I’m not saying this is necessarily a smart move btw - can you outflank Reform on immigration? Are you ignoring the v real threat from the Lib Dems/Greens? But I think it’s going to happen - ThreadSky

sophyridge.bsky.social • 30 days ago

I’m not saying this is necessarily a smart move btw - can you outflank Reform on immigration? Are you ignoring the v real threat from the Lib Dems/Greens?

But I think it’s going to happen

Comments

cobieef.bsky.social•30 days ago

The bigger issue for Labour is next year's elections if they keep this direction. The right aren't going to switch because they don't trust Labour and never did. If Reform can prove they're winning, more right-wing voters will flock to them as victory matters.

cobieef.bsky.social•30 days ago

Labour, therefore, is doomed.

cobieef.bsky.social•30 days ago

As with all far-right organisations, only ideological purity matters. Only obedience. No matter how dangerous or self-defeating. And Labour's biggest problem is that they have a PM in name only. In reality, McSweeney runs things, and the right-wing press own McSweeney.

cobieef.bsky.social•30 days ago

And that raises another problem for Labour - there is no-one with enough of a voice in Starmer's Labour to question their terrible direction of travel and keep them from making mistakes, anymore. Just look at all the planted questions at PMQs. It's a compliant shambles.

cobieef.bsky.social•30 days ago

Labour's message of, "We understand you think everything is awful, we do too, and only we can fix it (by making it worse)" is literally why we voted out the Tories. The party is already mutinous, and having MPs hand-picked for compliance is going to make things far worse, not better.

cobieef.bsky.social•30 days ago

Which is a real shame because if Labour embraced positivity and progressivism, and stood up against Farage on Brexit and immigration, he'd have more persuasive, authentic arguments, and he'd be able to lure back apathetic voters and those abandoning the party in droves.

cobieef.bsky.social•30 days ago

And, whilst I loathe Nigel Farage, we live in an age of authenticity, and Starmer is just inauthentic in the positions he has taken. Farage isn't. People can smell inauthenticity. Nobody believes that Starmer is doing this because he believes it. Just as a cynical ploy that isn't working.

cobieef.bsky.social•30 days ago

Morgan McSweeney and Blue Labour and Starmer are only going to go down from here. Doing things your base hates - for the Tories, it was increasing immigration; Labour is putting children into poverty, and attacking minorities - doesn't win you votes and alienates the base.

cobieef.bsky.social•30 days ago

It'll be a year after their obviously awful policies have damaged the country, America looks like it will trigger a global recession, Pride events will attack them on trans rights, disabled suffering will be in the news, and nothing will have gotten better - after a year of robotic repetition.

cobieef.bsky.social•30 days ago

So Labour are competing for a smaller and smaller group of votes the further right they take the country. And, as a party of the traditional left, that shrinks their vote as their base flees in disgust. Next year's vote is likely to be a bloodbath because...

cobieef.bsky.social•30 days ago

So, then, the issue for Labour is that by occupying only the far-right space, they drag more of the country far-right, but a significant proportion of their vote starts to stay home or looks to the Lib Dems and Greens as an alternative. Because there is a roof on the far-right vote.

cobieef.bsky.social•30 days ago

That likely means Kemi Badenoch is toast. If the Tories moved to the centre, again, they could kill Reform and Labour, and hoover up huge votes, but that isn't likely to happen. It's likely they go for Jenrick and that vote remains split, Tories lose out from changing leader.

theeconomiclens.bsky.social•30 days ago

It would be a terrible move. It would be telling people Reform are right so why not vote for them. Better to do two things.

theeconomiclens.bsky.social•30 days ago

Realise they’re not going to win someone mad about immigration so make the case for why it’s good. And then lean in to all the other things that their voters ask for so they want to vote for them.

theeconomiclens.bsky.social•30 days ago

For example - focus on improving the NHS to prove how important it is

happyannie.bsky.social•30 days ago

I just wish and hope that Lib Dem can get serious and be a proper option.

jambodes.bsky.social•30 days ago

It helps if the media treat them as such.

