Russo-Ukrainian War 2014-26

[Sheilbh]

But people who do not follow politics will not put even 10% of effort into analysing things like that. It IS a matter of story.

Sure no-one follows politics or does that. That's not my point - this isn't about voters.

Political parties or politicians need to do the analysis and have a diagnosis in order to have policy offers and narratives that tie together and are coherent/make sense to voters. It's not just that the radicals on both sides have got better comms - they've got an analysis and theory. The mainstream don't yet - as I say I think they're still in the denial/bargaining stage.

[Tamas]

they're still in the denial/bargaining stage.

Ok, I agree with that

[Jacob]

I think that sounds about right Sheilbh.

[Sheilbh]

they're still in the denial/bargaining stage.

Ok, I agree with that

Yes. Although it's 17 years since the crash, 9 years since the first big political shocks (though I think they start a little earlier - Syriza, Podemos, IndyRef, Corbyn, Sanders run in the primaries), plus covid, plus war. I am slightly out of patience at this stage - at some point they need to, in the immortal words of Cher, "snap out of it"

[Josquius]

Ed Miliband should have won

[PJL]

Ed Miliband should have won

I'm defintely warming to the idea he should be the next PM if/when Starmer is pushed out. He very much has grown in stature over the last few years IMO.

[Sheilbh]

I think he'd have been a disaster then and worse now

[HVC]

Ed Miliband should have won

I'm defintely warming to the idea he should be the next PM if/when Starmer is pushed out. He very much has grown in stature over the last few years IMO.

Insoles

[Zoupa]

NATO aircraft have started to patrol in Europe with their transponders switched off. I don't know what this means, but I'm guessing to keep the russians guessing?

[Josquius]

Reading about zelensky recently giving a speech on Ukraines ballistic missile programme.

Is it just me, or an I increasingly getting inter-war vibes from the Ukraine war?

What I mean is the war is kind of giving off vibes of what people in the 20s/30s expected another great war to be like.

Scary air power and ballistic missiles all powerful, smashing blocks of cities seemingly at random.... But without the mobile element that caught the west off guard in ww2. The front remains very WW1 styled.

Big vibes of Things to Come or other speculative fiction of the era.

[crazy canuck]

Ukraine is fighting an actual war and they have developed their own ability to hit targets in Russia.

What does the inter war period have to do with present day Ukraine, fighting to survive?

[The Minsky Moment]

Political parties or politicians need to do the analysis and have a diagnosis in order to have policy offers and narratives that tie together and are coherent/make sense to voters. It's not just that the radicals on both sides have got better comms - they've got an analysis and theory. The mainstream don't yet - as I say I think they're still in the denial/bargaining stage.

Mainstream parties still mostly have a commitment to objective factual truth in describing the world and to policy solutions that actually could work.  That puts them at a big disadvantage as against the "analysis and theory" of the extremes, which have no such pesky constraints.

[Valmy]

Political parties or politicians need to do the analysis and have a diagnosis in order to have policy offers and narratives that tie together and are coherent/make sense to voters. It's not just that the radicals on both sides have got better comms - they've got an analysis and theory. The mainstream don't yet - as I say I think they're still in the denial/bargaining stage.

Mainstream parties still mostly have a commitment to objective factual truth in describing the world and to policy solutions that actually could work.  That puts them at a big disadvantage as against the "analysis and theory" of the extremes, which have no such pesky constraints.

I don't know man. I keep seeing the mainstream parties just sticking to policies that have consistently failed for decades and refusing to try any policy solutions beyond moving deck chairs around as the ship goes down. That is why the extremes are winning. They need to be willing to do serious reforms or the nutters will end up running the asylum.

[Josquius]

Ukraine is fighting an actual war and they have developed their own ability to hit targets in Russia.

What does the inter war period have to do with present day Ukraine, fighting to survive?

The way I said.
The war in Ukraine is looking less like a 2020s war or even WW2 and rather more what someone in the 1930s would have imagined a future war to be like.

[crazy canuck]

Ukraine is fighting an actual war and they have developed their own ability to hit targets in Russia.

What does the inter war period have to do with present day Ukraine, fighting to survive?

The way I said.
The war in Ukraine is looking less like a 2020s war or even WW2 and rather more what someone in the 1930s would have imagined a future war to be like.

How would someone in the 1930s have imagined drone warfare taking out economic infrastructure targets hundreds of miles behind enemy lines.

But I grant you, the Russians seem to have thought this would be more like a late 1930s quick invasion of Poland.