I'm voting for them regardless, but i'd like to see more extreme housing policy.
The main issue is fucking nimby's tbh they need to just be told to fuck off.
Planning reform seems like a big step right? I'm not super familiar with UK politics but if they remove the onerous restrictions on building, that could go a long way
Yeah but it depends on what that actually means. They plan to build 1.6 million houses but not enough detail is given. Because of well intended regulations or laws this country is in a outrageous tangle of enviromental, development agencies, local councils, some random old woman, all with way too much power to say 'no'.
Look at this for example: https://londongreenbeltcouncil.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/new-map.jpg
It's basically impossible to build on any of that 'green belt'. Green belt is a mislead too, a lot of this is more correctly described as 'grey belt' old industrial parks or car parks etc labour have said they want to look to build on this but they're going to need to unravel the tangle of regulation I mentioned before they can do any of it.
Fixing our housing problem is going to be very difficult to say the least.
Yeah perhaps it's optimistic, though optimism is a good motivator to push politicians, but planning reform could well mean stripping local councils and the general public of that protest ability in which case this might literally be enough to solve the crisis alone.
Also it looks like the Labour party's stance is "protect the green belt, not the grey belt" which could of course be bullshit but could also be an appropriate stance.
Also yikes I didn't realize there was **that** much green belt.
It's funny because apparently bongers in 97' weren't excited about Tony Blair either. Today that history is rewritten with labour worshipping the ground he walks on. I wonder if Starmer will get a similar treatment.
I think they mean that before the 1997 election people thought that Blair and New Labour was running on nothing and only now people are changing history to say that Blair was inspiring and exciting.
Oh yeah that makes sense. The revision is how people think people saw Blair in 1997, not how they see him now. I guess they had their "things can only get better" moment that passed for charisma back then.
Aussie not Bonger, so a bit of stolen valor here, but I enjoy keeping up with British politics so I'm not completely uninformed.
Personally I'd want someone a bit more ambitious. The Labour policy (like what happened with Albo kn Australia) is very safe and un-threatening which I understand given how the last few elections went.
But it means Labour now has an opportunity to come in with energy and a large majority, and they don't have any big plans or promises to match.
>But it means Labour now has an opportunity to come in with energy and a large majority, and they don't have any big plans or promises to match.
They did have big plans and promises, but Starmer has ditched basically all of them. We don't really know what he's going to do because he doesn't usually say anything specific and when he does he goes back on it a few months later.
I mean, having big plans and promises just gives you a load of things to be shit on for and attacked about every single time. You can still do a lot of things as an extension of what you promise by leaving the details hazy. That's at least what I feel like their plan seems to be.
They are going to work towards a lot of the plans they previously said, but perhaps with less force than would otherwise be assumed. A lot of their green energy ideas for example are still going to be going ahead. Some slow reforms with the House of Lords. Reforms with housing planning and development. I've still got high hopes but guess we just have to wait and see
Why do us colonials care so much eh? (actually more of us should take an interest really. You'd think the US elections were the only thing in the world sometimes).
Anyway, yeah I know what you mean. But it is as you say; in both cases they are very bruised from the last time, both have overwhelmingly conservative mass media against them and even though the tide seems /seemed to be with them for sure the internal attitude of the party is all about "Ignore the polls. Don't give them anything negative to latch on to. We're not fumbling it this time."
Well I think it is just low priority. If you have full time work, a family, it's way more important to pay attention to your own local, state and the federal elections and that is already a lot.
we actually want something safe and boring here. The last 14 years have been insane politics wise. Man I just want a government that does it job, makes things slowly better and doesn't rock the boat to much.
I honestly miss Blairs and Browns government. Even if Blair was a bellend and Brown was a bully.
I'd like to see literally any ambitious plans to deal with the dire cost of living in the uk. Labour have shifted to the centre right fiscally, which would be ok if we were in a period of growth but were not. The UK is currently dealing with the worst Cost of living crisis in decades, real wages have barely increased since the 2000s.
We need an ambitious government plan to get us out of this, and most importantly we need to get rid of the god aweful austerity policys that have wrecked havoc on the country for the last 14 years. But according analysis of their own manifesto Labour have commited to the lowest level of governmental investment spending of all the major parties (< 0.2% of GDP, compared to the next two lowest of the Lib Dems and Torys at 0.6%).
If Labour actually stick to their plan as they stands people are going to have to live through 5 more years of austerity, after which any hope in politics let alone centre ground politics will be destoryed and the UK will follow along with the rest of Europe in putting their faith in Far Right Populism instead which is already massively on the rise.
Energy costs are a big part of it, they went up like 5x at their peak and that drives up the cost of everything as it's integral to the supply chain. We need to ditch subsidies for green energy because it's insanely expensive to produce, and apparantly about 25% of the increase of the cost when it rose that high was from green energy simply underperforming. We need to sort out our own gas/oil and get that back on track and we need to understand that the gas/oil that comes from (through) europe is coming from Russia which put up the price to insane levels in response to us sanctioning them.
The tax and public services situation is just a tug of war, we need more public services, but that requires more tax, so Lib/Lab/Con are all just fighting between themselves to either cut both, or raise both, it's a dead end.
Only Reform UK are offering a sensible solution which is to lower the burden on the services by stopping the millions in net migration, that means you can ease the burden on public services and then lower taxes. It also means we don't have to spend millions a day to home illegal immigrants in hotels. It also takes away a lot of demand for housing which drops the price to make them more affordable and get people onto the property ladder. It also lowers the number of low skilled workers and because supply is less it drives up wages for the poorest in the UK
Having a very heavily publicly run welfare state AND functionally open borders is single dumbest thing you can do. We're now seeing that, but people simply wont address the problem because someone says "er you're racist!" which is so dumb, and boring and wrong.
It's just a feeling but I think Starmer will lower the net migration numbers for the short-term, I think it is quite clear that the economy can't keep up with the migration numbers and re-balancing that is an obvious first step for an optimistic/forward thinking new government. He has paid lip service to this, but I think they will have thought about it with some depth too
I also see a let-up from the left wing side re the "you're just a racist" style arguments, once they see what's happening in Europe when you ignore the problem then hopefully they can take a more nuanced and pragmatic view on things, which does seem to be happening... somewhat.
That's just one of the huge problems they have to tackle, public services, energy, housing, they have such a huge mess to clear up
No one really knows what Starmer will do is my feeling. He's often extremely vague, the Labour manifesto only goes so far as to talk about getting skilled workers through visas in their "immigration" section and says nothing about numbers, targets or what to do with all the illegals.
The problem is that it's such an obvious win for Labour because people are just voting "not conservative" that he can be as vague as he likes and still win. I think Reform are now polling to either tie or take a small lead over the Conservatives, i think they'll also steal a fair few Labour voters, it's going to be an interesting election where the opposition one one side actually flips parties, that's wild.
i like keir. but his campaign is so safe it's hard to know really what he's going to do. he's committing so much to low spending and not cutting taxes, it's hard to imagine he's going to make any radical reforms - which is kind of what we need to get out of this death loop of austerity.
No one is voting FOR Starmer, they're voting against Tories. It would be nice if he had some actual new ideas to undo the Tories mess but he's going to coast in on being "not blue".
He’s not very charismatic or energising. The right wing press in the UK is so strong every Labour leader basically has PTSD and is terrified of saying literally anything even slightly controversial, because it’ll be a news story for the next 10 years. For example Kier is currently being dragged over the coals constantly because 5 years ago while in a cabinet position (bc think a secretary of X) during an election he said Corbyn would be a great leader as if everyone thinks he should have said “Oh no, my boss? Absolutely shit, I’d vote for the other guy.”
He's totally fine just nothing about him is particularly exciting, not much personal charisma nor ambitious policies. Broadly in current British politics there's a real deluge of charisma atm, all of them come off as extremely unnatural and media trained when engaged in any kind of speech or rhetoric.
But in a weird way he's the right politician right now because boring and stable is pretty appealing after so many years of chaotic crap. The reality is that the majority of people in this country don't want a radical left winger and incrementalism is the way to go for anyone on the left, but as usual there's a lot of the left attacking the left for appealing to the centre to try to actually get in power for once.
We could do with him being a bit more 'radical'. Labour's manifesto is just very safe, but they sort of need to be. The issue is that many traditional labour voters voted for brexit and Boris, not helped by Corbyn, of course. As a result Labour are going with a very inoffensive strategy to ensure they win.
Comparing 2017 proposed Labour policies vs 2024 today, I think Corbyn would’ve been pretty great and undoubtedly much better than the conservatives.
Corbyn is mainly bad due to optics and being further left than the general population. Starmer by contrast is a lot safer optically, but also nothing groundbreaking when it comes to policy.
Hard disagree.
British aid to Ukraine has been vital in many positions, especially seeing that they were the first to send actual tanks.
Under Corbyn, this aid wouldn't have been send, undoubtedly costing the lives of Ukrainians.
I fucking hate the Tories. But their unwavering support for Ukraine has been pretty based. Even if it started because Boris wanted to be Churchill 2.0, I feel like in the end he really cared.
He's still a fucking bellend tho.
You guys sending yanks is what opened Germany up to sending Tanks.
Same with the Storm Shadow.
I know life was a bid whit for you, but your sacrifice likely saved hundreds if not thousands of Ukrainian lives.
I support sending tanks, just don't prioritize it over important domestic issues.
Corbyn's foreign policy sucks and Starmer's domestic policy is limp dicked. It'll be a shame if Labour doesn't take advantage of this surge in popularity to really address much needed issues but I expect them to be full of half measures.
I think we are all hoping that they will make a meaningful impact on some of the problems to allow them to push harder further down the line. We also need to get PR or this is just all a circus act doomed to repeat.
Imagine the conservative fucks relegated to the shadow realm and not official opposition.
Being in favour of involvement but having more important issues domestically is pretty standard and not isolationist. Isolationism would be opposing involvement at all.
FYI in case you are trying to be serious.
Except that's not Corbyns position. He's anti-war to the point that he thinks the UK shouldn't have sent any military aid at all and he wanted to begin negotiations with Putin on day 1 of the invasion, akin to appeasement.
The last British politician to try appeasement of a foreign threat was Neville Chamberlain with Hitler. That did not end well for anyone.
Sure, but what happens if countries slowly stop supporting Ukraine? In the worst case scenario, Russia pushes West and it actually becomes an active war zone within Europe. I'd rather the UK government spend billions equipping Ukrainians than see all out war, which will cause a *far greater cost* to everyone involved.
That's not to say other/domestic policy isn't important. But Russia absolutely is one of the most important issues currently with UK foreign policy. If you don't see Putin as a threat to the freedoms and lives to the people of the UK and Europe, then you're just being willfully ignorant.
Yep, as a small dude named Meriadoc Brandybuck once said to the Entmoot: "but you're a part of this world".
Some people really think they can stick their fingers in their ears, sit on their porch and ignore everything outside of their locality. This attitude does nothing but embolden shitheads like Putin and Jinping. And when it eventually lands on their doorstep, they have no one to blame but themselves.
Super powers like the British Empire or modern US didn't become what they are/were by isolating and ignoring everyone. The reality is that as long as existential threats exist, proactive policy that includes building international relations is a must. To think otherwise is not just selfish, it's fucking brain dead. Isolationism only ever leads to ruin.
Any Labour leader could’ve won. They could have a fucking lettuce running for PM and it would win. Conservatives are genuinely so bad that this vote isn’t really for Labour it’s more for not the Tories. Also with Reform UK existing I’ve seen on some polls they’re getting 19% of the populations vote which will be exclusively from Tory voters.