Bet they and the Greens would kill for the coverage Reform and Farage get.

happyannie.bsky.social•30 days ago

Totally agree. I wish Reform were properly scrutinised when delivering their messages. I get that coverage has to be neutral but it is loaded towards them. Some people watch skewed news channels and don't understand the bias. How can MPs be allowed to do this?

msbluewednesday.bsky.social•30 days ago

As usual our ‘Of’ regulators are useless. As is our national broadcaster & billionaire media owners.

jambodes.bsky.social•30 days ago

The balance of coverage for Lib Dems, Greens has been skewed for years

Where the coverage does NOT have to be neutral, is on blithely repeating Farage/Reform lies without challenge.

doctoralexh.bsky.social•30 days ago

With green/libs option, labour will lose as many votes pandering to the right as they’ll ever win. Problem with the ongoing brexit issue is it split trad parties and only the harder right has it “easy” policy wise and has an unflinching core to rely on.

muralive.bsky.social•30 days ago

Labour needs to reverse WFA and benefit cuts widely hated by everyone. Focus on progressive policies that can bring tactical votes from LD/Greens. Labour needs a wide tactical voting anti-Reform coalition to win in 2029.

jonayre.uk•30 days ago

Tbh it's a really dumb move. If anything today's results show that tacking towards Reform has the very opposite effect.

It simply confirms to certain voters that Reform's position is correct and the Tories and Labour are just the weak copy.

The solution is to tack in the opposite direction.

paulwoodhead100.bsky.social•30 days ago

It would be stupid to do that - softens the progressive labour support and still won't win back Faragists

soozuk.bsky.social•30 days ago

I mean...it's demonstrably not a smart move. They've been doing it since before an election they won with 33.7% of the vote and that was the high point.

johnrawes.bsky.social•30 days ago

Farage keeps being invited on to talk and then isn’t scrutinised and asked about his Russia and Putin relationship or Trump, and ask him about Brexit, and he needs to keep being asked about it, and not be able dodge it

jon-snowboarder.bsky.social•30 days ago

Hearing even more from Farage wouldn't be my favoured tactic.

goatsarah.org•30 days ago

So why are supposedly educated people doing the obviously stupid thing which obviously isn’t working, and in response to it obviously not working, planning to do it even harder?

pollik.bsky.social•30 days ago

"supposedly" is your answer

spetsdad.bsky.social•30 days ago

Ideology? It's nearly always the explanation when someone who is supposed to have basic intelligence does something obviously idiotic

goatsarah.org•30 days ago

I’m also learning thanks to Elvanse that neurotypical people and ADHD people have VERY different ideas on the importance of morality. No offence intended to neurotypicals. It’s just an observation.

spetsdad.bsky.social•30 days ago

A lot of people farm out their morality to an ideology (usually religious, but not always). It's risky as hell

goatsarah.org•30 days ago

For ADHDers, if something is wrong then it’s viscerally painful.

goatsarah.org•30 days ago

And even on a good day, our brains are busy telling us that we’re terrible people. The cost of ignoring a moral imperative is VAST.

stuartbudd.bsky.social•30 days ago

Most neurotypicals have programmable brains where messages can pass through the conscious, thinking part of the brain and strait to the subconscious.

Then there is the normal bias.

My bias thinks the new Reform MP looks like a proper One Nation Tory person but my thinking part kicks in before.

goatsarah.org•30 days ago

I have the opposite problem. Shit that should have been strangled at birth in the subconscious makes it out.

stuartbudd.bsky.social•30 days ago

Odd isn't it.

There are a load of people who have voted for the new Reform MP because of the political left messaging however she is way, way to my political right and unelectable and even even further to the right for you.

Yet, she has been voted in by the left and now I'm aligned to the Greens.

goatsarah.org•30 days ago

And even the Greens keep threatening to tack right too.

The fuck is wrong with all of them?

bigginjimbo.bsky.social•30 days ago

Ask the Tories. They still haven't worked it out.

sloanelysbeth.bsky.social•30 days ago

bcos they’re all being paid by the same ‘donors’ and corporations.

none of them actually care what voters want. we get the same policies regardless of who wins.

toogloomy.bsky.social•30 days ago

I wonder if Labour will wake up to the fact that their core support are deserting them because they are tired of their blue policies of supporting Brexit, victimising foreign people, lurching ever more to the right. What was the point of changing government last year?? Nothing has changed.

fplbeastmode.bsky.social•30 days ago

Labour has to stay centre left or we are Trump 2.0

pollik.bsky.social•30 days ago

Starmer is not remotely centre left. And he is emboldening Trump 2.0

thechiller.bsky.social•30 days ago

Labour haven't been centre left for years.

sloanelysbeth.bsky.social•30 days ago

labour aren’t centre-left.

some of their policies are farther right than trump.

