Labour ran a moderately left wing campaign in 2015. They lost. They ran a very left wing campaign in 2019. They lost. In both instances (most of) the national rags systematically took apart their leader. Keir Starmer has decided that Labour can only win power by sitting on the centre ground and, given the above, I can understand that decision. However, I think the unique circumstances right now with the government at historic levels of unpopularity give him the chance to be more radical and still win power.
I disagree with the view that there is nothing between the two parties. The tories have shifted miles to the right of where they began in 2010 and have been reduced to culture wars and attacks on those who can't fight back - disabled people, asylum seekers etc. To a man/woman I think the Labour Shadow Cabinet are more empathetic and frankly competent then their Government counterparts, and they deserve a chance to fix the mess we're in.
My hang up with ‘the far right are coming’ hysteria is that it stifles the views and concerns of some instead of trying to understand them.
The polarisation of politics into Racists v Woke Lefties is why we will not see grown up progress in government. And whilst we have polarisation no party is going to make significant changes to our lives as they jump from foot to foot trying to win votes from both sides.
We all need to listen more (not the Gasroom, we are a shining beacon of reasonable debate) and scream less.
I would consider myself a conservative (with a small c) but have never been a member of the party. I hated the Thatcher years and everything she stood for, but also hated the damage that the previous Callaghan government did to the country.
Whilst I voted Tory in 2019 as the alternative in the form of Corbyn and his crew was too awful to contemplate, I honestly couldn't support them this time, even though I know Steve Baker personally.
They need a period in opposition to reinvent themselves, and to reclaim the centre ground which they occupied 14 years ago. No easy task, considering how the right-wingers are currently calling the shots.
Polarisation is an issue but needs a bit of care not to disregard some unpleasant insinuations and policies of recent times and some nasty pieces of work as just playing politics when this stuff can have a huge effect on individual people's lives, and the most rabid racist fringe has always got a lot more coverage than it ever does votes.
Over focussing on immigration hasn't done the main parties any good anyway and some of the very harsh and expensive steps dreamt up to pacify newspapers have not made any difference to overall numbers anyway.
If we can afford hundreds of millions for performance stunts like Rwanda we could probably afford to invest more in services.
I believe the rise of ‘the far right’ is down to rational people airing views about immigration and then being labelled as racist as a result. You air a concern about climate you are a tree hugger. You air a concern about gender you are a transphobe. Etc. This of course stems from socials I guess
There are always going to be extremist with extremist views and some of them lie dormant in every society (on both sides of every argument) but I would like to think that we are not marching into some new era of race war. You can’t quell this problem by simply calling people a name and hoping that shaming them makes them evaluate their views. Like every debate listening as well as talking is crucial. I’m not sure Mr Macron has got it right.
I find the Tory declaration that they will be clawing back cash by targeting tax avoidance amusing. “Please don’t leave me, I know what I need to do to change” “If you have known what you needed to do and didn’t bother to do it for over a decade, that makes you an even bigger shit than I thought you were”.
Mordant has sunk the knife in to Rishi further as her leadership bid launches but Rishi doesn’t care. He’s given up and turned to announcing bizarre policies and making himself look an arse as some form of shitposting role play to ensure there’s no chance he has to do the job any longer. A decade of consultancy will be a lot less stressful and before then he can be on the beach in early July and enjoy a summer of sport.
Beery Nige, as named by the much missed @Wendoverman, has his dog whistle at the ready and will be the first MP on the President’s guest list at Mar a Lago in ‘25. Mordant can only hope she can win the race to be Britain’s favourite right wing populist politician.
Sir Kier will have work to do. One nasty flu outbreak or another land war in Europe and his ‘a bit more leftish than the last lot but definitely not at all socialist’’ goose will be well and truly cooked.
People are completely fed up of party politics and unfulfilled promises. The whole way our country is run needs changing from top to bottom, including abolishing the House of Lords.
Do you think it is ever been thus or are we at a new low due to the ineptitude of the current bunch? I heard Starmer say the words 'the Conservative party has the right idea...' quickly followed by 'but badly implemented' in the context of childcare yesterday. My heart lifted when I heard praise from an opposing politician who recognised that an idea can be good even if you didn't think of it. And there in lies the problem. A party could come up with a policy tomorrow that solves a problem in the best most efficient and effective way possible but the other parties are too polarised to be able to recognise it, and are likely to ignore or undo it if they had the political reigns. It is politics for politicians rather than the people.
Migration has always been an issue, but it has moved from the fringes to central issues. It is now the get out of jail for all failures. My point about framing all discussion on migration as race or religious based is inflammatory. We need to understand and listen to people not label them, labelling them pushes them towards the extremes. All too often I see, for example, someone ask a question on Question Time where they have a genuine and personal concern only for the next day for that to be clipped up and shared around on social media with "LOOK AT THIS RACIST". You can't engage with people like this, you can't change minds like this, you continue to drive wedges and you will fuel some of the extreme views we see. And that is the same for so many topics in this election.