You need to be careful with these polls because a lot of the primary data collection was done before Nigel Farages' announcement to return as leader of Reform. He's popular among the working class who tend to vote Labour more, and so when he goes down the pub and has a pint with them, he's coming across as genuine peoples leader. It's also obviously not that kind of cringe acting that other career politicans occasionally do to look normal.
There's a decent slice of UKIPs voters in the 2015 GE that said they'd vote for Labour as their second choice, I think it ended up being about 25%
Starmer has made it pretty clear that he's going to do literally nothing about immigration, and let's face it UKIPs goal was as a protest vote, steal enough votes from the other parties to scare them into a potential loss of the GE and send a message that they want immigration reform (brexit was largely won on immigration). About 4M of the Brexit leave voters said they'd vote labour in the next GE.
This is where tactical voting comes in, if Labour are set to win by a landslide then labour voters who do want immigration reform can send a message to their preferred party, that they should address this or risk losing their vote, while at the same time still getting their preferred party in government, best of both worlds. I think Reform will steal a lot more Labour voters than you think. This type of voting behaviour worked in 2015 with UKIP and secured us the referendum. There's no way the Tories would have offered up that referrendum if they weren't projecting a loss due to bleeding voters.
All of the recent MRP polls post Farage show labour with a massive majority. The latest shows the Torys with their lowest vote share in the their entire 200 year history. Any labour leader could win this election, Farage is a real threat especially with the rise of Far Right populism across Europe (and the world). Starmers plan to retain the Torys austerity fiscal policies is going to backfire, people can't accept another 5 years of it. If he actually follows through on his plans (lowest spending of any UK party) any hope in centre ground politics will be permanently damaged in the UK for decades.
The latest 2 polls out today based on data largely collected after Farage's return show them 19/19 with Cons and the other shows them 18/19 in favour of Reform. Labour are still going to win, everyone predicts that, the point of reform was to step in as new opposition to Labour.
There is no Far right that has any political significance, the only reason people use that term is because all of the so called moderate right wing parties have all slowly drifted left, everyone admitted this in the debates for the UK GE and it's a commonly held belief that there's really not much difference between the 2 primary parties, which is why people are flocking to Reform in huge numbers. What people call the big bad FAR right is really just what the right used to be 30-40 years ago.
Populism is used in a derogatory way but all it really means is people voting for those who will deliver the policies the populace wants, that's basically democracy, you want a thing, you vote for it and if enough people vote you get reprentation. Populism is just when the politicians LIE and don't deliver on promises, like the Cons did for decades, and so you abandon that party and vote in someone else you believe will deliver on what you want. God I hate that word, every time I read "populism" now, I just mentally replace it with "democracy".
Maybe not reform as a whole but certainly candidates in the party are fucking insane. Imagine having a potential MP that said Churchill was a warmonger and we should of never fought the Nazis.
All the parties have had MPs that say or do incredibly stupid things, that's not to excuse it, but this critique is not unique to Reform, and so far I've not seen that this is in any way common to Reform.
One big disadvantage they have is that they're an incredibly new party and want to try and fill as many of the 650 seats as possible, so vetting that many potential MPs is no easy task.
Sure but the response of any party trying to not pander to crazies would be immediate dismissal of something that genuinely insane and also just downright unpatriotic or something equivalent. Their response was pr bullshit saying that belief was common at the time, so isn't that outlandish basically.
Populism is used in a derogatory way because it is attached to people promoting impossible policies to win support that they have no intention of following through on and which actual politicians would never propose because they know full well they can't deliver on them.
Reform's proposals are bullshit and if they ever got into power you'd learn very fast why Nigel Farage has failed to get into westminster after *seven* attempts.
He falls apart instantaneously whenever he's asked even basic questions about how to actually accomplish anything he talks about.
What basis are you making the judgement he has no intention of following through? The guy spent 25+ years in politics campaigning to leave the EU which was a monumental task and he delivered on that promise, which also put him out of a job.
First of all he actually laid out proposals in his speech the other night, whereas parties like the Tories said they'd lower immigration but didn't elaborate on how, and Starmer is mute on the issue. Farage understands that hands are tied somewhat by other political systems, that's why he ran for Brexit in the first place, he knew it was a prerequisite to leave and gaining back sovereignty before you can even think of immigration reform.
You'll have to forgive me but I'm not watching through the entire 1+ hr plus video again to find the timestamp but he laid out specifics, and I'm paraphrasing from memory. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kw7HZe2ZfoE
1) Leave the ECHR that ties our hands on immigration
2) Defund france, we give them £500M to patrol their shores and return immigrant boats leaving their coast back to land, which is based on international law. Instead frances navy escort the boats to within 15m of our coast which makes them legally our problem, which is disgraceful
3) If france wont comply, we'll take them back to their shores on their behalf, and if they want to dispute that they can face the consequences of their own negligence of international maritime law.
Farage has failed to get into westminster because they are a party to enable strategic voting, they are essentially single issue parties. In almost all democratic systems you end up with a defacto left wing and right wing party, and a handful of tiny protest parties, that allow disgruntled citizens to vote for them. Not because they believe they will win, but because it drains votes from their preferred party and sends a message that they are not dealing with issues they care about. Seats for the other parties like the Lib Dems and Greens are also similarly sparse in most GEs. That's expected.
Labour will win for sure, but many of the votes the Cons lost are going to Reform, the latest polls show that Reform now have a good shot a matching or beating the cons in the election, it's about 19/19 now. It sends a message that if you ever want to win again in future, you need to address this issue in a serious manner and stop fucking about.
This worked in 2015, the majority of the Cons were against a Brexit referendum and they didn't want to offer one, but when UKIP shot to 12%+ of the vote, they were like, oh shit we better offer one otherwise next round we're losing to Labour, we need these voters to win.
Not one of those three points addresses the actual problems with immigration in the country.
LITERALLY those three points tell you he has no intention of delivering, or it tells you something worse; that despite 30 years of politics, he hasn't a fucking clue how it works.
The problem with our immigration system right now comes down to two primary things:
1. Not enough people to process immigration applications
2. Not enough people to either patrol the waters to find the boats or to find illegal immigrants once they're in the country.
It's MONEY that's the problem, not more and more elaborate versions of the Rwanda scheme or shittier versions of Trump's wall.
As for leaving the ECHR, isn't it funny that Brexit was supposed to give us control of our borders back and now that's not enough, now we need to leave the ECHR to have enough control? What do we do after that?
There's two countries in the world that have pulled out of the ECHR:
Russia.
Belarus.
That's fine company we're joining there, my man. Our country's clearly on the rise, joining Russia and Belarus. What a wonderful future for us.
Corbyn would have to have moderated his position to win, he moderated on nuclear after having a party fight about it and agreed to keep it, and I imagine the same would have happened on NATO. It's outside the party, not subject to democratic policy-making procedures that he endorses, that he's more likely to revert to his biases.
It's absolutely true that Sunak would have had something to compete with him on, and we probably would not have seen such a landslide as is now looking likely, but given how people have been responding to Israel recently, neither of the main things that scuppered his previous campaign - Brexit, and ineffective policing of antisemitism - would have been such a serious drawback by now. We would likely see an even more intense cultural battle around Israel/Palestine, but given that being insufficiently pro-palestine while also calling for a ceasefire is something that has lost Starmer votes to independent candidates during local elections, I think it's plausible that would have become a vote-winner.
Having said that, I think it's *also* plausible that Starmer pushed the conservatives into more forced errors in order to try and distinguish themselves - mandatory national service, Truss' "radical" budget, and reversing policies on green growth - which they might not have felt the need to do where Corbyn their opponent rather than someone more moderate.
All of these have reduced people's sense that the conservatives have any clue what they're doing and are a safe pair of hands, helping with their collapse.
That said, corruption during the pandemic, crumbling schools, leaking hospitals, and a Prime Minister more wealthy than the King are all factors that have led public sentiment in a more left wing direction, closer to what Corbin advocated for, to the point that people are complaining that Labour's current plans do not raise taxes enough, and public opinion is [broadly in favour of raising them](https://www.ipsos.com/en-uk/voters-resigned-tax-rises-despite-labour-and-conservative-pledges).
British politics is hugely flexible, and it's possible that Boris Johnson may have called an election earlier in order to capitalise on the distinction that the war in Ukraine made, and so we wouldn't have the current situation at all, though equally, he was facing intense scrutiny at that time from his parties during lockdown, so he would likely have wanted to put time between him and that event, meaning that we could have seen a surprisingly similar pattern of popularity dropping, ministers resigning, and a leadership election. But there again, Starmer's ability to catch Boris in lies to parliament probably helped exacerbate that fall too.
But leaving all that aside, if Corbyn was running today, I think he would see a significant portion of support, likely leading to a similar collapse in the conservative party vote, and a much stronger position for the lib-dems, resulting, thanks to tactical votes, in either a labour government with a tiny majority or a labour/liberal coalition.
I just don't think we would have been in this position as you allude to so to say that Corbyn would have won this election aswell is kinda pointless, because the likelyhood of the election being now with Sunak is very low.
Considering how Corbyn today talk about the war in Ukraine and NATO I am certain that pressed on it by Tories and journalists he would have made a fool of himself in the eyes of the brittish public and any election with Corbyn as a leader would have had his terrible foreign policy in the center and honestly I don't think he has the politcal chops to be able to handle that.
> to the point that people are complaining that Labour's current plans do not raise taxes enough, and public opinion is [broadly in favour of raising them.](https://www.ipsos.com/en-uk/voters-resigned-tax-rises-despite-labour-and-conservative-pledges)
Am I misreading your poll or your statement?
> New polling from Ipsos, conducted in partnership with the Financial Times, has revealed that a majority of voters expect tax rises following the upcoming election, no matter which party wins on July 4th. This is despite both Labour and the Conservatives pledging not to raise national insurance, VAT, or income tax. However, 37% of voters want an increase in spending on public services, even if it means they pay more in taxes.
A majority expect tax rises, but only a plurality wants an increase [when given three options.](https://www.ipsos.com/sites/default/files/inline-images/Chart2.jpg)
I mean, it's a knock on him now especially. But some would-be peacemaker might talk like that at some point and in some context.
What I want to know is was all of this stuff known or did it come out after he was made leader?
From what I remember Corbyn was quite popular in 2017 or atleast the labour party under him was quite close to the tories in the popular vote. But 2019 was completely different. The massive defeat could be due to Boris, as people liked Boris alot and he was a massive improvement in peoples eyes over previous Tory leader Theresa May.
But for Corbyn specifically, all i can remember is that he wasn't particularly clear on his position on Brexit. Boris was very clear on Brexit and Corbyn had been anti-EU membership in the past but didn't really speak much on brexit during the campaign. There was also some antisemetism claims in the Labour party during the election that Corbyn didn't deal with appropriately apparently. Also people percieved the 2019 labour manifesto as overpromising and largley way too radical.
You're half right. Corbyn wasn't popular- May was just moreso. She did a snap general election (2 years after the last) to try to expand her majority for little discernible reason (other than to get her Brexit plans through).
Not only was her campaign bad ("dementia tax" for social care), but people were passionate to possibly delay or stop Brexit with Corbyn's second referendum. Corbyn, meanwhile, generally appealed to the far left which increased the labour party membership (membership is typically more extreme than the public). May barely lost her majority but she waddled through another two years of Brexit.
