I always remember Frank Skinner saying he played in a celebrity cricket match with Jeffrey Archer and how he was absolutely gutted that he turned out to be a really nice bloke!
General UK politics
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I always remember Frank Skinner saying he played in a celebrity cricket match with Jeffrey Archer and how he was absolutely gutted that he turned out to be a really nice bloke!
Plaid Cymru wins the Caerphilly by-election with almost half the votes. Labour absolutely destroyed in a seat it has held for over a century.
They need to wake up and ditch that clown Starmer before he loses more seats. Starmer is holding the party back
I do wonder what it was that the Labour Party were thinking during all that time in opposition.
From the outside it looks like they weren't clear. They appear hamstrung (as were the Tories) by slavishly following international 'laws' and political correctness to the point where their future looks uncertain. Each economic 'tweak' seems to compound the mess.
Before I'm submerged by the keep-the-faithers could someone explain where we are going?
Simply ditching Starmer seems fiddling at the edges to my unsophisticated political mind.
From the outside it looks like they weren't clear. They appear hamstrung (as were the Tories) by slavishly following international 'laws' and political correctness to the point where their future looks uncertain. Each economic 'tweak' seems to compound the mess.
Before I'm submerged by the keep-the-faithers could someone explain where we are going?
Simply ditching Starmer seems fiddling at the edges to my unsophisticated political mind.
What political correctness do you keep referring to? All I see is a complete regression of human values. In 90s, you would never have the constant attack on minorities like Reform clown going on about over representation of blacks in ADs and keep their seat. Now, they are lauded. It’s a complete reversal perpetuated by Big Corps and mislaid protectionism. What more exactly do you want?
To answer the broad question, to assess what the Labour Party were thinking when they were in opposition, you can only really go back to 2019.
Remember, at that stage everyone considered them finished. Bit like the Tories now, actually.
So they would have wanted to get rid of the loons and convince people they were normal. Well, ish.
Next up, just attack the government on everything. Helped of course by the fact the government was frequently chaotic.
Suddenly there is a route to power that they didn't expect, and they could increasingly do very little and still win, which is what happened. Just don't upset anyone!
I think at that point it would have been a case of win the election, sorry about the rest later.
The main problem there is that it gives the impression everything will be better. And everything costs money to make better. And because Labour didn't want to upset anyone, they made promises on tax, promises on spending and now they can't do very much if they don't want to break those promises.
What they really should have done is to given themselves some leeway to raise money. Sure, it would have put some people off voting for them, but what is the use of a massive majority if you can't do much and everyone hates you? They would have still won the election anyway.
Remember, at that stage everyone considered them finished. Bit like the Tories now, actually.
So they would have wanted to get rid of the loons and convince people they were normal. Well, ish.
Next up, just attack the government on everything. Helped of course by the fact the government was frequently chaotic.
Suddenly there is a route to power that they didn't expect, and they could increasingly do very little and still win, which is what happened. Just don't upset anyone!
I think at that point it would have been a case of win the election, sorry about the rest later.
The main problem there is that it gives the impression everything will be better. And everything costs money to make better. And because Labour didn't want to upset anyone, they made promises on tax, promises on spending and now they can't do very much if they don't want to break those promises.
What they really should have done is to given themselves some leeway to raise money. Sure, it would have put some people off voting for them, but what is the use of a massive majority if you can't do much and everyone hates you? They would have still won the election anyway.
If, heaven forbid, Reform do end up in government they will have the same broad problem, by the way, but worse.
For some reason, people are actually enthusiastic about Reform. Noone was really enthusiastic about Starmer. I doubt Starmer was even enthusiastic about Starmer.
While I guess that would buy Reform a bit of time, the expectation will be huge, and given they will achieve nothing, that is a lot of people who will ultimately be let down.
They are rapidly proving that they can't even run the local Councils that they control, and it will literally be the same people. Does anyone think running a Council is harder than running a whole country?
For some reason, people are actually enthusiastic about Reform. Noone was really enthusiastic about Starmer. I doubt Starmer was even enthusiastic about Starmer.
While I guess that would buy Reform a bit of time, the expectation will be huge, and given they will achieve nothing, that is a lot of people who will ultimately be let down.
They are rapidly proving that they can't even run the local Councils that they control, and it will literally be the same people. Does anyone think running a Council is harder than running a whole country?
I know in our system there's a threshold where Reform basically hoover up all seats on a fairly low % just like Labour did last time, and they seem to have been above that for ages, but surely in pure vote share they can't be THAT far off being drastically underrepresented like last time, right?
