan of our current democracy, one of the least-bad systems in world history..... That explains a lot.

 

OK, apart from being totally impractical to just ask everybody an opinion on everything based on no information about the thing they are being asked about lets consider that you can people to say any old bullshit by manipulating how you phrase the question, and frankly everyone would get pissed off with it almost immediately. But OK, yes for a start lets' go with:

 

"Do you want to rejoin the EU?" and see where that goes. After all democracy is not a fixed thing. Opinions change all the time. If we were part of the EU the cost of increasing military spending would be presumably shared and just like NATO, we'd get blanket insurance. Attack one attack all. There's safety in numbers.

 

How about this Question: "Bearing in mind over the last 35 years Russia has invaded:

 

Republic of Tatarstan 1994–present

Chechen Republic 2000–present

Republic of CrimeaA 2014–present

Donetsk People's RepublicAB 2022–present

Luhansk People's RepublicAB 2022–present

Kherson OblastAB 2022–present

Zaporizhzhia OblastAB 2022–present

 

Do you believe that rewarding Russia giving them Ukraine will be a deterrent to consistent liar, deal-breaker and propagandist Putin coming back for more, or going for small Baltic nations that irritate him?

 

If not, should the UK re-arm itself back to the standards we had ion the 20th century for our own future well-being and safety, bearing in mind it's within living memory that we were very nearly wiped out by fascist forces from the East?"

 

I hope those questions are helpful.

 

That you can sweepingly lump all of the EU together as "simpletons" suggests you are not perhaps the best judge of character (see Trump, now opting for "King" as his new title, which I suspect will annoy Musk who is more of "Emperor". Both of them in stylistic terms, more The Emperor as in The Empire in Star Wars, and Trump as King, more in the sense of King George III, only not quite as stable and charming.). I can at least see some sane Republicans. All former Presidents for a start, who know exactly what Trump is.

 

Or how about re: UKraine, Putin has hired in North Koreans to do his fighting for him - to avoid the upper middle classes having to sacrifice their sons, the richer ones might get a bit testy about Sonny- boy buggering about as cannonfodder, but who cares about brainwashed Asians eh? So why don't we have a vote on whether we can hire the North Koreans in for more money? Job sorted! Putin would have no choice but to kill his fellow richer folk or see reason.

 

The reason Russia doesnt attack anyone with Nuclear missiles is because of a thing called Mutually-Assured Destruction. Even evil dictators kind of realise that would be insane and self-destroying. Nobody surviving would be very happy with him. The whole point of NATO is to have that back-stop. If the USA f***-off, which is looking likelier by the day, then it's down to the UK and France to become the key figures. Given Trump's foreign-born Muskrat just sacked a load of staff paid to keep his own country safe, the lunatics are really taking over the asylum.

 

But here's another vote they could have in the UK, but not in the USA - because that is not currently a democracy and the 2 Houses voted in to run the the country policies basically talk a bit, have a coffee-break, talk a bit more, then go for lunch, then talk a bit more and go home after kneeling-down in servitude to the Grand Overlord - could be this one:

 

"Given the anger over immigrants coming into the country and taking all the jobs and Trumps desire to chuck out any (non-white) people born in the USA, should the former "model" Mrs Trump (current job unclear) and South-African racist Elon Musk be deported? Consider that shutting down his ego-project-with-no-scientific validity to get some poor sucker dead on Mars costs you all a staggering 5 billion dollars (along with his other government contracts) and the savings would be huge. Sending robots spaceships would be a tiny tiny little insignificant ickle bitty part of the cost of that still-vague idea to go to Mars, in much the same way that the 60's Apollo programme cost a fortune and was shut down due to that. Note: Musk still having issues with exploding rockets landing all over islands in the Pacific, but happily he just discontinued the people tasked with making sure they are safe, so we can look forward to lots of Musk souvenirs becoming more available globally in the future, except his satellites in Ukraine, because he wants to use them elsewhere - on his likely forthcoming global media platform Good Morning Nazis, or GMZ for short. Seig heils optional unless attending a rally."

