Looking at the polling and asking myself for the first time where I’ll be living after the 2029 election. Because it sure as shit isn’t Farage’s Britain.
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It’s extraordinary, isn’t it? Is it that people planning to vote Reform are a mixture of people who want a fascist coup, and a lot of people who are very poorly informed and don’t know what’s happening in America?
My experience has been Europeans have much greater knowledge of what goes on here than we do there. And after Brexit they should know better. That means for many it’s a conscious decision.
I think though there’s a big swathe of the British population who get their news from the Daily Mail and similar and have a very skewed view of what’s happening. I mean, that’s how come Brexit happened.
The Democrats offered ‘more of the same’. That was not wanted.
Starmer’s offering is also ’more of the same’.
No change to Tory laws.
No change to party funding.
No change to Brexit
No change to voting.
Call me a prophet. The BBC’s Nigel is a shoe-in
Yes again I agree. I do find it surprising that Starmer doesn’t want to keep his job. He must know that ‘more of the same’ is an open goal for the BBC’s Nigel.
Interested to see how Reform fare in the polls after/if they win a few councils or a mayoralty. Guessing they'll have little clue how to run anything with any degree of efficiency or justice...
I suspect there is a fair amount of self fulfilling prophecy going on. The press keeps talking them up & legitimising them without serious interrogation. No one seems all that interested in how well funded they appear to be. Also social media is partly to blame.
Meanwhile Greens are rising in the polls & again there's no serious look at that. They're not given the same chances or looked at seriously. Meanwhile the Labour party has been instructionally captured.
Thankfully I'll be long gone by then, but the polls n talk isn't connected to the real world is it? A man who didn't shown any interest in being a MEP during his 18 year stint, and who clearly doesn't care about Clacton, is just not the sort of man to imagine reading the contents of his red box.
We need Proportional representation. So that the worse case scenario can be better diluted.
Labour have a massive majority. Yet on many things they are fiddling at the edges. The HOL needs reformed. Laws covered by ECHR could surely be written separately into our laws. Just in case.
A ban on funding from outside the UK for political parties.
The Ministerial code is utterly pointless unless it is applied. Currently MPs appear to be able to behave, in what would be sackable offences elsewhere.
I'll be astonished if Labour introduces PR or any other serious reform - the FPTP system brings enormous patronage opportunities.
Starmer et al have never been serious about electoral reform; now, with their snouts deep in the trough, I suspect they'll forget it until next time they're in Opposition
Passed some graffiti just now (in deepest Devon) saying "Farage is a Nazi". That was weirdly encouraging. Lot of people he's not fooling if there's graffiti about it!
Sadly I think all the "Keir Starmer should..." noise that goes on actually facilitates this. I don't think people realise how lucky we are to have folks in gvt who at least are attempting to make things better. Not perfect, some bodges, but the alternative doesn't bear thinking about.
How bad is the alternative when the current is locking up protestors, raiding Quaker houses, kicking disabled off assistance, attacking most vulnerable minority in society, chose to leave hundreds of thousands of kids in poverty, sided with Trump against British wishes, privatising the nhs, etc etc?
Some things I'm fine with, some less so. However some responses to my post suggest that that some highly intelligent people are also very bigoted. I guess that's life on social media. Going to do stuff in the garden and count blessings.
Don't look at the polling. Right now, it's meaningless, and is basically just there as depression bait. Of course, Labour are doing badly and Reform are doing well, because Labour's in a difficult position and the media's focusing on the worst of their decisions, not the best.
Yeah, but even so: Reform is being leveraged into a thing, and the Cons are so pathetic that there’s actual space for them. That’s not a shift I wanted to see.
Many a slip twixt cup and lip. Reform are incapable of finding any cohesion, and there'll be more infighting by the by. The Tories need to hit rock bottom before they realise they need to change, and there's time for that yet. No need to borrow trouble given the next elections's over 4 years away.
Polling atm is meaningless, other than as a tool to give lazy political journalists a horse race to write about.
What we really need to do is focus on constructive, positive and solutions-oriented stories, and as the media won't do that, we need to do that ourselves.
Honestly, I am *exhausted* trying to iterate hopeful outcomes and having even the notional good guys turn around and suck. Arguably people just don’t want the things I want here. That’s democracy.
There aren't a lot of places where the same targeting and manipulative stuff isn't happening, so, when considering where to live, questions need to include, 'How safely can I oppose, resist or moderate the far right t/here?' and 'Do I care how effective, credible or otherwise my efforts might be?'