finl3y.bsky.social•30 days ago

Tacking closer to Reform is what Labour have done. This has happened in Europe. When the ones in govt try to absorb policies from the right ppl just vote for the far right. Simply because in tacking to the right, they fail to deliver on meaningful policies to tackle issues the right are weaponising

ukanarchist.bsky.social•30 days ago

Wait until deform start running the local council into the ground giving the under 70s are taste of how badly granny has fucked them over.

bigginjimbo.bsky.social•30 days ago

Labour are doing it now (and of course were saying they were before the GE), but the Tories already have. We don't need to look to Europe when we have the fate of the Conservative party to show what happens.

harvestime.bsky.social•30 days ago

All it does is strengthen Reform. I’d never vote for them but the closer Labour tack towards them the less scared of Reform I become. It is a truly terrible course for labour to take

mintopia.net•30 days ago

Why would anyone go and see the tribute act?

They're never going to be able to outflank them.

sloanelysbeth.bsky.social•30 days ago

they can’t outflank reform in any policy area bcos reform’s positions rely on manufactured problems and outrage

every time labour move right reform will just move the goalposts

labour have already fallen in to this trap on trans rights. ‘solutions’ to fake problems and it jus loses them support

samantha42.bsky.social•30 days ago

Mhmm, the people who just want cruelty will never be satisfied with anything from labour. And the people who believe that immigration is why they cannot see a doctor or afford food will just be told labour didn't do enough because no matter what happens on immigration, it cannot solve those problems

glostermeteor.bsky.social•30 days ago

Yep, I am old enough to remember when the Far Right lot told us that all our problems stemmed from membership of the EU. They just moved on to the next further Right goal post. Progressives need to draw a line in the sand and loudly say no further.

monika-uk.bsky.social•30 days ago

It's very charitable to call Labour progressive. Some of Labour politicians might be, but I bet none of them fully embrace progressive values. If they did, they would already defected to the Green Party.

Prove me wrong.

glostermeteor.bsky.social•30 days ago

I think some of them are. @labourlewis.bsky.social is an example. But the problem is the leadership, its been captured by the Blairites/Blue Labour folk.

lapideus.bsky.social•30 days ago

isn't that the guy who earned a spot in the bluesky ratio hall of fame for telling a constituent who asked whether he's gonna do anything about his party shitting on trans people "you don't demand solidarity"

yeah i dunno about that one chief

monika-uk.bsky.social•30 days ago

So, here we are. Even Clive Lewis, and I follow him.

It's ridiculous, tbh. It's as if they forgot what solidarity with minorities mean.

I'm cis-hetero, and i welcome trans women into women's places because they join the fight against patriarchy.

You can't be a feminist and anti-trans women.

monika-uk.bsky.social•30 days ago

There are some, but can't they see what you and I see? Why stay in a Labour Party who betrays socialist values and flirts with neoliberalism?

mrbgumbo.bsky.social•30 days ago

It's absolutely not a smart move. Reform can spout their dangerous fantasies which the fools and racists will soak up but they're totally incompatible with operating the country in a responsible manner.

neilbilbo.bsky.social•30 days ago

Massive mistake I think is what you mean Sophy...

diddlysquat20.bsky.social•30 days ago

Agree whole-heartily. Not the right course i would think, but the inevitable one.

macca77.bsky.social•30 days ago

I don’t.

More to be gained from pulling the majority of voters with you not pandering to a dying minority which make noise in a first past the post system.

thatidiotmonro.bsky.social•30 days ago

Even though people who are swayed by these policies will more likely vote Reform anyway, because they're already there and Labour have been shown to be unreliable with promises and pledges over the last year.

Labour didn't shed loads of voters to Reform, they lost them to not voting.

brydo1984.bsky.social•30 days ago

The media are complicit in any votes reform gets and in turn partly responsible for the outcome and damage they will do. Reform and farage are never scrutinised throughly and constantly platformed by sky, bbc etc. You should all be ashamed of yourselves.

brydo1984.bsky.social•30 days ago

Why would anyone want to outflank reform on immigration? Instead call them out on their racism and go at them hard for their lack of substance and expose them for the lying grifters they are.
What happend to politicians actually leading and doing what's right rather than pandering to the media guff.

realjohncarvill.bsky.social•30 days ago

Well yes, clearly, because this is what they’ve already done. And they’re so stupid that their solution to finding themselves in a hole will be to keep digging.

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