Am I right in thinking there must be some narrow band of 5% or so where they'd drop from like 400 seats to about 50?
And if so, surely that's way more possible than the media are having us believe?
View: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1983444964848873569
According to these two utter cunts we are heading for a civil war.
I think Reform are very hard to poll accurately, as they don't quite have an identifiable voter base yet (though presumably it's getting there) and their supporters are probably more likely to vote.
The polls that give indications of seats work on demographics and assumptions but that's an awful lot easier with 2 parties, and virtually every seat would essentially have had 2 parties who could win before Reform came along.
It is entirely possible that even their current polling doesn't give them a majority but the pessimist in me tells me that they are understated if anything
Presumably the voter base will just be the heavily Brexit voting seats?
I think the hero who helped avert the train stabber being named as Algerian-born Samir Zitouni might be the funniest thing I've read all year. It'd be like Nigel Farage discovering he has 98% Somalian ancestry or something.
Amazing.
Amazing.
It really shouldn't matter but as right wing voices keep shouting about the 'straight white men' who stopped the attacker it does matter.
The twitter racism has really exploded over the past few weeks.
Relentless and coordinated
Past few weeks? It’s been like that a while. I had no idea there were so many racist women who black up.
Yh its been racist for a while, but there's a really different feel about it more recently.
Maybe its a change of algo and Ive not seen this before but the islamophobia feels different also.
Maybe its the Mamdani effect
Dunno what it is
I hope he turns up to heaven and someone shoots him in the head
Fundamentally it's because they can't get a grip on the small boats. That plus all the immigration under Johnson has made it a salient issue, and most people are just too thick and weak to resist sliding from somewhat reasonable concern to outright racism and hatred.
They're fucking idiots though because if they carry on like this there'll be an even bigger backlash some way down the road and an even more insane version of political correctness than whatever "wokeness" was. Not to mention that racism and hatred are just plain evil too, of course.
Not sure racism was ever really enabled by a major political party in the same way as it is now.
While there have been racist political parties and movements around for a very long time, they were rightly considered unacceptable and the vast majority wanted no part of them.
I mean, people who were members of the BNP etc lost their jobs when employers found out. Now we have an actual MP for a party that is potentially on the cusp of government saying that she's sick of seeing non-white people on TV.
While Reform usually don't go quite as far as open racism (apart from the aforementioned imbecile), they usually do enough to point some people in the direction of who they can blame for things and what they can get angry about.
The result is that where some people wouldn't quite cross a line on social media etc, that line is now a few miles back.
While there have been racist political parties and movements around for a very long time, they were rightly considered unacceptable and the vast majority wanted no part of them.
I mean, people who were members of the BNP etc lost their jobs when employers found out. Now we have an actual MP for a party that is potentially on the cusp of government saying that she's sick of seeing non-white people on TV.
While Reform usually don't go quite as far as open racism (apart from the aforementioned imbecile), they usually do enough to point some people in the direction of who they can blame for things and what they can get angry about.
The result is that where some people wouldn't quite cross a line on social media etc, that line is now a few miles back.
As much as I hate Reform I still think they'd have got nowhere without the Boris wave and the boats. I'm not bothered by that stuff but loads of people are and it's not totally unreasonable, really. And scum like Farage have just exploited the situation, and it's got worse and worse as they've become more established and therefore "respectable".
Farage was always given a much bigger platform than others though. Even when UKIP only had a handful of councillors, UKIP were invited on question time etc. Whereas the Green party, who were then much bigger, weren't getting a sniff of an invite.
Yes, you're right, because that gave them a focus.
Boris wave on it's own probably wouldn't have worked, but the idea of lots of people arriving by boats every day is clearly something that the likes of Farage can use to scare people or make people angry.
Though I understand the small boats point. It doesn't explain the rampant Islamophobia on US accounts that are then amplified by weirdos in UK or pretending to be in the UK.
RE uber wokeness down the line, it's the same argument for the right. There'll be an even more insane version down the line.
The centre ground is seemingly lost forever.
Uber retards on both sides and here we are stuck in the middle wishing everyone would stop being so stupid.
Also, no one is really asking why the Boris wave of immigrants was needed, wonder what huge event happened in early 2020 (that wasn't plague related!)
Not sure who you are hoping gets unalived both in this life and the hereafter.
Ah must have quoted the wrong post. Talking about Cheney