PR is never going to happen but a simpler way of getting a more varied bunch of politicians would be to remove the secret part of the ballot. I'm sure the 'nicer' parties would do better if everybody knew what everybody else was voting for.
Many thanks for the detailed response. I agree nuance is required and that labelling is unhelpful.
It was interesting and heartening for me that the two biggest applauses during last Friday’s debates were for Stephen Flynn making a positive case for immigration and for bringing up Brexit.
I really hope that after the election we can take some sting out of these issues and be more open about what the country needs to get back on a decent footing.
This country is in such a sorry state that it really needs a National Government to take over.
Luckily, if Obama wins his 4th term later this year the Democrats will get the World War they are so keen on and we'll get a National Goverment by default.
World Wars are a bit scary but at the end the people get chucked a thankyou gift. Women's votes and the NHS after the first two. Hopefully WW3 gets us that access road we so badly need.
This is a problem, but less of a problem than social media giving voices to the racists again, after they had gradually been removed from mainstream media.
There's no such thing as completely free speech when it's so easy to manipulate people with fake information& lies.
I've come to the unfortunate conclusion that a large portion of people simply aren't intelligent enough to have access to the vast amount of information available to them online, and understandably, the dimmest of them coalesce around the simplest arguments. These arguments tend to be on either extreme (but more commonly far-right), and turn politics into someone like football where you support your "team" regardless of what happens.
Couple that with the extreme cynicism of online political lobbying / disinformation deliberately targeting those with the least understanding and it's a horrible mess.
Catch 22 as you can't tell people they're not able to understand they're being lied to, but by humouring them you allow nonsense to proliferate.
Comments
He’s certainly scored a few own goals.
The major problem with Politics is that it's dominated by Politicians.
My wife has Enoch Powell's autograph.
Can anyone beat that for an embarrassing political comment?
I once met Cyril Smith and thought he was a nice chap. It was a long time ago.
Labour ran a moderately left wing campaign in 2015. They lost. They ran a very left wing campaign in 2019. They lost. In both instances (most of) the national rags systematically took apart their leader. Keir Starmer has decided that Labour can only win power by sitting on the centre ground and, given the above, I can understand that decision. However, I think the unique circumstances right now with the government at historic levels of unpopularity give him the chance to be more radical and still win power.
I disagree with the view that there is nothing between the two parties. The tories have shifted miles to the right of where they began in 2010 and have been reduced to culture wars and attacks on those who can't fight back - disabled people, asylum seekers etc. To a man/woman I think the Labour Shadow Cabinet are more empathetic and frankly competent then their Government counterparts, and they deserve a chance to fix the mess we're in.
There was the Michael Portillo incident.
My hang up with ‘the far right are coming’ hysteria is that it stifles the views and concerns of some instead of trying to understand them.
The polarisation of politics into Racists v Woke Lefties is why we will not see grown up progress in government. And whilst we have polarisation no party is going to make significant changes to our lives as they jump from foot to foot trying to win votes from both sides.
We all need to listen more (not the Gasroom, we are a shining beacon of reasonable debate) and scream less.
@AlanCecil had indicated his colours on here a few times. Got an instinct that Bargie might dress to the right as well?
I would consider myself a conservative (with a small c) but have never been a member of the party. I hated the Thatcher years and everything she stood for, but also hated the damage that the previous Callaghan government did to the country.
Whilst I voted Tory in 2019 as the alternative in the form of Corbyn and his crew was too awful to contemplate, I honestly couldn't support them this time, even though I know Steve Baker personally.
They need a period in opposition to reinvent themselves, and to reclaim the centre ground which they occupied 14 years ago. No easy task, considering how the right-wingers are currently calling the shots.
Polarisation is an issue but needs a bit of care not to disregard some unpleasant insinuations and policies of recent times and some nasty pieces of work as just playing politics when this stuff can have a huge effect on individual people's lives, and the most rabid racist fringe has always got a lot more coverage than it ever does votes.
Over focussing on immigration hasn't done the main parties any good anyway and some of the very harsh and expensive steps dreamt up to pacify newspapers have not made any difference to overall numbers anyway.
If we can afford hundreds of millions for performance stunts like Rwanda we could probably afford to invest more in services.
I believe the rise of ‘the far right’ is down to rational people airing views about immigration and then being labelled as racist as a result. You air a concern about climate you are a tree hugger. You air a concern about gender you are a transphobe. Etc. This of course stems from socials I guess
There are always going to be extremist with extremist views and some of them lie dormant in every society (on both sides of every argument) but I would like to think that we are not marching into some new era of race war. You can’t quell this problem by simply calling people a name and hoping that shaming them makes them evaluate their views. Like every debate listening as well as talking is crucial. I’m not sure Mr Macron has got it right.
