I guessed that the councillor is a Tory… looks like he is.

The US defence industry does pretty well though, given that it makes the world’s best military hardware. Although of course Boeing has had problems in recent years so I guess it’s not all great.

But yeah military and civilian benefits would of course both be good, I’m just saying that military research has produced stuff that also has civilian benefits.

Military R&D has created good technology though, like the internet, and GPS. Both of these obviously benefit civilians.

Also maybe Europe needs to be more serious about defence and military capabilities, especially if Trump weakens NATO. Macron said yesterday that Europe needs to stop being “herbivores” and start being “omnivores”, otherwise the world’s “carnivores” will push Europe around.

Fair enough. I mean I would definitely say it’s true that Starmer has moved rightwards since he was elected as Labour leader, but I guess I would consider him now being somewhere in the centre. People on the right would say he’s far-left I bet. “Two-tier Keir” and all that.

I was cycling the other day and a car passed me very closely. Either they weren’t looking or they were trying to make a point. It was unusual because most drivers do give enough space, but sometimes there are people who just want to provoke you (I had someone in a van shout at me some time ago, for literally no reason).

Maybe in some countries they wouldn’t refer to Labour as centre-left, but I think the majority of Brits would agree with Labour being called centre-left.

Starmer would probably like to introduce more left-wing policies, like when he said a couple of years ago that he wanted to abolish university tuition fees, but Corbyn’s election losses seemed to lead Starmer to believe that he needed to be more centrist in order to successfully replace the Tories.

Anyway I think most people in Britain and around the world would refer to Labour as a centre-left party even if they disagree with Labour’s policies.

The reason I think Labour are centre-left is because I think most people would think of them that way. I’m not trying to defend them or anything like that, I didn’t even vote this year. I just think that’s how most people would refer to them.

Maybe left and right are relative terms and Labour are centre-left within the context of British politics… but maybe this is the wrong community for me to say things like that.

I think in any country you have to appeal to undecided voters in the centre in order to win an election. So yes maybe the Dems shouldn’t appeal to “the right” but they probably need to appeal to the centre.