We felt like that in 2016 & left in 2018. Never regretted it. We could see Brexit vote was just symptom of broken political & media system, decades of failed economics & corruption, & it opened the door for even more self-destructive politics.
I think more people want the good things you want than are visible. But I do hear you. I've had to block out as much political chatter as poss, cos so much of it is miserable. The only way I can maintain hope is to focus on what's being done that's good, and finding ways to do good stuff myself.
My thinking? Or the fact that 41% of Welsh people now favour independence, up from 10% a decade ago? And Scotland already has its bags packed. The rise of fascism doesn't just affect England,but it does emphasise and increase the split between the countries of Britain
They're ahead because no-one is seriously focusing on their defects and because Labour are crap. In actual elections all kinds of targeted messages attack their weaknesses, inexperience, etc. People make different choices AND they vote tactically.
For clarity: I’m not saying he’s definitely going to win. I’m saying that some sort of Farage-aspected outcome is now sufficiently plausible that I feel it’s a question I have to examine.
I find it remarkable that those whose lives have already been damaged by the effects of Faragism (Brexit, obvs) continue to look to him for answers to the problems he's helped create. A real failure of the media to interrogate root causes.
What I can't understand, though is how the vast majority of Britons now say "Ah yes, Brexit was a huge mistake, damaging the country" and a sizeable chunk of them then also say "But this Farage guy is on the money, I'd like to see him have more power"
So on the one hand, no, “it’s not that bad.” On the other hand yes, it absolutely is, and not taking the reality seriously is a familiar mistake we mustn’t repeat.
Unlikely to be a smooth road, though. People talk as if another bad govt in Westminster translates to Indy plus EU, but that’s a four or five year process at best, as far as I can see.
Regardless of how long it takes the trajectory for the U.K. looks bleak so whenever we get started is the point we make the break from that and start to build something different. The world order is unravelling as neoliberalism eats itself so we need to be ready with what we learnt from those years
Any chance you have access to R Reeves - could you point out fiscal "rules" only exist in her head and that the U.K. is a currency issuer. The markets need bonds, we don't need them. The BoE could always buy them when necessary or they could choose to stop the charade of gilt/bond sales altogether
We have been 300 years in this hobbled state, another few is immaterial. The wake up is happening in Scotland and we look to the independence movement not the independence parties to push this through. Of course it won't be smooth, WM doesn't want to lose our resources.
People are afraid and the likes of Farage feed on that. Our principle interest is Indy and our own currency, the EU can wait and we have the option of EFTA leading to EEA single market access. We must persist with the positive case for independence on its own merits, tough in a hostile U.K. MSM
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WwrUemz8-A
Starmer’s offering is also ’more of the same’.
No change to Tory laws.
No change to party funding.
No change to Brexit
No change to voting.
Call me a prophet. The BBC’s Nigel is a shoe-in
change Tory laws,
change party funding, change Brexit, change voting rules.
I have a grandson who's been living in Norway for a year and is desperately trying to figure a way to stay there.
In general, our cunts are a little less cunty.
Thankfully I'll be long gone by then, but the polls n talk isn't connected to the real world is it? A man who didn't shown any interest in being a MEP during his 18 year stint, and who clearly doesn't care about Clacton, is just not the sort of man to imagine reading the contents of his red box.
If you believe that worst case scenario has a fair chance of becoming reality, then you should work on your plan B.
Mine will be digital nomad visa - Spain in such circumstances.
Labour have a massive majority. Yet on many things they are fiddling at the edges. The HOL needs reformed. Laws covered by ECHR could surely be written separately into our laws. Just in case.
The Ministerial code is utterly pointless unless it is applied. Currently MPs appear to be able to behave, in what would be sackable offences elsewhere.
Any corruption? Sack them & send them to prison.
Starmer et al have never been serious about electoral reform; now, with their snouts deep in the trough, I suspect they'll forget it until next time they're in Opposition
Russia runs out of money in about August and that’s why Europe is backing Ukraine so strongly.
We’re in the endgame.
You did the entire bottle of brake fluid didn’t you?
I get less than zero of my news from the Mail.
The independent nation of.
What we really need to do is focus on constructive, positive and solutions-oriented stories, and as the media won't do that, we need to do that ourselves.
Life's too short to waste on a broken country.
YMMV
Though the same powers behind Farage are playing the same games in other countries, desperate to break up the stabilising regulatory power of the EU.
I feel we’re in the “woodwork” stage