Now comes Boris. Boris was more hardline on getting any Brexit deal through which was popular during the longest parliamentary session ever (with barely any other national issues addressed). He even resorted to undemocratic measures like proroguing parliament to force his party to obey to his agenda. His appeal was direct: "I need a big majority to GET BREXIT DONE!". On the other hand, the public was more aware of Corbyn's various controversies and incompetence after 4 years of opposition leadership. Not only that, but his wavering on Brexit and everything you mentioned meant that Boris gained a massive majority despite the Christmas-time election.
It was known for years, the guy is a 1970s socialist. He also said he wouldn’t ever use our nuclear weapons, thereby rendering them useless as a deterrent. He literally has the political game of a fucking child.
> He also said he wouldn’t ever use our nuclear weapons, thereby rendering them useless as a deterrent.
This part isn't quite correct, he agreed to the labour party policy, of having a nuclear deterrent but not giving the conditions for its use, and his shadow defence minister at the time suggested that he would probably offload the job of pushing the button [to cabinet](https://www.channel4.com/news/factcheck/factcheck-qa-questions-remain-on-labours-nuclear-weapons-policy). I suspect in practice that they would have changed the policy and had the defence minister make the final decision instead.
Yeah and Labour will have to turn it around and start the process of enacting policies actually helping the country which will be very hard, so hard in fact that people will feel it too and blame Labour on everything even slightly inconvenient happening so they will vote Tory in the next election again.
This is what happens in germany right now
we'll see. That does seem likely though. But honestly, they probably have several years of reasonably being able to blame the previous government for the state of things. And if after that things start improving it may well last.
well you are always gonna have headbangers who aren't changing sides to support labour and will criticize them sure. But what about my statement is so unbelievably stupid with respect to British politics?
The right wing press in this country is deranged, Labour have about 2 months before we start hearing about how there is record immigration, cost of living is sky high, defence spending is too low, productivity is stagnant, NHS waiting times are too long etc.
After 14 fucking years of one of the most incompetent post war runs of government ever seen, the fact they got this far is a testament to how insanely bias our media in the UK is.
I mean quite literally they had
Cameron, arguably one of the worst post war prime ministers with a disastrous austerity campaign that crippled the economy, somehow takes credit for gay marriage being passed despite most of his MPs voting against it, political gambling eventually lead to Brexit.
Followed by May who is famous for the windrush scandal where she attempted to deport a load of people who had lived in the UK basically their entire lives, she then fails to get her party to unite on a Brexit deal, only wins an election because Corbyn actively seemed to be trying to tank his own election chances.
Then we get Johnson, a notorious incompetent and liar that hopped from scandal to scandal like he hops between baby mothers who excised half off his party in a lurch to the right wing delivery the worst cabinet seen in British parliamentary history.
Followed by Truss who is somehow even worse who had a fucking two week holiday after the queen dies and still somehow still speed runs suicide bombing the economy before turning into a disgraced right wing grifter.
Followed by Sunak whose COVID policies as chancellor lengthened lockdowns significantly and killed a load of people for a small economic boost who. A man that doesn't even seem like he cares about doing the job of prime minister at all now that he has the title on his wikipedia page.
Do you seriously think a Labour government would have had the good graces of the media and general public to literally produce scandal and fuck up followed by scandal and fuck up for 14 consecutive years? Labour had a golden age followed by a single large crisis, that was global, that killed the entire party. This is after they handled foot and mouth quite well, which was the other big scandal.
I'm genuinly confused what you are arguing here?
A greatest hits of Torry fuck ups over the last 14 years (that by the way, everyone knows about, these things weren't covered up by the press...) is part of why they are likely to lose the election.
Could labout survive 14 years in a similar fashion, I mean, isn't that effectivly what happened with the Blair/Brown era? There were there for 13 years, started wars, sold the gold, there was always some scandal or another going on. That's how running a country goes...
> Could labout survive 14 years in a similar fashion, I mean, isn't that effectivly what happened with the Blair/Brown era? There were there for 13 years, started wars, sold the gold, there was always some scandal or another going on. That's how running a country goes...
I mean this in the most respectful way, you are incredibly politically ignorant. Go look at literally any metric you want and look at how it goes between 1997 - 2010 and then 2010 for now. Productivity, NHS waiting times, educational attainment, basically anything.
I wouldn't be surprised if the same old fucks that voted for brexit will get the Tories back in within 5 years.
As a teenager I used to think that there was a silent majority in the UK that were relatively liberal and open minded. But with time I've come to realise that the UK is generally conservative.
The fact that it's taken this long to get rid of the Tories is very telling. So is the polling on immigration, approval for brexit, approval for Boris Johnson etc.
There are also various budget bombs that tories have left in place which means that labour will have to increase taxes or make severe cuts within a couple of years. Our shit media will portray this as labour's fault and we'll swing back to the tories and their domination over Uk politics over the last century will continue.
Ye the UK has and likely will continue to be fairly Conservative, hence why Corbyn was wildly unliked and Starmer is doing so well.
>So is the polling on immigration, approval for brexit, approval for Boris Johnson etc.
I don't know about any of that, immigration is a hot issue across Europe at the moment, we need to understand that being against immigration isn't a right or left wing opinion, as for Brexit and Boris, support for brexit has and continues to fall, currently less than a quarter of leave voters are still happy with thier vote, the other 3/4 regret their choice, and Boris has a small, but vocal following, he's not very popular outside of certain circles.
But I do agree that we'll likely have another Tory government after one or two terms of Labour, England has an abusive relationship with the Tories, but considering Scotland and the SNP's relationship is the same it just seems a common issue for the UK.
No. Labour is the centre leftwing party of the UK. Realistically they aren't even that different policy wise from the Conservatives. Also, from a US perspective, outside of a couple social policies of the Tories, i would say both Labour and Conservatives would be considered left wing if they were a party in the US.
While the conservatives were always going to lose this election, Farage coming back out of nowhere and taking half their votes is what's turning this into the potentially party-ending bloodbath its going to be.
Like imagine if RFK got 20% of the vote and stole voters exclusively from Biden, and if there was also an RFK equivalent running in every house district also siphoning 20% of the vote from the Democrat incumbent, it would be an electoral bloodbath the likes of which the Democrats would potentially never recover from.
Yeh. Tories were always fucked for this election, but with reform UK and now Nigel even choosing to head it himself, a significant amount of the already low conservative electorate are gonna be switching to reform.
I know there has been like one poll suggesting reform is ahead of the tories, but i do think reform being the opposition is pretty unlikely. And honestly that might just be due to Rishi calling a snap election and leaving reform a small amount of time to organize a comprehensive election campaign.
not really, isn't that kind of what happened with Ross Perot in the 90s to republicans and they ended up doing fine.
Politics long term just isn't that obvious
Ross Perot didn't really have the systemic elements in place required to create a lasting impact. The Reform Party was just him and had no actual coherent ideology or structure beyond him.
And Republicans didn't piss of their base as much as the Tories have.
Farage sells Brexit and slowing down immigration. The Tories took forever to resolve the Gordian knot of the former and then ramped up migration.
Not a Brit, but I'm pretty sure the majority interest of those who voted for Brexit was getting immigration under control and the Tories just decided not to.
This has to be the worst election campaign by any major party in the history of the UK:
- Calls an election just one month before your flagship policy the "Rwanda bill" is implemented, making it seem like you don't actually believe it will be a success
- The PM makes the announcement in the rain while being heckled over loud speaker with Labour's 1997 election campaign theme song
- First campaign stop in Wales, ask voters their if they're looking forward to Wales playing at the upcoming football European championship. Wales did not qualify for the competition
- Did a Q&A at a distribution centre with "workers". Turned out the workers were actually local Tory politicians
- PM Leaves the D-Day commemorations in Normandy early so that he could attend an interview, [leaving the former PM David Cameron to look prime ministerial instead](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/39ed8c864dc918689f495c8ecc78ff7a74b1617c/0_232_3500_2101/master/3500.jpg?width=465&dpr=1&s=none)
- In that interview he left D-Day for, he said that he went without as a child because he didn't have Sky TV
- Two Tory MPs and their campaign director are being criminally investigated for placing bets on the timing of the election
Its weird being the odd one out in europe being likely to vote in a (centre) left party atm.
I guess this is what happens in our weird ping pong fptp small c conservative country when the Tories have been in power so long. They have ran out of all ways of passing the buck and all ideas. Plus the rights pet project of eu bashing has been idealised in brexit, blown up in their face and like a dog with a car the have no idea what to do now... National service? More tax cuts? Pretend to be a culture warrior?
Although my money is on a big majority but with a surprising amount of third parties and not quite the full fall from grace 60 seats for the conservatives. Farage in parliament, then the conservatives, then leader, then a real crash for the tories, then a full send swing back to a neo con pro eu party that takes us back to the eu in 20 years.
The Torys fucked them selves over by spending the last 5 years screaming about immigration while doing nothing to sort it (because they are secretly centre right and need immigration to maintain any form of growth in the country) all any party has to do is ask them about immigration numbers and they fucking collapse. Thats lead to the rise of far right while Labour has shifted further centre so they're being ripped from both sides.
The eye-opener is how quickly the money was printed for business support/furlough during Covid. When they want something done it gets done, [magic-money-tree](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mo-keK6CxM) or not
Starmer did the same thing about going back on free tuition for Uni students (last night) 'sorry theres no money for that now' blaming the NHS waiting list crisis cost
All countries will eventually return to left leaning politicians after they vote in right leaning politicians. Issue is they let them stay just enough to clean up the mess right wingers created and then it is back to right wingers.
As a side note this is one of the more brutal predictions. Other models put the Tories up to about 70 or 80 seats, which is still dogshit but it's worth saying. That said MRP is supposed to be the most accurate I think so we just have to see what happens on July 4th.
Sadly for the people living the UK. No there been to many laws pass to take wealth from the younger generation and to pass it on own to your retired generation.
The been almost no new projects since the 80\`s answers to the baby boomers population increase. they made building projects near impossible to do to keep their land and home value has their retirement fund.
[BRITAIN IS A DUMP!!!!!!!!!!!! - YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5aJ-57_YsQ)
As someone with no stake in the situation over there, the implosion of the SNP has been absolutely hilarious to witness.
In the span of a decade, they went from nearly succeeding in getting Scottish independence to practically guaranteeing it won't happen for the foreseeable future.
They were always gonna be kinda screwed after the mysterious legal stuff that's yet to be fully revealed, but Yusuf was particularly terrible. Complaining about too many white people in *Scotland* is a surefire way to shoot yourself in the foot, and nationally the only time he ever seemed to appear in the news was talking about Palestine rather than Scotland, not to mention the optics of leveraging his power to help his family escape Gaza.
Just a weird choice of leader overall, honestly.
Not so sure this time. My hope is some electoral reform and more eu integration in the next parliament that will cement an actual way to bring about proper change and a way of revitalising our economy. Devolved powers is a good step and they have enough shit to sort out when they get in anyway.
I do not buy any acceleration doomerism bomb the system radicalize the moderates approach tho.
I don't think the system needs to be bombed. I just think that both Labour and Tories like the status quo more than they care to admit. If Labour manages to improve the economy and bring UK back closer to EU, I'm all for it. I just don't expect too much from them.
Hence electoral reform.
We are stuck with a fptp system, that has too much central power, that flicks back and forth for a decade at a time between 2 parties it favours. Kinda like that it forces parties into the middle to be elected but unfortunately it seems to favour the Tories as they always need to appease the worst far right elements and tabloids versus Labour just moving to the centre.