 

 

 

Personally, I think those surveys would do quite well in getting 50% votes in any country with a democracy.

Is it crossing the line to point out that every day the war goes on is a day Ukraine kills Russian combatants, reducing the strength of their army overall and morale, which is a net positive for all of us that oppose Russia?

 

It's not far off a proxy war if we're frank.

Pretty wild exchanges between the Trump camp and Zelenskyy today. They clearly don’t like or trust each other yet are supposed to be on the same side.

17 minutes ago, LiamSotavento said:

Pretty wild exchanges between the Trump camp and Zelenskyy today. They clearly don’t like or trust each other yet are supposed to be on the same side.

Of course they don't trust each other. Putin is clearly Trump's blindspot. And of coruse, Trump hates Zelensky for not throwing Hunter Biden

A really awkwad exchange. Genuonely thought Zelensky was going to lump Vance.

45 minutes ago, LiamSotavento said:

Pretty wild exchanges between the Trump camp and Zelenskyy today. They clearly don’t like or trust each other yet are supposed to be on the same side.

Zelensky says no concessions but Trump says there has to be. Interesting. Zelensky is wrong and will have to give in. As Trump says, he has no cards left to play. His country is in tatters. Both seemed very angry. Press conference cancelled and Zelensky's leaving. Trump says "come back when you want to make peace"

Edited February 28Feb 28 by CRAZY CHRIS

31 minutes ago, Rooney said:

Of course they don't trust each other. Putin is clearly Trump's blindspot. And of coruse, Trump hates Zelensky for not throwing Hunter Biden

A really awkwad exchange. Genuonely thought Zelensky was going to lump Vance.

They came across like bullies tbh it was terrible optics. Demanding to be thanked repeatedly by a nation under attack and trying to fleece them for minerals isn’t necessary to get the point across that the war has to end. I wasn’t a fan. Bad look for Britain too since Starmer spent all yesterday sucking up to Trump and this is the response.

Zelensky has to act this way, its his country Trump is talking about selling away to a hostile invader, but what a contrast with yesterday (though he can't play them the way Starmer did).

Disgusting behaviour from Trump and Vance, acting like Zelensky is being 'disrespectful', get that bullying behaviour out of world politics. They're coming across like entitled teenagers.

https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/114082877976878390

I mean, fucking hell. Distorting reality saying that Zelensky is not ready for peace because he thinks America is going to give him an advantage, not this way it isn't.

Just saw that on the news and it was a toe-curling watch, they should be ashamed.

White House saying another meeting could possibly take place before Zelensky leaves but he has to change his position. No mineral deal signed and no joint press conference.

Edited February 28Feb 28 by CRAZY CHRIS

This was despicable and embarrassing to watch. This administration is bullying a patriot that watched his country being devastated and his people dying for the past three years, and yet, they want him to thank them!!! Thank them for what?!!!

Ugh I’m so mad!!!

Just watched it. Its like 2 mobsters attacking a helpless shopkeeper. Pair of bullying c**ts. Im going to repeat that because no other word will do. c**ts. Extorting the victims of a democracy invaded by a tyrant by saying you have no choice do what i say give me your minerals you bast*rd and i don't give a shit if putin invades again. Not my problem. Zelenskyy trying to reason in his second language to 2 men who only care about money. We know thats true. Trump doesn't care about anyone.

Then a rant about biden and not caring about previous deals. Sign the f***ing deal Putin is God he is the true leader you are a piece of shit sign the f***ing deal.

Im paraphrasing but that was the clear intent and any whataboutery about Zelenskyy is bollocks. Sorry but its true. The man is a hero and so are the people of Ukraine they were expected to rollover in 3 days and become another putin satellite fascist regime but they stood up for what is right. Putin is the bad guy and so is the USA under Trump. If you arent strong in their eyes then you are fair game to exploit.

Giving in to bullies is not a solution. It just puts it off for a bit to allow putins economy and forces to build up.

I don't think I've ever seen anything like that before, that was truly extraordinary! It was like watching an episode of Big Brother in the White House.