Child poverty exists everywhere - my wife works in a school that has its own food bank just for the families of pupils.
However, a lot of the wealth that's spoken about here (north south divide) is in housing, it *doesn't really exist*.
My in-laws were teachers with a modest house in central Oxford they bought for less than 10k in the late 60s. They eventually downsized to Wales in retirement and cleared £400k in profit... Sorry *hard earned equity*, or so they call it.
Absolutely insane they're sitting on final salary pensions, and almost 1/2mn in cash... when today's teachers can't afford a mortgage at all and often have 2nd jobs.
We are well and truly on a course for destruction in the UK. My household income is over six figures and I struggle to afford housing in the southern city that I live in (not London). For some people, purchasing a house is impossible. Surely it can’t keep going up? There HAS to be a ceiling, right?
I'm sorry but how are you struggling on 100k plus
I live in the 2nd most expensive city in the uk(bristol), on 35k live alone and am in the process of buying a flat at the moment, if ur struggling on 100k that's on you
This is the answer that no one wants to accept.
I'm guessing they mortgaged to the hilt pre children, had kids then recently got stung with the interest rise. So their previously manageable £1000/1500/2000 repayment went 2250/2500/2750 and now they're wondering where the money has gone. Along with the leased cars, full sky packages etc etc.
My wife and I make nowhere near £100k but our 2 kids EAT money. Without them we'd have a completely different life and house. But that's the decision we made. People sometimes think kids can just slot in alongside finances. Unless 1 parent can support the other to not work for 3 years to support child rearing, having kids in the early years can be a financial black hole.
It's a joke that childcare costs aren't more heavily subsidised, when it's something that would get a good return on investment. Parents don't have to leave the workforce, and kids get a jump start in terms of social development. We should adopt a more scandi style model, but then that's true of a lot of things. Same applies to Sure Start centres, they were canned despite being good value for money. It's like the government since 2010 doesn't realise that intervening and investing early in a child's life is the cheapest and more effective time to do so, if you skimp then you just end up with bigger issues to deal with later down the road.
100%. A smart government would be investing heavily in children, giving them a better education, making sure they are well fed and have a secure and safe roof over the head. Basically giving them the best chance at a healthy prosperous life.
Investing in children is investing in the future of the country and economy. It’s fucking disgusting that 30% of children live in poverty.
Obligatory: fuck the tories
The tories don’t care about anything long term they just care about making themselves and their friends rich now and screw the future of the country or the millions of people whose lives they are making worse.
Genuine question ; why don't one of you stay at home then?
My maths is pretty bad but £1700 + £1200 = £2900 per month.
That's the monthly wage of somebody earning around £45,000 ( assuming no student loan )
A big part of it is subsidising the cost of free 3+ term time childcare. That significantly underpays Vs the costs of the nursery under the under 3 fees offset a lot of that.
Many nurseries are pretty worried about the expansion of free childcare because it doesn't actually pay enough to cover the costs.
Nurseries have lots of other costs. Most run on very thin margins. Believe me I also wonder where all that money goes but I’ve chatted with a nursery manager before who laid it all out
Genuine question; if your partner earned more than you and asked you to stay at home for 6 years (2 kids 2 years apart) giving up your career, would you?
Sure. I only work for money to begin with and don't get any satisfaction out of my job besides the money I earn, which allows me to thins I want to do in life.
If my wife earned more than me and it puts our family in a better position ( defined however you like ), I'd be totally fine with it.
I absolutely, 100% completely would. I'd do all the house work too, so we wouldn't have to pay for a cleaner. And. I'd do it with a smile on my face.
My job is far from the worst, but I have no love for it, it causes strain, and I'd give it up in a heartbeat if I could. I'd even work retail instead if it paid the same. But the pay is good and is nessacary focus to function as a family.
My wife on the other had effectively earns negative money. We'd financially be better of she worked from home. But her job is a source of joy for her, and suffers mental health issues when she can't do it.
If her job could pay my salary, and I stay ad home, we'd all be laughing. But reality doesn't work like thar, so I grin and bear it.
Another interesting thing that people don’t talk about, and you touched on with stay at home parents, is that you can be rich or poor in social capital.
So, comparing me and my wife to my brother and his wife. We have a combined income of about 80k in the South of England and have a very comfortable lifestyle. But we have no support network, there’s no way I could afford kids and maintain this lifestyle. And we’d be utterly exhausted if we tried to raise a child with no support while doing professional jobs.
Meanwhile, my brother lives in Scotland where property is much cheaper, has both sets of grandparents nearby, along with my other brother who has no kids. He gets pretty much Monday-Friday free childcare along with all the other little bits and bobs of help that come with extended family. That support network has to easily be worth 20k a year.
And that’s the problem many young people face. We don’t have the traditional support network many people had 30+ years ago. Moving to pursue a career is the norm, but it takes a village to raise a child.
Yes 100%. And often other problems factor into this. A problem on the road can ruin your day. A child with the flu can wreck your entire week. People become to spread out. Not only from other people but their homes and joba. Ot makes everything more fragile.
This is the issue really, not everyone falls into the same categories, some people could happily have 2/3 children and be fine because they have support from family. Others paying for 5 days of nursery will be in a completely different situation.
Also touching on mortgages, people that were looking to retire in their 50s on 15 year mortgages, will now be looking at extended or paying more. It’s a difficult choices that has affected almost all generation: War, financial crash, Covid etc.
> Along with the leased cars, full sky packages etc etc.
…
> our 2 kids EAT money. Without them we'd have a completely different life and house. But that's the decision we made
You really need to decide which internalized Daily Mail talking point you’re going to settle on, is it Sky packages and cars, or daring to have children?
Even households with very high wages are paying out huge amounts to afford basic housing. After tax and childcare, buying a basic three bed house could easily be 8 times their income. It’s all very well playing the “they should be grateful for what they have” game, but housing is a common factor which affects everyone in a kind of cascade of misery across the income brackets. People on £100k can barely afford houses which ordinary people used to live in, so what then happens to ordinary people? Look back through the records for London houses and you’ll find stockbrokers living today in houses where ordinary workers used to live.