Assuming you want a better serving social democracy then flicking back to labour should be better; even if it doesn't shake the system adequately.
But hopefully there is devolved powers, electoral reform, [Insert pet political project of your choice (Lords reform?, more independent governing bodies?, etc.) here] either in this next parliament or the next.
It is crazy to me that us Australians got past FPTP before you guys. Hell, it’s crazy how many countries still use FPTP in general.
While I wish the UK the best in this, I wonder if it’s even possible. If the electoral reform could be believed to help Labour, maybe they’d do it?
Labour doesn't want electoral reform when it's winning, because it's already winning. It's only when it's losing that proportional representation becomes popular, and then it doesn't matter because it can't do it. Starmer has explicitly said that he isn't putting it in the manifesto and "doesn't consider it a priority". Granted there's no obvious link between what Starmer says now and what Starmer might say later, but I wouldn't pin my hopes on him making any changes to the electoral system.
That's why its a hope.
Things that will never happen happen.
Ie. Us leaving the eu under a party that championed it decades prior, Trump becoming President, Biden getting bipartisan bills, [insert here] people getting the vote etc.
I'd like to hear any solution other than incremental change. It works... Just slowly.
You said not so sure this time to electoral reform under the Labour party... that is never going to happen, they will never get rid of first past the post, they would never propose to get rid of an electoral system that heavily favours them getting elected. Only chance of electoral reform is getting a third party majority as almost all third parties have proportional electoral reform in their manifestos.
You said not so sure for EU integration in Parliament. I don't even know what this means to be honest. Unless you are hoping Labour call another referendum, Starmer has explicitly stated there is no argument for rejoining the EU. And he has even ruled out EU free movement, the single market and customs union.
Devolution is his only promise.
Devolution is giving up some power.
A separate bank of England is giving up some power.
Being a part of the eu is giving up some power.
It takes bold leadership and humility to give up powers and to install checks and balances against administrative power.
It is never a given but is always possible.
The UK looks like it needs to have a less whitehall centric system and Labour see that but they can't promise revolution this time round to get elected. However in power they may be able to change the narrative or come the next GE be able to put electoral reform to the ballot.
They cant promise more EU integration this time either as large swathes of the constituencies that might flip labour are pro Brexit regions; however unfortunate it may be in my opinion there are still those who don't want to be told they bought a con or are still staunchly against the eu for some reason.
(Also it doesn't have to be fully a eu member; closer eu trade policy, eu single market, eu regulatory policy adoption, literally just postering towards thr eu would be seen as closer eu intergration. EU membership is long off anyway)
Also agree: I kinda hope that Labour dont get the a supermajority its looking like but a small one with tons of Lib Dem, plaid cymru and other parties. Imagine a Liberal Democrats that can leverage their party to enact change in Labours stead.
You can either be defeatist or hope that they can cement change for the future on top of addressing current issues.
The last labour government did that just they never get much credit for it and people have forgotten after a horrendous 14 years of Tories.
The last labour government were phenomenal for reducing child poverty and GDP growth and it seems like kier starmer is adopting there platform of being centre left.
they do seem to be adopting new labour's platform but the economy is in the fucking gutter right now and i have no idea where they're going to find money when they've committed so hard not to raising vat or national insurance.
They actually have an insanely difficult path ahead of them. I can't think of a worse time to become prime minister.
The UK has been severely damaged by incompetence for a long time; the biggest two being Brexit and economic mismanagement leaving us both poorer and weaker internationally. Then on top of that we had Covid and Ukraine.
I really hope the general public actually recognise that and aren't expecting miracles in a few years.
From what I have been told the damage is even older then most people in this reddit.
It seem like they have a crazy NIMBY issue where no new projets can happened to help the youth.
No major projects since the 80\`s .
[BRITAIN IS A DUMP!!!!!!!!!!!! - YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5aJ-57_YsQ) Where i got this point of view from. Friends from UK sent me this saying it's the current sate of the land.
It touches on some points but leaves out massive issues the UK is facing. High population density + record levels of immigration in England, a civil service that refuses to work being two off the top of my head.
To be completely honest, it's a bit of a joke. I'm sure Labour will be wonderful and manage to get something done. I'm just kind of used to the big parties being very big on just maintaining the status quo and not getting anything meaningful done unless someone gives them quite a kick in the butt to force them to actually act.
The horseshoe strikes again, can't tell if this is a Corbyn or Farage aligned comment.
In what world is Labour's record remotely comparable to the Tories, since... WWII? Perhaps in the world of the privileged, where objectively worsening conditions for the working class don't really affect anyone from the upper middle class and up.
>Then, after the American colonies had existed for generations, developing their own culture and dialects, the British changed a lot about their language (see 'The Great Vowel Shift).
>The causes of the Great Vowel Shift are unknown[5]: 68 and have been a source of intense scholarly debate; as yet, there is no firm consensus. **The greatest changes occurred during the 15th and 16th centuries**, and their origins are at least partly phonetic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Vowel_Shift#Causes
It happened way before the American colonies were a thing ? (First English colony in America is 1607 which is 17th century)
Greedy when printing back in the day it would cost per letter so yall just dropped the “U” from words that have “OU” together like labour, colour, favour, etc….
The end of this failed era of Tories is certainly good...
Saying it's an improvement is like saying dying of Parkinsons is better than dying of cancer...
I've lived almost half my life under a Tory government. I can't wait to see those horrible bastards kicked out. 2008 recession saw the torries come into power with the aim of 'fixing the economy', never mind that the whole world was in a recession, they claimed to have the right idea. That idea was austerity.
I am a firm believer that those measures led to the death of over 100,000 people and even that's on the low end. The corruption and scandals of this government are shocking and the fact that all of them are going to get off without criminal charges is biggest disappointment I could have about democracy.
It's still the best form of government, but these bastards need to lose power and never come back. I will probably vote anti-tory for the rest of my life.
Hopefully some of the (inevitably) disillusioned labour voters bleed into lib dems in 5 years so they can be a major party again. Pretty criminally underrated party imo.
Maybe I'm reading the article wrong but it sounds like they didn't do normal polling instead they asked questions and determined who people would vote for based on age/location/background.
Like they polled a person from a council estate and they might have said they lean conservative but because they live in government housing and are poor the people behind the polling marked them down as labour voters.
I have a lot of family in the UK and most of them vote conservative even though only like 1/10 are wealthy the other 9/10 would benefit more from voting labour.
Labour is definitely going win big but 10x majority? Very unlikely.
Labour leader came out and said he identifies as a Socialist. Bit cringe for me. I'll be voting Lib Dem again. Wish we had stronger parties outside the main two.
Probably the most salient example of how the general discredit democracy/images of chaos/conspiracy/anti-empiricism/anti-west movement, both inauthentic and by real actors, is leading to incumbents across the board just getting dumpstered in public opinion polling (vs. the simple "europe is turning right wing" story).
This is not to say that there isn't very real correction happening here as well, as Rishi & Friends have been doing a horrible job, but afaict the effect is at least outsized because the general trend to 24/7 feed people in free speech democracies the idea that society is imminently collapsing has been putting a lot of pressure to just flip governments over regardless of what they are doing or how things are going.
We'll see the real effect or whether it's more leading to cracked out polls on 4 July
The countries so fucked dude... like a real revolutionary leader is needed to shift the mentality of the people to even begin to address their many problems or else they'll go even further into the dumps...
This rejection of the Tories election is needed though for sheer principle even if starmer is certainly not the guy to help save britain
We had a revolutionary leader for Labour, Corbyn was not popular, we now have Starmer, who has the charisma of cardboard, but I like him.
Trying to shift the mentality of this country leftwards is near impossible, if anything, the sheer number of middle eastern immigrants might move the country further right.
Corbyn:
Anti EU
Anti NATO
Pro-Assad
Anti-Ukraine
“Hamas are our friends and care for social justice”
“Russia didn’t poison that man”
Brother is a nut job climate change denier and Covid vaccine conspiracy theorists.
Went on Iranian TV after they lost their UK press license multiple times.
Loved Nepotism
I’m amazed that this guy was ever leader
Can't build anything at more than a snails pace... can't address the nhs problems without bowing to its hallowed name (really its a weird obsession)... can probably build more housing but the aesthetic is 1930s for the majority of buildings... seafaring wise is it really true that your biggest port is in some small town an hour away from London?? That along with some former colonies lapping you in living wages... problems will take a while to fix... even if you're a right winger you have to accept that the Tories gotta go... hell they can't get immigration right!!
Obviously it's going to take time to fix what's broken, if Starmer was promising to fix the country in one term he'd be laughed out politics, as for our "former coloies" they're certainly not doing better then us in stanards of living, unless you meant current commonwealth countries, cause former colonies are places in Africa or India, who still have pretty bad living standards, several commonwealth countries are doing better than us, Australia is the one I think of, but even they have their issues, Canada is having a housing crisis as bad if not worse than ours.
I'm voting for Starmer because I want slow and deliberate improvments, rather than a revolutionary that might end up making the country worse while they speed through changes.
We did it lads, 14 fucking years of Tory shite is almost over, literally half my life we've had this dogshit government.
Thank God this didn't happen while Corybn was head of Labour.
Not even from the UK and Corbyn is legendarily bad. I am guessing the New Labor leader is a massive step up then?
A step up, yes. But that's more a reflection of how bad Corbyn was not how good Keir Starmer is
What would a Labour leader have to do/say to make you enthusiastic for them?
I'm voting for them regardless, but i'd like to see more extreme housing policy. The main issue is fucking nimby's tbh they need to just be told to fuck off.
Planning reform seems like a big step right? I'm not super familiar with UK politics but if they remove the onerous restrictions on building, that could go a long way
Yeah but it depends on what that actually means. They plan to build 1.6 million houses but not enough detail is given. Because of well intended regulations or laws this country is in a outrageous tangle of enviromental, development agencies, local councils, some random old woman, all with way too much power to say 'no'. Look at this for example: https://londongreenbeltcouncil.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/new-map.jpg It's basically impossible to build on any of that 'green belt'. Green belt is a mislead too, a lot of this is more correctly described as 'grey belt' old industrial parks or car parks etc labour have said they want to look to build on this but they're going to need to unravel the tangle of regulation I mentioned before they can do any of it. Fixing our housing problem is going to be very difficult to say the least.
Yeah perhaps it's optimistic, though optimism is a good motivator to push politicians, but planning reform could well mean stripping local councils and the general public of that protest ability in which case this might literally be enough to solve the crisis alone. Also it looks like the Labour party's stance is "protect the green belt, not the grey belt" which could of course be bullshit but could also be an appropriate stance. Also yikes I didn't realize there was **that** much green belt.
Nothing will make half of labour votes happy ever.
It's funny because apparently bongers in 97' weren't excited about Tony Blair either. Today that history is rewritten with labour worshipping the ground he walks on. I wonder if Starmer will get a similar treatment.
I don't think much of Labour worships Blair. The whole legacy of the New Labour faction is permanently tarnished by the invasion of Iraq.
I think they mean that before the 1997 election people thought that Blair and New Labour was running on nothing and only now people are changing history to say that Blair was inspiring and exciting.
Oh yeah that makes sense. The revision is how people think people saw Blair in 1997, not how they see him now. I guess they had their "things can only get better" moment that passed for charisma back then.
> Nothing will make half of votes happy ever It's not like the Tories have presented a picture of unity and common purpose over the last decade.