I find the Tory declaration that they will be clawing back cash by targeting tax avoidance amusing. “Please don’t leave me, I know what I need to do to change” “If you have known what you needed to do and didn’t bother to do it for over a decade, that makes you an even bigger shit than I thought you were”.
Mordant has sunk the knife in to Rishi further as her leadership bid launches but Rishi doesn’t care. He’s given up and turned to announcing bizarre policies and making himself look an arse as some form of shitposting role play to ensure there’s no chance he has to do the job any longer. A decade of consultancy will be a lot less stressful and before then he can be on the beach in early July and enjoy a summer of sport.
Beery Nige, as named by the much missed @Wendoverman, has his dog whistle at the ready and will be the first MP on the President’s guest list at Mar a Lago in ‘25. Mordant can only hope she can win the race to be Britain’s favourite right wing populist politician.
Sir Kier will have work to do. One nasty flu outbreak or another land war in Europe and his ‘a bit more leftish than the last lot but definitely not at all socialist’’ goose will be well and truly cooked.
We live in interesting times.
People are completely fed up of party politics and unfulfilled promises. The whole way our country is run needs changing from top to bottom, including abolishing the House of Lords.
Party politics divides the nation.
Do you think it is ever been thus or are we at a new low due to the ineptitude of the current bunch? I heard Starmer say the words 'the Conservative party has the right idea...' quickly followed by 'but badly implemented' in the context of childcare yesterday. My heart lifted when I heard praise from an opposing politician who recognised that an idea can be good even if you didn't think of it. And there in lies the problem. A party could come up with a policy tomorrow that solves a problem in the best most efficient and effective way possible but the other parties are too polarised to be able to recognise it, and are likely to ignore or undo it if they had the political reigns. It is politics for politicians rather than the people.
Yes totally agreed. It is down to the ineptitude of the current bunch and probably goes back 10 /15 years or so.
And that is both Tories and Labour and the rest.
Every election in my lifetime has had a focus on immigration. It’s constantly in the news and the focus of the right wing press.
What further grievances need to be aired that haven’t been discussed ad-infinitum before?
Migration has always been an issue, but it has moved from the fringes to central issues. It is now the get out of jail for all failures. My point about framing all discussion on migration as race or religious based is inflammatory. We need to understand and listen to people not label them, labelling them pushes them towards the extremes. All too often I see, for example, someone ask a question on Question Time where they have a genuine and personal concern only for the next day for that to be clipped up and shared around on social media with "LOOK AT THIS RACIST". You can't engage with people like this, you can't change minds like this, you continue to drive wedges and you will fuel some of the extreme views we see. And that is the same for so many topics in this election.
PR is never going to happen but a simpler way of getting a more varied bunch of politicians would be to remove the secret part of the ballot. I'm sure the 'nicer' parties would do better if everybody knew what everybody else was voting for.
Many thanks for the detailed response. I agree nuance is required and that labelling is unhelpful.
It was interesting and heartening for me that the two biggest applauses during last Friday’s debates were for Stephen Flynn making a positive case for immigration and for bringing up Brexit.
I really hope that after the election we can take some sting out of these issues and be more open about what the country needs to get back on a decent footing.
This country is in such a sorry state that it really needs a National Government to take over.
Luckily, if Obama wins his 4th term later this year the Democrats will get the World War they are so keen on and we'll get a National Goverment by default.
World Wars are a bit scary but at the end the people get chucked a thankyou gift. Women's votes and the NHS after the first two. Hopefully WW3 gets us that access road we so badly need.
Is this a bit?
Or rather... how much of this is a bit?
If WW3 were to happen we would probably not be around to expect anything by way of handouts.
It'll be 'Covid in the Championship' all over again.
Oh that will be just my fucking luck. We get promoted and can’t see a game due to fallout contamination.
That and our entire 'youth development squad' getting conscripted.
But to which side?
This is a problem, but less of a problem than social media giving voices to the racists again, after they had gradually been removed from mainstream media.
There's no such thing as completely free speech when it's so easy to manipulate people with fake information& lies.
I've come to the unfortunate conclusion that a large portion of people simply aren't intelligent enough to have access to the vast amount of information available to them online, and understandably, the dimmest of them coalesce around the simplest arguments. These arguments tend to be on either extreme (but more commonly far-right), and turn politics into someone like football where you support your "team" regardless of what happens.
Couple that with the extreme cynicism of online political lobbying / disinformation deliberately targeting those with the least understanding and it's a horrible mess.
Catch 22 as you can't tell people they're not able to understand they're being lied to, but by humouring them you allow nonsense to proliferate.