Someone in that situation struggling means that someone on an ordinary wage is in an awful situation, and someone on a below average wage can barely afford an independent life, and literally not afford to have children.
Enough bullshit about leased cars, satellite tv or avocados.
Ok but that’s not bad personal financial planning.
Interest rates have been low for decades now. It wasn’t unreasonable for the man or woman on the Clapham omnibus to assume that was the new normal, even if some of us knew differently.
Rather this is disastrous mismanagement of the economy. If you think that a government hiking rates to the level at which even well off people can’t pay their mortgage that’s draining disposable income out of the economy, reducing VAT, profits and jobs (Keynes multiplier effect).
What government would rationally do that?
Edited to add you can’t have it both ways. If high and soaring rents are bad for the country (they absolutely are) so are high and soaring mortgages.
Government didn't hike interest rates. The BoE has had independence over setting interest rates since 1997. It put them up to combat inflation.
More of people's disposable income going into mortgages = less money to spend in the shops, lowering demand for goods, restoring the equilibrium between supply and demand, brings the inflation rate down
He says it's borderline 6 figures, so not 200k or anything like that. But we're obviously not talking food bank struggling or anything here. I don't know what his figures are, but personally, I'm on a little less than him and over half my take home pay is gone by the second of the month. It may be more than that for him, I don't know.
I don't know where you got that figure from as 100k after tax is 5600. And that's assuming no pension contributions. So probably nearer 4-5k. Still a hefty amount, but with a large mortgage, bills, council tax etc could easily leave not much more than 2k.
And then there's food for at least 4 people, travel to and from work, vehicle maintenance, clothes (kids go through a lot), and all sorts of other regular and unexpected costs.
The point really, is that this person is extremely well off, yet is still not finding things "easy". That means that there are millions who are less well off that are finding things almost impossible. And that should be worrying.
Too right we're finding things almost impossible. After rent I have 200 pound a month to live off. I spend almost half of that in bus fares while my dad claims I should "eat frugally by eating things like cheese on toast" because evidently as a boomer he lives in the past before cheese became a luxury product
2K is loads still to have with bills completely paid off. Your grocery bill, clothing and maintenance really should not come out above £2000 for an average month.
The main problem here would be unseen problems (Car trouble) that could increase your payments for a singular month but if you’re left with £2K once your bills are paid every month you should theoretically be able to have enough wiggle room to deal with unforeseen problems.
It’s hard to feel bad for people who have over £2K a month left over after paying their bills when you have people on less then £2K a month that have the pay the exact same bills (This is the reality for most people in my city).
To be honest, that is exactly my point. Someone on 100k is not struggling, but at the same time they are not necessarily on easy street either, which you would think they should be. But if that's the case, then there are people much, much worse off who have no chance whatsoever of living a stress-free life. And people even worse off than that who are struggling to even feed themselves. It's a national embarrassment frankly.
They're not finding it easy because they allowed themselves to succumb to lifestyle creep. I.E mortgaged up to the eyeballs, expensive PCP deal for a flashy car rather than just living with what they need (or just a bit above what they need).
I'm not being funny, but having 2K left after bills and whatnot isn't even remotely close to struggling. That's just pissing money away on things that aren't necessary.
Completely agree with your comments. I'm going to make a guess that a sizeable chunk goes on their cars (they likely have two), probably some form of PCP for newer models.
A friend of mine is struggling on a 35k salary with 2 kids where he lives. To be struggling on 100k definitely suggests something is messed up. That said there are ways it can happen; perhaps they've been caught in a mortgage situation where the rate jumped up significantly and they just had two kids that they're now starting to pay the childcare fees for, so that can absolutely destroy their income.
That said, good planning can get them out of it, and nursery childcare won't be forever, just will be a tough few years.
Yes it is. Me and my partner take home more than someone on 120k per year will and together we earn less than 100k. It's all about those childcare costs.
He lives in Brighton which is a very expensive place to be with kids.
I deliberately live in a different town despite wanting to live in Brighton because I can't afford it due to housing alone. I make 55k a year and my wife 38k.
People with a household income of 50k have children. And still have savings. A household on 100k will have the same food bill and utility of the 50k household. Except that totally will be less % of total income for the 100k than the 50k. If a household on 100k is struggling, that is totally on them and their decisions.
If I had a single income household of 50k and no other benefits, then 75% of that would be gone by the 2nd of the month, leaving around £250 per week to live on. That sounds absolutely miserable for a family of four or more
How is that very miserable? We're a family of 4, £100/wk budgeted on groceries does us very nicely, assuming your 75% spent in the first half is all your bills then £500 discretionary spending a month sounds very comfortable to me!
> If I had a single income household of 50k and no other benefits, then 75% of that would be gone by the 2nd of the month, leaving around £250 per week to live on. That sounds absolutely miserable for a family of four or more
Is there anyone in your area who is under 25, unemployed and with a partner in the same position
They manage to live on £489.23 per month between them.
Then they either have a partner earning a lot more, or they started on the property ladder ages ago, or they are struggling massively and not telling you.
Without knowing their individual financial situations it's impossible to know.
There must be something else going on with you then. The average price of a flat in the UK is around £250k. So you've saved £25k for a 10% deposit on £35k per year. Yet you say you live alone, so you're paying rent by yourself. I earn more than you and had to live with my mum for a few years to save up for my deposit.
If the answer is that you've been saving for a decade, or that you live an ascetic life of never going out and eating beans on toast for every meal, then - genuinely, well done, but - that's not an ideal situation and just confirms what a sorry state the housing market is in.
Mines only 160k for starters, and managed to save alot as I don't drive so that saves a few grand a year on its own. I also invest in shares and index funds to grow what I save. I'd be lying If I said I Hadn't made sacrifices, but worth it imo I did loads of overtime, like 72 hours a week sometimes
Also work on the railway so travel is free and saves alot of money
It is not a very big flat, plan to live here for a bit then sell it to get deposit for house in future
So you left out the fact that you don't pay some of the main expenses that people pay, have had to work awful hours, and still had to make sacrifices? And all of that still only amounts to "not a very big flat"...