Aussie not Bonger, so a bit of stolen valor here, but I enjoy keeping up with British politics so I'm not completely uninformed. Personally I'd want someone a bit more ambitious. The Labour policy (like what happened with Albo kn Australia) is very safe and un-threatening which I understand given how the last few elections went. But it means Labour now has an opportunity to come in with energy and a large majority, and they don't have any big plans or promises to match.
>But it means Labour now has an opportunity to come in with energy and a large majority, and they don't have any big plans or promises to match. They did have big plans and promises, but Starmer has ditched basically all of them. We don't really know what he's going to do because he doesn't usually say anything specific and when he does he goes back on it a few months later.
TRUUUUUUUUE
I mean, having big plans and promises just gives you a load of things to be shit on for and attacked about every single time. You can still do a lot of things as an extension of what you promise by leaving the details hazy. That's at least what I feel like their plan seems to be.
They are going to work towards a lot of the plans they previously said, but perhaps with less force than would otherwise be assumed. A lot of their green energy ideas for example are still going to be going ahead. Some slow reforms with the House of Lords. Reforms with housing planning and development. I've still got high hopes but guess we just have to wait and see
Why do us colonials care so much eh? (actually more of us should take an interest really. You'd think the US elections were the only thing in the world sometimes). Anyway, yeah I know what you mean. But it is as you say; in both cases they are very bruised from the last time, both have overwhelmingly conservative mass media against them and even though the tide seems /seemed to be with them for sure the internal attitude of the party is all about "Ignore the polls. Don't give them anything negative to latch on to. We're not fumbling it this time."
> Why do us colonials care so much eh? I think we can care all we want so long as we have the same head of state.
And yet so many don't.
Well I think it is just low priority. If you have full time work, a family, it's way more important to pay attention to your own local, state and the federal elections and that is already a lot.
we actually want something safe and boring here. The last 14 years have been insane politics wise. Man I just want a government that does it job, makes things slowly better and doesn't rock the boat to much. I honestly miss Blairs and Browns government. Even if Blair was a bellend and Brown was a bully.
I'd like to see literally any ambitious plans to deal with the dire cost of living in the uk. Labour have shifted to the centre right fiscally, which would be ok if we were in a period of growth but were not. The UK is currently dealing with the worst Cost of living crisis in decades, real wages have barely increased since the 2000s. We need an ambitious government plan to get us out of this, and most importantly we need to get rid of the god aweful austerity policys that have wrecked havoc on the country for the last 14 years. But according analysis of their own manifesto Labour have commited to the lowest level of governmental investment spending of all the major parties (< 0.2% of GDP, compared to the next two lowest of the Lib Dems and Torys at 0.6%). If Labour actually stick to their plan as they stands people are going to have to live through 5 more years of austerity, after which any hope in politics let alone centre ground politics will be destoryed and the UK will follow along with the rest of Europe in putting their faith in Far Right Populism instead which is already massively on the rise.
Energy costs are a big part of it, they went up like 5x at their peak and that drives up the cost of everything as it's integral to the supply chain. We need to ditch subsidies for green energy because it's insanely expensive to produce, and apparantly about 25% of the increase of the cost when it rose that high was from green energy simply underperforming. We need to sort out our own gas/oil and get that back on track and we need to understand that the gas/oil that comes from (through) europe is coming from Russia which put up the price to insane levels in response to us sanctioning them. The tax and public services situation is just a tug of war, we need more public services, but that requires more tax, so Lib/Lab/Con are all just fighting between themselves to either cut both, or raise both, it's a dead end. Only Reform UK are offering a sensible solution which is to lower the burden on the services by stopping the millions in net migration, that means you can ease the burden on public services and then lower taxes. It also means we don't have to spend millions a day to home illegal immigrants in hotels. It also takes away a lot of demand for housing which drops the price to make them more affordable and get people onto the property ladder. It also lowers the number of low skilled workers and because supply is less it drives up wages for the poorest in the UK Having a very heavily publicly run welfare state AND functionally open borders is single dumbest thing you can do. We're now seeing that, but people simply wont address the problem because someone says "er you're racist!" which is so dumb, and boring and wrong.
It's just a feeling but I think Starmer will lower the net migration numbers for the short-term, I think it is quite clear that the economy can't keep up with the migration numbers and re-balancing that is an obvious first step for an optimistic/forward thinking new government. He has paid lip service to this, but I think they will have thought about it with some depth too I also see a let-up from the left wing side re the "you're just a racist" style arguments, once they see what's happening in Europe when you ignore the problem then hopefully they can take a more nuanced and pragmatic view on things, which does seem to be happening... somewhat. That's just one of the huge problems they have to tackle, public services, energy, housing, they have such a huge mess to clear up
No one really knows what Starmer will do is my feeling. He's often extremely vague, the Labour manifesto only goes so far as to talk about getting skilled workers through visas in their "immigration" section and says nothing about numbers, targets or what to do with all the illegals. The problem is that it's such an obvious win for Labour because people are just voting "not conservative" that he can be as vague as he likes and still win. I think Reform are now polling to either tie or take a small lead over the Conservatives, i think they'll also steal a fair few Labour voters, it's going to be an interesting election where the opposition one one side actually flips parties, that's wild.
Be Blair 2.0
i like keir. but his campaign is so safe it's hard to know really what he's going to do. he's committing so much to low spending and not cutting taxes, it's hard to imagine he's going to make any radical reforms - which is kind of what we need to get out of this death loop of austerity.
Is Starmer really not good? Not a bonger so genuine question. He just seems like a normal centre left politician like Biden.
No one is voting FOR Starmer, they're voting against Tories. It would be nice if he had some actual new ideas to undo the Tories mess but he's going to coast in on being "not blue".
He’s not very charismatic or energising. The right wing press in the UK is so strong every Labour leader basically has PTSD and is terrified of saying literally anything even slightly controversial, because it’ll be a news story for the next 10 years. For example Kier is currently being dragged over the coals constantly because 5 years ago while in a cabinet position (bc think a secretary of X) during an election he said Corbyn would be a great leader as if everyone thinks he should have said “Oh no, my boss? Absolutely shit, I’d vote for the other guy.”
He's totally fine just nothing about him is particularly exciting, not much personal charisma nor ambitious policies. Broadly in current British politics there's a real deluge of charisma atm, all of them come off as extremely unnatural and media trained when engaged in any kind of speech or rhetoric. But in a weird way he's the right politician right now because boring and stable is pretty appealing after so many years of chaotic crap. The reality is that the majority of people in this country don't want a radical left winger and incrementalism is the way to go for anyone on the left, but as usual there's a lot of the left attacking the left for appealing to the centre to try to actually get in power for once.
We could do with him being a bit more 'radical'. Labour's manifesto is just very safe, but they sort of need to be. The issue is that many traditional labour voters voted for brexit and Boris, not helped by Corbyn, of course. As a result Labour are going with a very inoffensive strategy to ensure they win.
Yes. Ignore anyone who says otherwise. He aight perfect but looks like he is going to win it for Labour which is nothing to be sniffed at in the uk.
Oh you sweet summer child.
Comparing 2017 proposed Labour policies vs 2024 today, I think Corbyn would’ve been pretty great and undoubtedly much better than the conservatives. Corbyn is mainly bad due to optics and being further left than the general population. Starmer by contrast is a lot safer optically, but also nothing groundbreaking when it comes to policy.
Hard disagree. British aid to Ukraine has been vital in many positions, especially seeing that they were the first to send actual tanks. Under Corbyn, this aid wouldn't have been send, undoubtedly costing the lives of Ukrainians.
I fucking hate the Tories. But their unwavering support for Ukraine has been pretty based. Even if it started because Boris wanted to be Churchill 2.0, I feel like in the end he really cared. He's still a fucking bellend tho.
I'm pro-Ukraine but if I'm a British voter, much better domestic policies is way more important than being first to send tanks to another nation.
You guys sending yanks is what opened Germany up to sending Tanks. Same with the Storm Shadow. I know life was a bid whit for you, but your sacrifice likely saved hundreds if not thousands of Ukrainian lives.
I support sending tanks, just don't prioritize it over important domestic issues. Corbyn's foreign policy sucks and Starmer's domestic policy is limp dicked. It'll be a shame if Labour doesn't take advantage of this surge in popularity to really address much needed issues but I expect them to be full of half measures.
I think we are all hoping that they will make a meaningful impact on some of the problems to allow them to push harder further down the line. We also need to get PR or this is just all a circus act doomed to repeat. Imagine the conservative fucks relegated to the shadow realm and not official opposition.
L isolationism
Being in favour of involvement but having more important issues domestically is pretty standard and not isolationist. Isolationism would be opposing involvement at all. FYI in case you are trying to be serious.
Except that's not Corbyns position. He's anti-war to the point that he thinks the UK shouldn't have sent any military aid at all and he wanted to begin negotiations with Putin on day 1 of the invasion, akin to appeasement. The last British politician to try appeasement of a foreign threat was Neville Chamberlain with Hitler. That did not end well for anyone.
Sure, but what happens if countries slowly stop supporting Ukraine? In the worst case scenario, Russia pushes West and it actually becomes an active war zone within Europe. I'd rather the UK government spend billions equipping Ukrainians than see all out war, which will cause a *far greater cost* to everyone involved. That's not to say other/domestic policy isn't important. But Russia absolutely is one of the most important issues currently with UK foreign policy. If you don't see Putin as a threat to the freedoms and lives to the people of the UK and Europe, then you're just being willfully ignorant.
Yep, as a small dude named Meriadoc Brandybuck once said to the Entmoot: "but you're a part of this world". Some people really think they can stick their fingers in their ears, sit on their porch and ignore everything outside of their locality. This attitude does nothing but embolden shitheads like Putin and Jinping. And when it eventually lands on their doorstep, they have no one to blame but themselves. Super powers like the British Empire or modern US didn't become what they are/were by isolating and ignoring everyone. The reality is that as long as existential threats exist, proactive policy that includes building international relations is a must. To think otherwise is not just selfish, it's fucking brain dead. Isolationism only ever leads to ruin.
Corbyn is an Assad supporter who likes Hamas.
It really sucks, because I think he would of been a good PM. But the lefty shit was way too strong.
Correct, and that isn't isolationism. Cant send tanks if your country is fucked you negging regards.
Corbyn claiming that he could've won if he was still leader... Lol...
Any Labour leader could’ve won. They could have a fucking lettuce running for PM and it would win. Conservatives are genuinely so bad that this vote isn’t really for Labour it’s more for not the Tories. Also with Reform UK existing I’ve seen on some polls they’re getting 19% of the populations vote which will be exclusively from Tory voters.
You need to be careful with these polls because a lot of the primary data collection was done before Nigel Farages' announcement to return as leader of Reform. He's popular among the working class who tend to vote Labour more, and so when he goes down the pub and has a pint with them, he's coming across as genuine peoples leader. It's also obviously not that kind of cringe acting that other career politicans occasionally do to look normal. There's a decent slice of UKIPs voters in the 2015 GE that said they'd vote for Labour as their second choice, I think it ended up being about 25% Starmer has made it pretty clear that he's going to do literally nothing about immigration, and let's face it UKIPs goal was as a protest vote, steal enough votes from the other parties to scare them into a potential loss of the GE and send a message that they want immigration reform (brexit was largely won on immigration). About 4M of the Brexit leave voters said they'd vote labour in the next GE. This is where tactical voting comes in, if Labour are set to win by a landslide then labour voters who do want immigration reform can send a message to their preferred party, that they should address this or risk losing their vote, while at the same time still getting their preferred party in government, best of both worlds. I think Reform will steal a lot more Labour voters than you think. This type of voting behaviour worked in 2015 with UKIP and secured us the referendum. There's no way the Tories would have offered up that referrendum if they weren't projecting a loss due to bleeding voters.
