Marketing department should hang their collective heads in shame for not going with "Dum-bel" anywhere ...they even have the shape for it!

I think there's always been a bit of a gap, at some points in history more so than in others, but I'm not sure there's ever been quite such a stark cleavage been the policy and the politics as there is currently.

In my more cynical moments, I despair that politics has become increasingly divorced from actual policy. Farage gets it; he knows the way to get attention is all about brand and image not any of the things he says (hence why anyone trying to analyse his words ends up in a self-contradictory mess).

My personal favourite is down the drain. 👍

My one and only competitive goal for the university hockey team scored here...

Definitely worse places it could have been! 😎

Or bush, either way the complexity increases and it's a judgement call as to how complex is too complex, at which point the joke is lost in confusion and explanations.

I think Moose got it about right.

This is all about branding. He knows the Tory brand is pretty Toxic right now and is hoping that no one notices that, behind the shiny new Reform brand, he's offering an even more extreme version of everything people hate about the Tories.

Sadly, a lot of people seem to want to buy what he sells.

Too many people seeing it as a career rather than a calling.

Theose ones may be good at speaking in public or whatever but they have no grounding in any sense the national interest, just personal interest.

Very true but that's why we're losing doctors, not legislators.

...by public outrage at the idea that they vote on their own pay and it's going up much faster than anyone else's.

You're correct that Drs are underpaid versus 30 years ago but the comparison with MPs, while rhetorically effective, doesn't really work.

I think the problem with that analogy is that MP are relatively underpaid compared to legislators elsewhere (the flip side being historically generous perks and expenses which are being wound back) so, in fairness, you expect MP salaries to rise much faster than inflation, the pace only limited...

The dam breaks in one of two ways: either Labour need coalition partners in order to govern and agree forced to accept PR as the price or the press are so nakedly politicised that Labour no longer care what they have to say and regulate anyway.