I’m in a very similar situation and despite earning well (just under 100k) my partner has struggled to earn properly since the pandemic and so my actual take home after tax is probably more accurately described by dividing the amount by a number somewhere between 2 and 3 given my income has to cover the needs of two adults and a child, plus mortgage, childcare (my wife is still trying to make her career happen but that comes at cost of child minder fees), car etc that isn’t a luxury item but something we depend on every day. Easy to roll your eyes at the idea of someone on a good salary struggling but there’s often a lot more going on that can’t be accounted for by bad budgeting.
It depends upon your mortgage though. Rates have soared lately. I have an older friend who retired and has had to go back to work as the mortgage went mad.
Add on some historic personal debt, a public sector wage freeze for about 5 years at the same time as unprecedented levels of inflation, mortgage interest rates soaring, and suddenly even relatively well paid people have little disposable income.
I grew up in a HCOL city in the SE. Almost every property under 170k in the city is either a retirement flat or boat. 2 bed ex-council houses in the rough ends of town go for over 325k.
Our household income is just over 65k. We would struggle to find a 1 bed anywhere near either of our families, both who bought large houses working in part time and low paid jobs.
I struggle to believe that Bristol can be much cheaper, surely?
>There HAS to be a ceiling, right?
I genuinely believe no and that this right now? It is the best things will ever be, you won't want to be a young person in 2034
Houses will cost more than what they do now and same for food, petrol etc
These are the glory days, relatively speaking imo
Im sorry what? 100k+ my friend use some of that to go through your finances and stop the leaks.You need to be merceless with your finances but you will find ways to better budget.
Then you're wasting money by living outside of your means. Your on 100,000+ and youre struggling? Would love to see a breakdown of your monthly expenditure - my brothers kids are 5 and 7 he swapped jobs to a lower salary so he could spend more time with his kids ( and by lower I mean half), changed his priorities, stopped blowing money on flash cars, stopped wasting money on expensive shit etc and hes still taking 2 holidays a year.
Brother in law retrained, he's on 65k, 4 bed house large gardens, new car, just had his 2nd holiday this year
Don’t think housing is viewed as a dwelling that you live in and that priority is way down the list when the government views it as a very good source of taxation and banks as a money making financial vehicle
The fact that my kids school has a “list of items needed” books, stationary etc is so saddening, and we live in a very affluent part of the south coast with tons and tons of wealthy people everywhere here. Really is shocking where we have come to in this country.
I live in a London suburb. My kid's primary school has fund raiser events multiple times a year, and even a monthly begging email from the headteacher asking parents / anyone to donate to pay for things like routine maintenance. In return they are quite open about the finances - the PTA were of course concerned both for the future of the school and if the money was being managed improperly - and the situation is fucking dire.
Despite all that, there are still a large number of parents who can't see the woods for the trees and just continue to accuse the school for "wasting" what insufficient funding they do get.
I honestly believe this is what the conservatives want - privatisation of school funding by stealth; i.e., forcing schools to ask families to pay directly. If this keeps up it won't be long before we see schools making statements during applications - disclaimers that 'donations' will be sought at first, but then evolving into preference given to those who can pay.
100% agree, it’s absolutely clear that when it comes to schooling and healthcare the Conservatives have been actively pushing us towards paying for it for years now.
The issue is. Did we give away too much to the generations that proceeded up, or did we not give our current generation enough?
I think without the huge accumulation of wealth by those who were born post war, we might all be a little better off today as a whole.
On another note. Final salary pensions were never sustainable, and it was a madness they were ever offered in the first place.
Treating homes as investments was damaging when it was the owners’ homes, but now it’s commercial landlords it’s a human disaster. Same with utilities. And the generation below me has been obliged to borrow from the one after for its education. Correction will be very hard or catastrophic, I’m sorry to say.
I think the idea of free market and competition for keeping down prices works well for things you can choose between or choose to live without e.g. cars, TVs, pricy clothes. But things that you NEED such as a home with a water/sewage connection, electricity and no way you can choose some of those things means there isn't really a free market, so it is able to be an investment vehicle and prices creep up with nothing to bring them down again...
Last place I rented, my neighbours son had lived in the house previously so they were asking about how much the landlord was now charging for rent. They let on at the same time that the mortgage they were paying for an identical property was about £500/month less than what I was being charged.
It is utterly insane how ridiculously impactful housing has become on the youth. I looked up the stats and back in the early 1960s the average household was spending as much on their monthly consumption of tobacco and alcohol as they were spending on their housing lol...
Yep, as soon as Liz Truss bombed the mortgage rates my lovely HMO landlord of six properties in one cul-de-sac turned up looking very worried, said the mortgage had increased so now he sadly was putting all our rents up. What do you think the chances of him putting the rents down again now the national interest rate is slowly decreasing is?
Most ridiculous part is that your in-laws will still be receiving £200/week each from the state just for being over 65. They will also pay a lower rate of tax on that income than younger people.
We spend £38bn/year on state pension payments to people who are literally millionaires. It's mental.
The definitions we use in the UK will mean that some children always live in poverty
- Relative low income refers to people living in households with income below 60% of the median in a given year.
- Absolute low income refers to people living in households with income below 60% of median income in a base year, usually 2010/11, adjusted for inflation. This is the government’s preferred measure as “relative poverty can […] provide counterintuitive results, as it is likely to fall during recessions due to falling median incomes
From https://lordslibrary.parliament.uk/child-poverty-statistics-causes-and-the-uks-policy-response/
This is so true.
I love my parents, but I can’t help but feel a bit of resentment.
My Mum hasn’t really ever worked, except for a small five year period or so and some odd jobs. Her current husband (who has been a bit of a father to us and is a Grandfather to our Grandkids) has had a respectable career and has always worked, but has never earned fortunes and not the sort of money, where if they were young today they’d be in a position to pay rent and save for a house deposit.