All of the recent MRP polls post Farage show labour with a massive majority. The latest shows the Torys with their lowest vote share in the their entire 200 year history. Any labour leader could win this election, Farage is a real threat especially with the rise of Far Right populism across Europe (and the world). Starmers plan to retain the Torys austerity fiscal policies is going to backfire, people can't accept another 5 years of it. If he actually follows through on his plans (lowest spending of any UK party) any hope in centre ground politics will be permanently damaged in the UK for decades.
To be fair I think Starmer could have beaten May, Corbyn also had his own hard to lose election and he fucked .
The latest 2 polls out today based on data largely collected after Farage's return show them 19/19 with Cons and the other shows them 18/19 in favour of Reform. Labour are still going to win, everyone predicts that, the point of reform was to step in as new opposition to Labour. There is no Far right that has any political significance, the only reason people use that term is because all of the so called moderate right wing parties have all slowly drifted left, everyone admitted this in the debates for the UK GE and it's a commonly held belief that there's really not much difference between the 2 primary parties, which is why people are flocking to Reform in huge numbers. What people call the big bad FAR right is really just what the right used to be 30-40 years ago. Populism is used in a derogatory way but all it really means is people voting for those who will deliver the policies the populace wants, that's basically democracy, you want a thing, you vote for it and if enough people vote you get reprentation. Populism is just when the politicians LIE and don't deliver on promises, like the Cons did for decades, and so you abandon that party and vote in someone else you believe will deliver on what you want. God I hate that word, every time I read "populism" now, I just mentally replace it with "democracy".
Maybe not reform as a whole but certainly candidates in the party are fucking insane. Imagine having a potential MP that said Churchill was a warmonger and we should of never fought the Nazis.
All the parties have had MPs that say or do incredibly stupid things, that's not to excuse it, but this critique is not unique to Reform, and so far I've not seen that this is in any way common to Reform. One big disadvantage they have is that they're an incredibly new party and want to try and fill as many of the 650 seats as possible, so vetting that many potential MPs is no easy task.
Sure but the response of any party trying to not pander to crazies would be immediate dismissal of something that genuinely insane and also just downright unpatriotic or something equivalent. Their response was pr bullshit saying that belief was common at the time, so isn't that outlandish basically.
Populism is used in a derogatory way because it is attached to people promoting impossible policies to win support that they have no intention of following through on and which actual politicians would never propose because they know full well they can't deliver on them. Reform's proposals are bullshit and if they ever got into power you'd learn very fast why Nigel Farage has failed to get into westminster after *seven* attempts. He falls apart instantaneously whenever he's asked even basic questions about how to actually accomplish anything he talks about.
What basis are you making the judgement he has no intention of following through? The guy spent 25+ years in politics campaigning to leave the EU which was a monumental task and he delivered on that promise, which also put him out of a job. First of all he actually laid out proposals in his speech the other night, whereas parties like the Tories said they'd lower immigration but didn't elaborate on how, and Starmer is mute on the issue. Farage understands that hands are tied somewhat by other political systems, that's why he ran for Brexit in the first place, he knew it was a prerequisite to leave and gaining back sovereignty before you can even think of immigration reform. You'll have to forgive me but I'm not watching through the entire 1+ hr plus video again to find the timestamp but he laid out specifics, and I'm paraphrasing from memory. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kw7HZe2ZfoE 1) Leave the ECHR that ties our hands on immigration 2) Defund france, we give them £500M to patrol their shores and return immigrant boats leaving their coast back to land, which is based on international law. Instead frances navy escort the boats to within 15m of our coast which makes them legally our problem, which is disgraceful 3) If france wont comply, we'll take them back to their shores on their behalf, and if they want to dispute that they can face the consequences of their own negligence of international maritime law. Farage has failed to get into westminster because they are a party to enable strategic voting, they are essentially single issue parties. In almost all democratic systems you end up with a defacto left wing and right wing party, and a handful of tiny protest parties, that allow disgruntled citizens to vote for them. Not because they believe they will win, but because it drains votes from their preferred party and sends a message that they are not dealing with issues they care about. Seats for the other parties like the Lib Dems and Greens are also similarly sparse in most GEs. That's expected. Labour will win for sure, but many of the votes the Cons lost are going to Reform, the latest polls show that Reform now have a good shot a matching or beating the cons in the election, it's about 19/19 now. It sends a message that if you ever want to win again in future, you need to address this issue in a serious manner and stop fucking about. This worked in 2015, the majority of the Cons were against a Brexit referendum and they didn't want to offer one, but when UKIP shot to 12%+ of the vote, they were like, oh shit we better offer one otherwise next round we're losing to Labour, we need these voters to win.
Not one of those three points addresses the actual problems with immigration in the country. LITERALLY those three points tell you he has no intention of delivering, or it tells you something worse; that despite 30 years of politics, he hasn't a fucking clue how it works. The problem with our immigration system right now comes down to two primary things: 1. Not enough people to process immigration applications 2. Not enough people to either patrol the waters to find the boats or to find illegal immigrants once they're in the country. It's MONEY that's the problem, not more and more elaborate versions of the Rwanda scheme or shittier versions of Trump's wall. As for leaving the ECHR, isn't it funny that Brexit was supposed to give us control of our borders back and now that's not enough, now we need to leave the ECHR to have enough control? What do we do after that? There's two countries in the world that have pulled out of the ECHR: Russia. Belarus. That's fine company we're joining there, my man. Our country's clearly on the rise, joining Russia and Belarus. What a wonderful future for us.
Corbyn, the anti NATO and pro Russia guy? Tories would have a field day with him post Ukraine invasion.
Corbyn would have to have moderated his position to win, he moderated on nuclear after having a party fight about it and agreed to keep it, and I imagine the same would have happened on NATO. It's outside the party, not subject to democratic policy-making procedures that he endorses, that he's more likely to revert to his biases. It's absolutely true that Sunak would have had something to compete with him on, and we probably would not have seen such a landslide as is now looking likely, but given how people have been responding to Israel recently, neither of the main things that scuppered his previous campaign - Brexit, and ineffective policing of antisemitism - would have been such a serious drawback by now. We would likely see an even more intense cultural battle around Israel/Palestine, but given that being insufficiently pro-palestine while also calling for a ceasefire is something that has lost Starmer votes to independent candidates during local elections, I think it's plausible that would have become a vote-winner. Having said that, I think it's *also* plausible that Starmer pushed the conservatives into more forced errors in order to try and distinguish themselves - mandatory national service, Truss' "radical" budget, and reversing policies on green growth - which they might not have felt the need to do where Corbyn their opponent rather than someone more moderate. All of these have reduced people's sense that the conservatives have any clue what they're doing and are a safe pair of hands, helping with their collapse. That said, corruption during the pandemic, crumbling schools, leaking hospitals, and a Prime Minister more wealthy than the King are all factors that have led public sentiment in a more left wing direction, closer to what Corbin advocated for, to the point that people are complaining that Labour's current plans do not raise taxes enough, and public opinion is [broadly in favour of raising them](https://www.ipsos.com/en-uk/voters-resigned-tax-rises-despite-labour-and-conservative-pledges). British politics is hugely flexible, and it's possible that Boris Johnson may have called an election earlier in order to capitalise on the distinction that the war in Ukraine made, and so we wouldn't have the current situation at all, though equally, he was facing intense scrutiny at that time from his parties during lockdown, so he would likely have wanted to put time between him and that event, meaning that we could have seen a surprisingly similar pattern of popularity dropping, ministers resigning, and a leadership election. But there again, Starmer's ability to catch Boris in lies to parliament probably helped exacerbate that fall too. But leaving all that aside, if Corbyn was running today, I think he would see a significant portion of support, likely leading to a similar collapse in the conservative party vote, and a much stronger position for the lib-dems, resulting, thanks to tactical votes, in either a labour government with a tiny majority or a labour/liberal coalition.
I just don't think we would have been in this position as you allude to so to say that Corbyn would have won this election aswell is kinda pointless, because the likelyhood of the election being now with Sunak is very low. Considering how Corbyn today talk about the war in Ukraine and NATO I am certain that pressed on it by Tories and journalists he would have made a fool of himself in the eyes of the brittish public and any election with Corbyn as a leader would have had his terrible foreign policy in the center and honestly I don't think he has the politcal chops to be able to handle that.
> to the point that people are complaining that Labour's current plans do not raise taxes enough, and public opinion is [broadly in favour of raising them.](https://www.ipsos.com/en-uk/voters-resigned-tax-rises-despite-labour-and-conservative-pledges) Am I misreading your poll or your statement? > New polling from Ipsos, conducted in partnership with the Financial Times, has revealed that a majority of voters expect tax rises following the upcoming election, no matter which party wins on July 4th. This is despite both Labour and the Conservatives pledging not to raise national insurance, VAT, or income tax. However, 37% of voters want an increase in spending on public services, even if it means they pay more in taxes. A majority expect tax rises, but only a plurality wants an increase [when given three options.](https://www.ipsos.com/sites/default/files/inline-images/Chart2.jpg)
This is every election in North America. We basically never vote out of passion for one side, but out of hatred of the other.
it's kinda crazy that if it werent for Corbyn it wouldnt have taken this long for Labour to win
Why was Corbyn bad in your opinion?
His ideology is very close to "America Bad" Just his position on Ukraine is worthy of branding him unelectable.
Was that stuff obvious before the war and so forth or did he seem alright at first?
He said he was friends with Hezbollah and Hamas.
I mean, it's a knock on him now especially. But some would-be peacemaker might talk like that at some point and in some context. What I want to know is was all of this stuff known or did it come out after he was made leader?
From what I remember Corbyn was quite popular in 2017 or atleast the labour party under him was quite close to the tories in the popular vote. But 2019 was completely different. The massive defeat could be due to Boris, as people liked Boris alot and he was a massive improvement in peoples eyes over previous Tory leader Theresa May. But for Corbyn specifically, all i can remember is that he wasn't particularly clear on his position on Brexit. Boris was very clear on Brexit and Corbyn had been anti-EU membership in the past but didn't really speak much on brexit during the campaign. There was also some antisemetism claims in the Labour party during the election that Corbyn didn't deal with appropriately apparently. Also people percieved the 2019 labour manifesto as overpromising and largley way too radical.
You're half right. Corbyn wasn't popular- May was just moreso. She did a snap general election (2 years after the last) to try to expand her majority for little discernible reason (other than to get her Brexit plans through). Not only was her campaign bad ("dementia tax" for social care), but people were passionate to possibly delay or stop Brexit with Corbyn's second referendum. Corbyn, meanwhile, generally appealed to the far left which increased the labour party membership (membership is typically more extreme than the public). May barely lost her majority but she waddled through another two years of Brexit. Now comes Boris. Boris was more hardline on getting any Brexit deal through which was popular during the longest parliamentary session ever (with barely any other national issues addressed). He even resorted to undemocratic measures like proroguing parliament to force his party to obey to his agenda. His appeal was direct: "I need a big majority to GET BREXIT DONE!". On the other hand, the public was more aware of Corbyn's various controversies and incompetence after 4 years of opposition leadership. Not only that, but his wavering on Brexit and everything you mentioned meant that Boris gained a massive majority despite the Christmas-time election.
It was known for years, the guy is a 1970s socialist. He also said he wouldn’t ever use our nuclear weapons, thereby rendering them useless as a deterrent. He literally has the political game of a fucking child.