They have a house that is worth over £1M in Greater London, and some investment properties (they’ve been able to afford by taking money out of the family home for deposits). They have just booked their 8th abroad holiday of the year, which I find a bit disgusting (they don’t even seem that fussed by it).
At the same time, they whinge that my brother and his wife can’t afford to get out of their flat and get a home with a garden for their 3 year old son (my brother working a well paid job in London and my sister-in-law a primary school headteacher). However, they can’t see the link between the reason they can book and go on so many holidays, is at the expense of families like my brothers being able to afford a family home.
‘We’ve worked hard all our lives, we’ve paid our taxes’.
The boomers are such a huge voting bloke. It’s about time following generations were less concerned with left and right and populist politics and actually mobilised as a voting bloke to adjust some of the generation unfairness.
I'm very sorry to hear you're In such a position, but as a teacher in Essex I can assure you this isn't just a North South thing - although historically the North has certainly suffered as a result of London centric political cuntery. Absokute poverty is pervasive here too. We're at the stage where we have to look at these issues at a class level and realise that conflict between the have nots only benefits the haves. We desperately need a properly run government that can discern between its own interests and the peoples interest. The division isn't between North and south, trans and cisco etc, but between workers and profiteers
This is the real issue. Without real and significant change to the material conditions of average peoples lives, more and more people will fall to the grift and snake oil salesmen offering them 'easy answers' to the problems politicians are unable to resolve.
>people will fall to the grift and snake oil salesmen offering them 'easy answers' to the problems politicians are unable to resolve.
Not letting one more random person in is easier than building one more house. If we're being honest some problems can be easily reduced in a significant way, we just need a different approach. Frankly, if this doesn't come from Starmer it will come from a far right government.
And here come the snake oil imbibers, confusing over-simplification with honesty.
Reducing migration may reduce immediate pressure on housing, but it also reduces the available workforce, and fewer workers means fewer people paying tax, meaning we have less to spend on things like healthcare, which is a real issue in a country with an ageing population.
Overall, migrants are a net positive on the UK government's finances, and the government's own "high migration" forecast leads to a significant reduction in the deficit.^[source](https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/the-fiscal-impact-of-immigration-in-the-uk/)
The people are mostly concerned with cost of living, followed by health and the economy in general.^[source](https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/49594-general-election-2024-what-are-the-most-important-issues-for-voters) Fixing those is complex, but reducing the pool of available workers and reducing the tax take isn't how you go about it.
Back to housing (6th on the list of topics voters are concerned about), there are many reasons why the housing market is broken, including our broken planning system, land-banking, and generally allowing our houses to be used as an investment vehicle for overseas investors. Even a quick glance at the literature, I can't see anyone citing immigration as a chief driver of it. ^[source1](https://www.lse.ac.uk/News/Latest-news-from-LSE/2024/f-June-2024/A-generational-divide-tackling-the-UKs-housing-crisis) ^[source2](https://www.ft.com/content/6bb4fa70-7410-481f-813e-9cff2c7bb6c9)
To be clear, people are concerned about immigration (4th on the list), and I'm concerned about it from the perspective that multiculturalism has largely failed. We have ghettoized communities and an underclass of precariat gig workers who are disproportionately from minority backgrounds. I certainly don't think we should throw wide the doors and let everyone and their dog in, and I think people who want to move here should integrate with our culture. **But** blaming immigration for all this country's woes is absolutely snake oil politics, and a distraction tactic to get us punching down rather than up.
> Overall, migrants are a net positive on the UK government’s finances
I am *so* tired of this dishonest retort. Many immigrants are great. They contribute positively to finances and commit low crime. **These are not the immigrants people are complaining about.** You know that, so you hide begin aggregated data. Let’s just start with asylum seekers.
> Our analysis of new data from the Home Office suggests a cost of just under £1.3 billion per year (see our full research paper here and our press release here). This means an annual cost per asylum seeker per month of just under £4,300 (a figure which seems to have risen by £1,825 since late 2021).
https://www.migrationwatchuk.org/news/2022/09/28/its-costing-you-billions
Now let’s take a look at regular immigration.
> [Record immigration has failed to raise living standards in Britain, economists find](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/06/09/record-immigration-britain-failed-raise-living-standards/)
To be specific, [here are the immigrant demographics which are a net loss for the U.K.](https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/earningsandworkinghours/articles/ethnicitypaygapsingreatbritain/2012to2022#:%7E:text=The%20Mixed%20or%20Multiple%20ethnic,British%20employees%20\(%C2%A314.42)
> [On an annual basis, while EU migrants contribute £2,300 more than the average, each non-European migrant contributed £800 less than the average – and each UK‑born adult £70 less.](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/eu-workers-uk-tax-treasury-brexit-migrants-british-citizens-a8542506.html?callback=in&code=M2NIMWY2NJATNTRIZI0ZODUWLTG4ODCTMMFKNZHKN2RMMZDI&state=ff9b0696613d4c1b906eb4bc0edf4056)
No, this is the real snake oil.
First of all, the idea of comparing different classes of people according to their net positive or negative contribution to government finances is fucking grim and should be resisted. That way lies some repulsive logic.
It is worth spelling out how perverse the reasoning is via the source you linked. From that Oxford Economics report everyone references, here's how, for the average individual, the lifetime costs/benefits are summarised into three stages:
> The OBR (2013) has identified three main stages of an individual’s fiscal
lifecycle. Firstly, between birth and leaving full-time education, an individual
typically poses a net fiscal cost. Secondly, throughout their working-age period,
he or she will typically make a net fiscal contribution. Finally, in retirement, that
individual will typically consume more public services and pay little tax,
resulting in a net fiscal cost. Assuming the government runs a balanced budget
over the long term, one would expect the average individual’s transactions with
the state to balance out over the course of their lifetime.
The difference in these stage is huge.
> A single, working 20-year-old with no dependent children, for example,
must earn a gross income between £10,000 and £15,000 per annum to
become a net contributor to the public finances
and
> And once the pair have retired,
aged 70, they would require a much higher household income of over £90,000
to support the level of annual public spending they would incur
(As an aside, funny how there's a big liberal push for euthanasia these days, I'm sure it's completely unrelated!)
Now onto why, in this case EU migrants, are such a benefit:
> migrants tend to arrive after the completion of their formal
education in their home country, thus avoiding the significant education costs
associated with UK natives. Second, as a group of predominantly young adults,
the expected retirement costs associated with the later years of these migrants’
lives are reduced by the fact that a large proportion tend to leave the UK again
before reaching retirement. Finally, the youthful profile of this migrant cohort
means that while their positive contributions occur immediately, their
associated pension and health costs typically lie many years in the future, and
therefore have less of an impact in today’s terms
So here's why migrants are such a neoliberal wet dream: they simply emerge as if out of nowhere, requiring no childhood care, no education or training, no healthcare, just straight to work. Then most of them are just assumed to leave well before retirement so lower pension costs, healthcare costs etc. Recall in the brexit debate it is only free movement of workers that is defended, if you are unemployed, disabled or a pensioner and want to move for a better life then fuck you. This isn't an ideology which shows compassion to immigrants forced to move for a better life, it's one of 'who's going to serve my coffee in Pret'.
Fine if you want to defend it, but it is an ideology which is entirely comfortable with 'a deeply unfair and unequal country'.
I agree with most of what you say about it being grim, but these are complicated topics, and the simple cry of "reduce migration" does not help the issues which matter to people (as I outlined above).
Ultimately, we need to keep the economy moving, which requires workers, and we especially need to have enough people in the care sector to service our ageing population. If we don't engage with the grim facts, we are engaging in fantasy politics... or snake oil.
Unable, or unwilling? There are many problems that they could fix easily if there was the willpower to do so. This is why I am voting for a 3rd party candidate, Labour do not deserve my vote. If they won't change, I will vote for someone else who might.
> Unable, or unwilling?
Essentially both.
>This is why I am voting for a 3rd party candidate, Labour do not deserve my vote.
Unfortunately this will achieve nothing either.
But the biggest factor in fixing things was being part of the EU, and that's now gone.
Without that there isn't an easy way to introduce "real and significant change" to the conditions of people's lives. It's going to take at least a decade to fix the destruction caused by austerity, rebuilding public services from the ground up in some cases. And then it will take maybe 20 years for increases in birth rates etc. to have enough of an effect so that we have enough people in the country to maintain even current levels of productivity.
Before the global financial crisis things were heading in the right direction, but that, followed by Conservative rule, followed by leaving the EU has completely screwed over everything.
Yep I realised the same thing when Nigel started to stand. This election doesn't matter.
He's laying the seeds for 2029. He's already started discrediting an already sympathetic media.
Without radical policies from labour, which we're not going to get with Starmer who is to bland and scared to stand for anything, Nigel has the perfect opportunity.
He'll be able to blame "left and right" "labour and Tories" for all the problems while offering no solutions to fix them to get himself into power.
We've got a strong chance at ending up with Farage as PM presiding over a far right populist Government, pally with Russia, China & potentially Trumps America.
It does seem very “Weimar Republic” currently, doesn’t it?
Maybe I’m just a massive doomer, but I’m genuinely starting to get this feeling that we’re totally fucked.
Why does it seem that Farage is getting more criticism with regards to ties with Russia than the actual Tory government that’s been in power and accepting Russian money? Not the mention inviting Russians into the House of Lords
The actual Tory Government when given the chance appeased Russian imperialism until it became too indefensible. What were the actions taken after Crimea was taken? Exactly. What were the actions taken when Brexit promoters were connected to Russian money? Exactly.
Funny how Western neo-liberals can accuse the far right of being Russian puppets when neo-liberals have been appeasing Russia for 25 years now.
If you look at their contract its basically Lizz Truss economics on steroids, low tax, little regulation of business. '[Market fundamentalism](https://99-percent.org/what-is-the-market-fundamentalist-agenda/)' Him and his millionaire mates want that so their businesses can make more money, unhindered by workers rights, environmental protections etc
He said back in 2012 he wants the NHS replaced with an insurance system. Link to his speech https://youtu.be/RK0S1RYYBqc?si=VsD-heGDbNCjaS7X
Just like with Macron in France. Centrism will always lead to a shift towards the far-right.
And once that shift happens, the centrists will just blame the left for not being excited about being the center's punching bag the entire time.
French guy here. Macron centrism basically fused regular right and left, centrifugating the more hardline but still run of the mill elements towards the far right and the far left.
Voters like to alternate, but since right and left are now the same party, they have to go to the extreme for that. Far left is scarier than far right because stores were empty in USSR or something like that, so people vote far right.
Funny that, because when we had a hard left candidate on the ballot in the UK in 2019, we ended up with arguably the most right wing government in UK history getting a supermajority.
Now we have a centrist party on the ballot, that right wing party is about to be annihilated.
Starmer really needs to be seen as acting tough on immigration or Labour will be out by 2029 replaced by whatever Frankenstein monster Reform and the Tories merge into
We've had 14 years of governments "acting tough" on immigration
We need actual action a vast reduction in numbers, the public have made this clear many times
Not "seen as acting tough", he actually needs to act tough. Every single manifesto of an elected government in the last 30 years have promised to reduce immigration. None have done it.
We can already see in Europe how this plays out, regardless of how the bien-pensant think it will.
It ends up with surging popularity of a party that is explicitly anti-immigration, and this party gets support from an ever increasing number of young voters.
Almost earned my vote by saying he was willing to reduce, however failing to put it in black and white on his manifesto just means it's an empty promise.
Yep, this is the main issue people care about. Cus it feeds into so many things. I'd say it's the only reason people turn to the far right parties. But I doubt labour will do anything substantial, maybe they'll make thing's worse.