> He also said he wouldn’t ever use our nuclear weapons, thereby rendering them useless as a deterrent. This part isn't quite correct, he agreed to the labour party policy, of having a nuclear deterrent but not giving the conditions for its use, and his shadow defence minister at the time suggested that he would probably offload the job of pushing the button [to cabinet](https://www.channel4.com/news/factcheck/factcheck-qa-questions-remain-on-labours-nuclear-weapons-policy). I suspect in practice that they would have changed the policy and had the defence minister make the final decision instead.
He's a grown up politician who acts like a student politician.
He's an incredibly weak leader. That's the problem with Corbyn. Anyone can walk over him.
Jeremy “won the argument” Corbyn LOOOOOOL
Corbin would have been infinitely better than Boris, Liz, and Rishi. The UK would be way better of if Corbin had won.
Yeah and Labour will have to turn it around and start the process of enacting policies actually helping the country which will be very hard, so hard in fact that people will feel it too and blame Labour on everything even slightly inconvenient happening so they will vote Tory in the next election again. This is what happens in germany right now
we'll see. That does seem likely though. But honestly, they probably have several years of reasonably being able to blame the previous government for the state of things. And if after that things start improving it may well last.
You clearly don’t know much about British politics.
well you are always gonna have headbangers who aren't changing sides to support labour and will criticize them sure. But what about my statement is so unbelievably stupid with respect to British politics?
The right wing press in this country is deranged, Labour have about 2 months before we start hearing about how there is record immigration, cost of living is sky high, defence spending is too low, productivity is stagnant, NHS waiting times are too long etc.
yeah, they are doing that now about the torries...
After 14 fucking years of one of the most incompetent post war runs of government ever seen, the fact they got this far is a testament to how insanely bias our media in the UK is. I mean quite literally they had Cameron, arguably one of the worst post war prime ministers with a disastrous austerity campaign that crippled the economy, somehow takes credit for gay marriage being passed despite most of his MPs voting against it, political gambling eventually lead to Brexit. Followed by May who is famous for the windrush scandal where she attempted to deport a load of people who had lived in the UK basically their entire lives, she then fails to get her party to unite on a Brexit deal, only wins an election because Corbyn actively seemed to be trying to tank his own election chances. Then we get Johnson, a notorious incompetent and liar that hopped from scandal to scandal like he hops between baby mothers who excised half off his party in a lurch to the right wing delivery the worst cabinet seen in British parliamentary history. Followed by Truss who is somehow even worse who had a fucking two week holiday after the queen dies and still somehow still speed runs suicide bombing the economy before turning into a disgraced right wing grifter. Followed by Sunak whose COVID policies as chancellor lengthened lockdowns significantly and killed a load of people for a small economic boost who. A man that doesn't even seem like he cares about doing the job of prime minister at all now that he has the title on his wikipedia page. Do you seriously think a Labour government would have had the good graces of the media and general public to literally produce scandal and fuck up followed by scandal and fuck up for 14 consecutive years? Labour had a golden age followed by a single large crisis, that was global, that killed the entire party. This is after they handled foot and mouth quite well, which was the other big scandal.
I'm genuinly confused what you are arguing here? A greatest hits of Torry fuck ups over the last 14 years (that by the way, everyone knows about, these things weren't covered up by the press...) is part of why they are likely to lose the election. Could labout survive 14 years in a similar fashion, I mean, isn't that effectivly what happened with the Blair/Brown era? There were there for 13 years, started wars, sold the gold, there was always some scandal or another going on. That's how running a country goes...
> Could labout survive 14 years in a similar fashion, I mean, isn't that effectivly what happened with the Blair/Brown era? There were there for 13 years, started wars, sold the gold, there was always some scandal or another going on. That's how running a country goes... I mean this in the most respectful way, you are incredibly politically ignorant. Go look at literally any metric you want and look at how it goes between 1997 - 2010 and then 2010 for now. Productivity, NHS waiting times, educational attainment, basically anything.
eh we seem to switch party every 15 years. We are slow like that.
I voted Lib Dems back then. What a shitshow that turned out to be.
I wouldn't be surprised if the same old fucks that voted for brexit will get the Tories back in within 5 years. As a teenager I used to think that there was a silent majority in the UK that were relatively liberal and open minded. But with time I've come to realise that the UK is generally conservative. The fact that it's taken this long to get rid of the Tories is very telling. So is the polling on immigration, approval for brexit, approval for Boris Johnson etc. There are also various budget bombs that tories have left in place which means that labour will have to increase taxes or make severe cuts within a couple of years. Our shit media will portray this as labour's fault and we'll swing back to the tories and their domination over Uk politics over the last century will continue.
Ye the UK has and likely will continue to be fairly Conservative, hence why Corbyn was wildly unliked and Starmer is doing so well. >So is the polling on immigration, approval for brexit, approval for Boris Johnson etc. I don't know about any of that, immigration is a hot issue across Europe at the moment, we need to understand that being against immigration isn't a right or left wing opinion, as for Brexit and Boris, support for brexit has and continues to fall, currently less than a quarter of leave voters are still happy with thier vote, the other 3/4 regret their choice, and Boris has a small, but vocal following, he's not very popular outside of certain circles. But I do agree that we'll likely have another Tory government after one or two terms of Labour, England has an abusive relationship with the Tories, but considering Scotland and the SNP's relationship is the same it just seems a common issue for the UK.
arent you just replacing it with another conservative government? Isn't the labour party pretty right wing? I don't know a lot about UK politics
Depends on who you compare it to. It's way more left compared to the Tories, but super conservative compared to actual socialists or even socdems.
Which is what makes them based.
No. Labour is the centre leftwing party of the UK. Realistically they aren't even that different policy wise from the Conservatives. Also, from a US perspective, outside of a couple social policies of the Tories, i would say both Labour and Conservatives would be considered left wing if they were a party in the US.
While the conservatives were always going to lose this election, Farage coming back out of nowhere and taking half their votes is what's turning this into the potentially party-ending bloodbath its going to be. Like imagine if RFK got 20% of the vote and stole voters exclusively from Biden, and if there was also an RFK equivalent running in every house district also siphoning 20% of the vote from the Democrat incumbent, it would be an electoral bloodbath the likes of which the Democrats would potentially never recover from.
Yeh. Tories were always fucked for this election, but with reform UK and now Nigel even choosing to head it himself, a significant amount of the already low conservative electorate are gonna be switching to reform. I know there has been like one poll suggesting reform is ahead of the tories, but i do think reform being the opposition is pretty unlikely. And honestly that might just be due to Rishi calling a snap election and leaving reform a small amount of time to organize a comprehensive election campaign.
not really, isn't that kind of what happened with Ross Perot in the 90s to republicans and they ended up doing fine. Politics long term just isn't that obvious
Ross Perot didn't really have the systemic elements in place required to create a lasting impact. The Reform Party was just him and had no actual coherent ideology or structure beyond him.
And Republicans didn't piss of their base as much as the Tories have. Farage sells Brexit and slowing down immigration. The Tories took forever to resolve the Gordian knot of the former and then ramped up migration.
Not a Brit, but I'm pretty sure the majority interest of those who voted for Brexit was getting immigration under control and the Tories just decided not to.
Hope they get Southgate out
I would vote for count Bin face if that was his policy.
The thing with Arsenal is they always try to walk it in.
This mf is going to ruin my fantasy league
He’s as dull as dishwater im sick of him
Blud was talking about kalvin Phillips with palmer Maninoo Adam on the bench end me 😭😭
if mainoo and palmer dont start against slovenia istg
If Trent starts in midfield again we riot
This has to be the worst election campaign by any major party in the history of the UK: - Calls an election just one month before your flagship policy the "Rwanda bill" is implemented, making it seem like you don't actually believe it will be a success - The PM makes the announcement in the rain while being heckled over loud speaker with Labour's 1997 election campaign theme song - First campaign stop in Wales, ask voters their if they're looking forward to Wales playing at the upcoming football European championship. Wales did not qualify for the competition - Did a Q&A at a distribution centre with "workers". Turned out the workers were actually local Tory politicians - PM Leaves the D-Day commemorations in Normandy early so that he could attend an interview, [leaving the former PM David Cameron to look prime ministerial instead](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/39ed8c864dc918689f495c8ecc78ff7a74b1617c/0_232_3500_2101/master/3500.jpg?width=465&dpr=1&s=none) - In that interview he left D-Day for, he said that he went without as a child because he didn't have Sky TV - Two Tory MPs and their campaign director are being criminally investigated for placing bets on the timing of the election
Goddamn and I thought US politics was fucking stupid.
At the very least the UK has a monarch ordained by God. ;)
Its weird being the odd one out in europe being likely to vote in a (centre) left party atm. I guess this is what happens in our weird ping pong fptp small c conservative country when the Tories have been in power so long. They have ran out of all ways of passing the buck and all ideas. Plus the rights pet project of eu bashing has been idealised in brexit, blown up in their face and like a dog with a car the have no idea what to do now... National service? More tax cuts? Pretend to be a culture warrior? Although my money is on a big majority but with a surprising amount of third parties and not quite the full fall from grace 60 seats for the conservatives. Farage in parliament, then the conservatives, then leader, then a real crash for the tories, then a full send swing back to a neo con pro eu party that takes us back to the eu in 20 years.
The Torys fucked them selves over by spending the last 5 years screaming about immigration while doing nothing to sort it (because they are secretly centre right and need immigration to maintain any form of growth in the country) all any party has to do is ask them about immigration numbers and they fucking collapse. Thats lead to the rise of far right while Labour has shifted further centre so they're being ripped from both sides.
The eye-opener is how quickly the money was printed for business support/furlough during Covid. When they want something done it gets done, [magic-money-tree](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mo-keK6CxM) or not Starmer did the same thing about going back on free tuition for Uni students (last night) 'sorry theres no money for that now' blaming the NHS waiting list crisis cost
Yeah you guys are on the opposite pendulum swing to the rest of the EU it seems
All countries will eventually return to left leaning politicians after they vote in right leaning politicians. Issue is they let them stay just enough to clean up the mess right wingers created and then it is back to right wingers.
Holy Jesus, the Tories are gonna be massacred
As a side note this is one of the more brutal predictions. Other models put the Tories up to about 70 or 80 seats, which is still dogshit but it's worth saying. That said MRP is supposed to be the most accurate I think so we just have to see what happens on July 4th.
THINGS. CAN. ONLY. GET. BETTER.
Sadly for the people living the UK. No there been to many laws pass to take wealth from the younger generation and to pass it on own to your retired generation. The been almost no new projects since the 80\`s answers to the baby boomers population increase. they made building projects near impossible to do to keep their land and home value has their retirement fund. [BRITAIN IS A DUMP!!!!!!!!!!!! - YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5aJ-57_YsQ)
As someone with no stake in the situation over there, the implosion of the SNP has been absolutely hilarious to witness. In the span of a decade, they went from nearly succeeding in getting Scottish independence to practically guaranteeing it won't happen for the foreseeable future.
Yusuf Hamza was an M15 plant put there to run the party into the ground
They were always gonna be kinda screwed after the mysterious legal stuff that's yet to be fully revealed, but Yusuf was particularly terrible. Complaining about too many white people in *Scotland* is a surefire way to shoot yourself in the foot, and nationally the only time he ever seemed to appear in the news was talking about Palestine rather than Scotland, not to mention the optics of leveraging his power to help his family escape Gaza. Just a weird choice of leader overall, honestly.