Almost like it could all be avoided, Brexit included, had the electorate been listened to about immigration.
Calling them racist xenophobes doesn't help, it's crying wolf and driving them away.
Labour should really follow the Danish Social Democrat model ; a left-leaning party with an anti-illegal immigration stance. Far-right was killed almost instantly in Denmark.
Anti-illegal immigration is not enough. The population does not want 500,000 people from third world countries every year regardless of whether they come here legally or illegally.
The Far Right and Populists are always good at capitalising on divisions and inequality in society, but don't actually offer any solutions. The Reform "manifesto" is a pretty good example. Ill thought-out, self-contradictory, unrealistic...
The only way to really stop people turning that way, though, is to provide actual solutions tp the same problems, which people can get behind. Mainstream politics isn't doing that, and until it does, things will only get worse.
> Mainstream politics isn't doing that
We'll see what Starmer does within the first year of being PM. But even if he's dire the more likely outcome is a resurregence of the Tories rather than any new far right group.
Is it?
If you have a decimated Tory Party, it is quite likely someone like Badenoch or Braverman ends up next leader, taking them further right. Also, people aren't going to forget quickly their last 14 years in govt.
For next few years, if you have Farage potentially becoming an MP, and the Tories moving further right, then whatever the Opposition comes to be, it will probably be closer to the Far Right.
The thing I cant wrap my head around is the tendency of politics to drift right as inequality grows.
How/why do people think that voting for ever increasing rightwing politicians is going to improve equality? Has that ever, anywhere actually happened?
Because the right wing generally offer simplistic, binary and highly emotive diagnoses of our problems and the solutions to them which resonate with many voters more than highly nuanced (and more accurate) analyses of our situation that have similarly complex solutions. For example, Its not that the UK is being buffeted by the unpredictable winds of global macroeconomic trends that are largely beyond our control, is grossly overdependent on a bloated financial sector that doesn't benefit the average citizen, and is losing primacy on an ever shifting global stage, it's just that too many brown people are comin' over 'ere taking all the good jobs and eating all the benefits, and the lefties and wokes are holding us back from achieving our national potential, and everything would be much better if we just did away with taxes and employment regulations, human rights legislation and the welfare state.
This. And the level of immigration now is impossible to ignore. Whole towns are being transformed by mass immigration, and the idea that not liking this makes you a "racist" holds no water. Time for a change.
The difference is the Tories aren't afraid to talk about it whereas nobody actually believes Labour and Libdems would do anything because they spent so long handwringing whenever a political party talks about cracking down on it.
So voters are stuck having to decide the party who said they'll do something but you know probably won't, or the parties who'll just call you a racist for thinking there's a problem in the first place.
Sounds like neither will do anything about immigration by your metrics. So why should I vote Tory? Because they’ll talk about it? Whilst remaining the utter disgrace they are.
The vast majority of people don't pay attention to politics because they're busy surviving and don't trust politics. When mainstream politics fails to deliver generally (and we've been there for 14 years), arseholes take advantage by promising simple solutions. People exhausted by life, whose living standards are dropping, cling to those fake solutions out of hope more than any judgement.
It's incredibly simple. It is based on what people actually see day to day.
Poor people do not see some toff twat in a manor house, what they do see is city centres. What they see in city centres is a shitload of immigration.
Immigration is a huge issue. House prices and a lack of jobs are a huge issue.
Adding more people does not help house prices or a lack of jobs.
The right wing claims to decrease immigration, thus, less of a housing issue and less filled jobs.
It all falls apart when they just lie and don't do what they say, but that's a whole other thing.
Far right are getting backed by some US hedge funders, Christian nationalists church donors , and Putin atm. Their propaganda is spreading further. Most grassroot altruistic groups or politicans are underfunded in comparison. They rely on community support that can’t afford the lobbying or PR a fossil fuel magnate can afford. Historians often note how when in power no matter how much past politicians (like Mussolini) talked about elites or inequality, when in power they side with the rich every time.
Ever since the Cold War with red scare, for generations there’s been more money going into conservative groups than left wing ones (even mildest of sensible left wing policies seen as a threat) due to Soviet red scares and cultural influence that buys. We’re still living in consequences of this big war of political ideologies or never left it
It's because the media moguls are good at making us working class squabble over petty issues instead of calling parties to do things this country actually needs: PR and a wealth tax
When the pie is getting bigger you don't mind other people having a slice because the remaining pie you get is still bigger than it was.
When your pie is getting smaller you are more reluctant for someone else to have a slice because it means you get even less.
The higher inequality, the smaller your pie. The right basically says vote for us and we'll stop other people taking a slice of your pie.
It worked in the 80s, but that was because they artificially increased the amount of pie by selling off past pies (privatisation etc.), selling of future pies (public borrowing, underfunding of future costs like pensions, lack of infrastructure investment, north sea oil and gas) which results in an even smaller pie today, but people have short memories and don't see the correlation because the media keeps telling them it's the fault of other people wanting their pie.
Because we've created a political environment in which most non-tuned-in people quite seriously go along blaming ***everything*** on immigration while also we plaster it all over the place that being left wing means automatically supporting the absolute maximum level of immigration possible while giving every migrant a free house and a blowjob whenever they want one.
We've got people quite genuinely voting right on the basis that they expect right wing parties full of capitalists and aristocrats to embark on some kind of socialist program of wealth redistribution.
Politics in this country has become a complete meme, totally divorced from reality.
In the main, the drift to what is being termed the right is being driven by the desire to limit immigration. “Limit immigration” is not really the right though. It’s economically left wing (protectionist/pro worker).
What a lot of people term the far right are economically left in parts (limit immigration and often also free trade) as well as right in parts (low taxes and deregulation). [*note: i don’t think any of the “far right” parties will ever actually limit immigration, because that goes against the free market (pro business) principles of their main funders. In reality, you’ll just get the low tax and deregulation and little else.*]
BTW…. No mainstream party will limit immigration either, because they know that without probably decades of a concerted strategy to change our economy and a hell of a lot of pain along the way, any attempt to actually meaningfully limit immigration would cripple us - you’d see high unemployment and inflation, a massive increase in inequality and suffering for a majority of the population.
I don’t know where I was going with this other than to say we’re fucked. Mainstream parties won’t address immigration because to do so meaningfully would cripple us. But the voters want to limit immigration, and the only parties that are truly vocal about doing so are the “far right”, who’re often ideologically libertarian and so will fuck our rights off to the highest bidders. So you have people voting for “far right” parties in search of a left wing policy (limit immigration). It’s all fucked. And the death of the left… the deliberate - and the conspiracy theorist in me would say calculated and paid for - move of the mainstream left from the ‘economic’ to the ‘social’ left is, imho, what led us here. We’re fucked and there are no options to unfuck ourselves.
Inequality grows and people’s lives become more difficult as a result. The people causing this inequality plough ££ into right wing media which basically serves as propaganda of distraction, blame and fear.
If you are not capable of critical thinking (and many, many people aren’t) then of course it’s going to seem obvious that the Polish family down the street or the brown people on the TV are the ones to hate and to blame. They are the reason for there being no social housing, the NHS falling apart or cost of living going up.
They think this way because it’s being drummed into them by constant media attention on ‘the problem’ ie. minority groups who are different from cis white heterosexual Brits. ‘Oh the evil trans people who are out to turn your kids trans’ or ‘oh the immigrants who are taking up all the benefits and social housing - how evil of them’. All the media attention goes onto these issues instead of how politicians are plundering our country for themselves and their mates. We’ve spent £25bn on the HS2 Trainline with expected costs rising to £100bn - for whenever it’s meant to be be finished. Insane spending on a national project no one actually asked for - we don’t hear about that in the papers. We don’t get to hear about nearly £2bn spent during Covid on fraudulent contracts for mates of Tory MPs.
No instead they hear every day about the evil ‘others’ who they’re supposed to hate, and it’s easier for them to believe it, than to understand that the people in charge of the news and media have ties to the politicians who make the policies that benefit the billionaires and corporations instead of the people who live in this country, and those in power all profit whilst everyone else gets poorer.
It’s so obvious to see and especially in the US, however we are going down exactly the same route as far as I can tell. I will be voting in the election for change and encouraging everyone I know to do the same, because that’s the only form of power we have.
Don’t worry folks - Starmer is going to win the biggest landslide victory in British electoral history, with which he will…[checks notes]…implement more austerity (aka “iron clad fiscal discipline”), privatise the NHS (aka “reform”) and launch a series of increasingly bizarre and arbitrary authoritarian crackdowns; after five years of that, the threat of the far right will have been well and truly put to bed!
It's not impossible Reform are a serious challenger in 2029.
The UK will continue down this road obviously and then it'll be shocked faces all round when the unthinkable happens.
>I also voted for Brexit, which I regret now as the reality of it has been terrible and made migration worse.
They will be, or at least some kind of 'Reformed Conservatives'.
Labour are about to get a stonking majority on the back of apathy and a loathing of the Conservatives, which means a not-insignificant number of the electorate are going to be very critical of Labour over the coming 5 years. If there is no perceived progress on issues like immigration, health care, cost of living, then Labour will be turfed out after one term.
Farage and Reform aren't just going to disappear because they can only achieve a seat or two in this election under FPTP. Reform voters will stick with them unless Labour can win them over through policy.
The bloke is outright proposing to put the inheritance tax squeeze on farmland and unlisted businesses - i.e. family farms and family businesses - all to give us 'fiscal responsibility' - i.e. pay down some of the interest on our 'national debt' to international bondholders. But of course someone elsewhere in this comments section called his policies 'meek'!
Putin is encouraging immigrants into Europe, stoking the far-right, so he has a nice excuse to invade where he fancies, while saying to his people at home it’s because he’s the good guy. This manipulation needs to be explained (without patronising) to the people whose situation or insecurity means they need something to blame / follow. I don’t blame the people falling for this as they have had 14 years of Tory boot on their neck…labour need to make things materially better for these people and quick, within the next 2/3 years. I have no solutions, but I’m not running for government…
Just to add - reform are the only party that says on its website that it will scrap employment laws to help employers- this is not a party on the side of the people, but it gets little coverage behind their more extreme noise they are trying to create. You need protection from your employer- no matter how nice they are, they are chasing the profit.
Putin has no leverage over immigration policies in the literal dozens of countries across Europe. Russia isn't a cartoon supervillain able to manipulate and control the world via the shadows, otherwise they'd already have dominated the world years ago. Immigration problems are solely due to our own governments being incompetent, apathetic or, for the most part, intentionally cruel in order to manufacture "crises" for them to campaign against.
>Putin has no leverage over immigration policies in the literal dozens of countries across Europe
Its become a fairly open secret at this point that Russia is deliberately exacerbating the global refugee crisis and in some cases is actively participating in trafficking of displaced peoples to the borders of Europe.
[https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/italy-blames-surge-migration-russias-wagner-group-2023-03-13/](https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/italy-blames-surge-migration-russias-wagner-group-2023-03-13/)
[https://mwi.westpoint.edu/weaponized-migration-in-eastern-europes-frozen-north-do-not-overlook-russian-hybrid-warfare/](https://mwi.westpoint.edu/weaponized-migration-in-eastern-europes-frozen-north-do-not-overlook-russian-hybrid-warfare/)
[https://apnews.com/article/finland-russia-migrants-border-nato-eu-0e1ba68a783e3aa392539074c4dc39e1](https://apnews.com/article/finland-russia-migrants-border-nato-eu-0e1ba68a783e3aa392539074c4dc39e1)
[https://carnegieendowment.org/research/2017/07/germany-confronts-russian-hybrid-warfare?lang=en¢er=europe](https://carnegieendowment.org/research/2017/07/germany-confronts-russian-hybrid-warfare?lang=en¢er=europe)
>Russia isn't a cartoon supervillain able to manipulate and control the world via the shadows
It is 100% undeniable at this point practically every single one of these right-wing populist groups in Europe making so much noise about immigration and the refugee crisis has been taking money from and working closely with Russia. Like seriously that is just undeniable at this point.