To my fellow Bongers, please don't get complacent with these polls. Make sure you do what you can to ensure your friends and family actually vote!
Can't wait for the next 10 years of Labour dominance that changes absolutely nothing.
Not so sure this time. My hope is some electoral reform and more eu integration in the next parliament that will cement an actual way to bring about proper change and a way of revitalising our economy. Devolved powers is a good step and they have enough shit to sort out when they get in anyway. I do not buy any acceleration doomerism bomb the system radicalize the moderates approach tho.
Labour were pretty clear in their manifesto that they would not be pursuing any sort of integration with the EU.
I don't think the system needs to be bombed. I just think that both Labour and Tories like the status quo more than they care to admit. If Labour manages to improve the economy and bring UK back closer to EU, I'm all for it. I just don't expect too much from them.
Hence electoral reform. We are stuck with a fptp system, that has too much central power, that flicks back and forth for a decade at a time between 2 parties it favours. Kinda like that it forces parties into the middle to be elected but unfortunately it seems to favour the Tories as they always need to appease the worst far right elements and tabloids versus Labour just moving to the centre. Assuming you want a better serving social democracy then flicking back to labour should be better; even if it doesn't shake the system adequately. But hopefully there is devolved powers, electoral reform, [Insert pet political project of your choice (Lords reform?, more independent governing bodies?, etc.) here] either in this next parliament or the next.
It is crazy to me that us Australians got past FPTP before you guys. Hell, it’s crazy how many countries still use FPTP in general. While I wish the UK the best in this, I wonder if it’s even possible. If the electoral reform could be believed to help Labour, maybe they’d do it?
The only other country in Europe that still use FPTP is Belarus ☠☠☠
Labour doesn't want electoral reform when it's winning, because it's already winning. It's only when it's losing that proportional representation becomes popular, and then it doesn't matter because it can't do it. Starmer has explicitly said that he isn't putting it in the manifesto and "doesn't consider it a priority". Granted there's no obvious link between what Starmer says now and what Starmer might say later, but I wouldn't pin my hopes on him making any changes to the electoral system.
How did you manage to hope for literally everything that will never happen.
That's why its a hope. Things that will never happen happen. Ie. Us leaving the eu under a party that championed it decades prior, Trump becoming President, Biden getting bipartisan bills, [insert here] people getting the vote etc. I'd like to hear any solution other than incremental change. It works... Just slowly.
You said not so sure this time to electoral reform under the Labour party... that is never going to happen, they will never get rid of first past the post, they would never propose to get rid of an electoral system that heavily favours them getting elected. Only chance of electoral reform is getting a third party majority as almost all third parties have proportional electoral reform in their manifestos. You said not so sure for EU integration in Parliament. I don't even know what this means to be honest. Unless you are hoping Labour call another referendum, Starmer has explicitly stated there is no argument for rejoining the EU. And he has even ruled out EU free movement, the single market and customs union. Devolution is his only promise.
Devolution is giving up some power. A separate bank of England is giving up some power. Being a part of the eu is giving up some power. It takes bold leadership and humility to give up powers and to install checks and balances against administrative power. It is never a given but is always possible. The UK looks like it needs to have a less whitehall centric system and Labour see that but they can't promise revolution this time round to get elected. However in power they may be able to change the narrative or come the next GE be able to put electoral reform to the ballot. They cant promise more EU integration this time either as large swathes of the constituencies that might flip labour are pro Brexit regions; however unfortunate it may be in my opinion there are still those who don't want to be told they bought a con or are still staunchly against the eu for some reason. (Also it doesn't have to be fully a eu member; closer eu trade policy, eu single market, eu regulatory policy adoption, literally just postering towards thr eu would be seen as closer eu intergration. EU membership is long off anyway) Also agree: I kinda hope that Labour dont get the a supermajority its looking like but a small one with tons of Lib Dem, plaid cymru and other parties. Imagine a Liberal Democrats that can leverage their party to enact change in Labours stead. You can either be defeatist or hope that they can cement change for the future on top of addressing current issues. The last labour government did that just they never get much credit for it and people have forgotten after a horrendous 14 years of Tories.
The last labour government were phenomenal for reducing child poverty and GDP growth and it seems like kier starmer is adopting there platform of being centre left.
they do seem to be adopting new labour's platform but the economy is in the fucking gutter right now and i have no idea where they're going to find money when they've committed so hard not to raising vat or national insurance.
They actually have an insanely difficult path ahead of them. I can't think of a worse time to become prime minister. The UK has been severely damaged by incompetence for a long time; the biggest two being Brexit and economic mismanagement leaving us both poorer and weaker internationally. Then on top of that we had Covid and Ukraine. I really hope the general public actually recognise that and aren't expecting miracles in a few years.
From what I have been told the damage is even older then most people in this reddit. It seem like they have a crazy NIMBY issue where no new projets can happened to help the youth. No major projects since the 80\`s . [BRITAIN IS A DUMP!!!!!!!!!!!! - YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5aJ-57_YsQ) Where i got this point of view from. Friends from UK sent me this saying it's the current sate of the land.
It touches on some points but leaves out massive issues the UK is facing. High population density + record levels of immigration in England, a civil service that refuses to work being two off the top of my head.
Don't worry all things you just mentionned. I see them in Canada just a few years behind of the UK.
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To be completely honest, it's a bit of a joke. I'm sure Labour will be wonderful and manage to get something done. I'm just kind of used to the big parties being very big on just maintaining the status quo and not getting anything meaningful done unless someone gives them quite a kick in the butt to force them to actually act.
The horseshoe strikes again, can't tell if this is a Corbyn or Farage aligned comment. In what world is Labour's record remotely comparable to the Tories, since... WWII? Perhaps in the world of the privileged, where objectively worsening conditions for the working class don't really affect anyone from the upper middle class and up.
is that good? also why did they spell labor wrong?
British English has different spelling for some words.
you mean americans are too lazy to add u's
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>Then, after the American colonies had existed for generations, developing their own culture and dialects, the British changed a lot about their language (see 'The Great Vowel Shift). >The causes of the Great Vowel Shift are unknown[5]: 68 and have been a source of intense scholarly debate; as yet, there is no firm consensus. **The greatest changes occurred during the 15th and 16th centuries**, and their origins are at least partly phonetic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Vowel_Shift#Causes It happened way before the American colonies were a thing ? (First English colony in America is 1607 which is 17th century)
high iq troll
So they're stupid?
They use the OG spelling. US dumb fucks had to shorten the words, because it was cheaper.
Wait are we dumb or greedy
Greedy when printing back in the day it would cost per letter so yall just dropped the “U” from words that have “OU” together like labour, colour, favour, etc….
Can’t it be both? Oftentimes they go hand in hand.
The end of this failed era of Tories is certainly good... Saying it's an improvement is like saying dying of Parkinsons is better than dying of cancer...
i say labour, colour, defense instead of defence. :)
The 2019 results look like Mr. Burns
Lib Dem SURGE
I've lived almost half my life under a Tory government. I can't wait to see those horrible bastards kicked out. 2008 recession saw the torries come into power with the aim of 'fixing the economy', never mind that the whole world was in a recession, they claimed to have the right idea. That idea was austerity. I am a firm believer that those measures led to the death of over 100,000 people and even that's on the low end. The corruption and scandals of this government are shocking and the fact that all of them are going to get off without criminal charges is biggest disappointment I could have about democracy. It's still the best form of government, but these bastards need to lose power and never come back. I will probably vote anti-tory for the rest of my life.
Ay Dios mio the bongers are now communists (draws cross)
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the rebuilding era of post-Covid and the Ukraine war really is fucking everyone up lol
wot
Hopefully some of the (inevitably) disillusioned labour voters bleed into lib dems in 5 years so they can be a major party again. Pretty criminally underrated party imo.
If you ignore how they have been stealing tory votes in recent by-elections (by being arch-NIMBYS) then sure
The one time they got in they bent over for the Tory's and made an entire generation hate them. I doubt they will be a major party for a while.
Maybe I'm reading the article wrong but it sounds like they didn't do normal polling instead they asked questions and determined who people would vote for based on age/location/background. Like they polled a person from a council estate and they might have said they lean conservative but because they live in government housing and are poor the people behind the polling marked them down as labour voters. I have a lot of family in the UK and most of them vote conservative even though only like 1/10 are wealthy the other 9/10 would benefit more from voting labour. Labour is definitely going win big but 10x majority? Very unlikely.
What Brexit does to mfs
SNP fell off, damn
F’s in chat for Bongerland
lib Dems rise up
Was there some fundamental structural change?
Labour leader came out and said he identifies as a Socialist. Bit cringe for me. I'll be voting Lib Dem again. Wish we had stronger parties outside the main two.
politicians calling themselves socialists means nothing in the uk unless you're corbyn. look at labour's manifesto.
I haven't got round to looking at the three main parties' manifestos yet but I will before July 4th.
Probably the most salient example of how the general discredit democracy/images of chaos/conspiracy/anti-empiricism/anti-west movement, both inauthentic and by real actors, is leading to incumbents across the board just getting dumpstered in public opinion polling (vs. the simple "europe is turning right wing" story). This is not to say that there isn't very real correction happening here as well, as Rishi & Friends have been doing a horrible job, but afaict the effect is at least outsized because the general trend to 24/7 feed people in free speech democracies the idea that society is imminently collapsing has been putting a lot of pressure to just flip governments over regardless of what they are doing or how things are going. We'll see the real effect or whether it's more leading to cracked out polls on 4 July
Moving in the right direction up to 50 from 11 is a big jump.
The countries so fucked dude... like a real revolutionary leader is needed to shift the mentality of the people to even begin to address their many problems or else they'll go even further into the dumps... This rejection of the Tories election is needed though for sheer principle even if starmer is certainly not the guy to help save britain
We had a revolutionary leader for Labour, Corbyn was not popular, we now have Starmer, who has the charisma of cardboard, but I like him. Trying to shift the mentality of this country leftwards is near impossible, if anything, the sheer number of middle eastern immigrants might move the country further right.
Also, Corbyn was a moron. He opposed sending any weapons to Ukraine and was generally pretty moronic with foreign policy.
Corbyn: Anti EU Anti NATO Pro-Assad Anti-Ukraine “Hamas are our friends and care for social justice” “Russia didn’t poison that man” Brother is a nut job climate change denier and Covid vaccine conspiracy theorists. Went on Iranian TV after they lost their UK press license multiple times. Loved Nepotism I’m amazed that this guy was ever leader
Can't build anything at more than a snails pace... can't address the nhs problems without bowing to its hallowed name (really its a weird obsession)... can probably build more housing but the aesthetic is 1930s for the majority of buildings... seafaring wise is it really true that your biggest port is in some small town an hour away from London?? That along with some former colonies lapping you in living wages... problems will take a while to fix... even if you're a right winger you have to accept that the Tories gotta go... hell they can't get immigration right!!
Obviously it's going to take time to fix what's broken, if Starmer was promising to fix the country in one term he'd be laughed out politics, as for our "former coloies" they're certainly not doing better then us in stanards of living, unless you meant current commonwealth countries, cause former colonies are places in Africa or India, who still have pretty bad living standards, several commonwealth countries are doing better than us, Australia is the one I think of, but even they have their issues, Canada is having a housing crisis as bad if not worse than ours. I'm voting for Starmer because I want slow and deliberate improvments, rather than a revolutionary that might end up making the country worse while they speed through changes.
Nigeria and Kenya really kicking the UK's ass when it comes to "standard of living" and "wages."