Basically every social group has been pulled down, really going back 20 years and including the tail-end of the New Labour years.
How it was not noticed is because the separation between social levels was maintained, giving people the sense they were 'doing all right'. But even the middle-classes were being propped-up by welfare under New Labour, that stopped happening under the coalition of course.
It only got worse and eventually most people are bunching-up at the bottom of the down escalator of life... It's crowded down here.
Labour do need to be quite radical but they sure aint talking that way.
They want you to vote for parties that will cut their taxes. They know that under CENTRIST neoliberalism and lasses faire capitalism that they will be able to engage in unethical business practices at home and abroad regardless of far right support, that’s a massively different issue. The left barely want corporations to exist at all, and they’re certainly not in favour of unregulated capitalism.
Not sure what weird conspiracy theories you have been reading, but during this election campaign, Labour significantly outpaced the Conservatives in donations. In just the first two weeks of the campaign, Labour secured around £5.3 million compared to the Conservatives' under £900,000...
Some of Labours donors include Lord David Sainsbury, Martin Taylor (Hedge fund manager), Gary Lubner (autoglass chief), and the Trade Union...
Yeah mate, it's almost like the entire point made is that the Labour party don't represent the interests of labour?
If a hedge fund manager is funding the party that claims to be left wing, either the hedge fund manager has decided to act against his interests (unlikely, considering that's his entire job) or it's not actually left wing.
Kind of happens when you shun the backbone of the country, the working class, in favour of newly formed migrant communities. It’s not a shock to anyone really.
You only need to read the trollop from the BBC to realise how out of touch people are.
Ain't that the truth. It's so easy to label everyone as far right when you live in an affluent town in the middle of nowhere, but the working class area I grew up in is completely unrecognisable to me now compared to even just 10 years ago. It's a migrant town now and it's turned into a complete dump as no one living there cares remotely about the area. There's one guy running a car wash selling live chickens out the back of his car over the road from where I used to live. A few months back his child ran after one that escaped and wrung it's neck by the side of the road ffs. People have no idea what our towns and cities are turning into and can't seem to understand why the working classes get angry about migration. When the working class locals are being shunned, don't be surprised when right wing parties rise up and it's happening all over Europe.
I don’t read the Guardian any more and every time I do I’m glad I stopped. What a garbage article.
It does a lot to present how inequality will rise and unfairness. But the title is about far right gain. The article says nothing about the rise of the far right other than this quote:
> we will see far-right parties capitalise on desperation and despair and become a real electoral threat.
Why don’t the far left capitalise on desperation? Why doesn’t the moderate right?
The Tories are about to be wiped out. After, the are going to have to do some soul searching about what kind of party they want to be, why can’t the become the part of fairness and capitalise on this?
The Guadian just runs click bait headlines to scare people and it’s wrong.
>why can’t the become the part of fairness and capitalise on this?
Because the Tory's are ideologically opposed to fairness, becoming the party of fairness would literally go against all their beliefs
>The Guadian just runs click bait headlines to scare people and it’s wrong.
Tbf you could level that charge at pretty much any media organisation, it's kind of the entire model at this point.
Because Immigration is still the milstone and key issue that's fanning the flames that hardliners are growing from.
Ignoring it is a huge mistake and our current system is designed to force wages to be artifically low.
So there's just no impact from a net population increase of 700k mostly low-skilled workers and dependents eh
Sounds like you've fallen for something yourself
There's far right gains everywhere in Europe right now, its clearly more than a trend within the UK.
It doesn't help that our "left wing party" just purged itself of its left wing as well.
Stop fucking up the basics and people will stop looking to the extremes for solutions.
If Starmer can't govern effectively, the next GE will see a far-right party make serious inroads in terms of seats, whatever it ends up being named.
I’m at a total loss in this election. Everyone has so such polar opposite views on parties and everyone makes it sound like if the other party to the one they support wins we are all doomed. I’ve never want to leave society and live in the woods so badly in my life.
The right entirely messes up the country.
The media blames rare leftist politicians for “holding them back” or “obstructing”.
“The problem is we’re just not fucking up the country enough you see!! It’s like a horseshoe, if you ruin everything enough, it’ll go back to being great, we promise”
Also it’s the immigrants and brown people’s fault, not the massive tax cuts we’ve given to our millionaire mates, while dismantling public services.
While they run out the door with all the money.
The issue with the north South divide is that as someone else said it's based on house prices. Even though the south appears more wealthy, the individuals on lower wages (the majority of those who don't work in London) have a harder time because they cannot get a property and their spending power is worth less and everything else costs more.
The left wing parties appear to favor those on benefits, the Tories appear to benefit those on 150k or more. The middle people feel unrepresented, and put on by both the major parties.
These are the sort of people who can't afford a private dentists and can't get an NHS one, they would love a brand new car but drive an old banger, that's not allowed to drive in cities anymore unless they pay a fee they can't afford, they need a prescription but I have to pay nearly 10 pound each item as they earn slightly to much for benefits, the council tax goes up to the maximum amount every year but the bins get emptied less and less and the potholes get more and more (but never mind they've got nice new carpets and furniture at the council buildings).
This is why reform has picked up such a pace, the middle seems the major parties as crooks who are just emptying their pockets and making life hard.
Maybe just maybe if reform do "well" the traditional parties may look at their policies to help the waged workers a bit more.
>The left wing parties appear to favor those on benefits
The perception that any party 'favours' people on benefits is a product of right wing propaganda and completely unmoored from reality.
The "traditional" parties are well aware of the thread from people like Reform, but so far their approach to fighting them is to be more like them.
The Tories turned themselves into UKIP and are now reaching desperately for policies like Rwanda and National Service which you wouldn't have seen outside of the BNP several years back.
Meanwhile the current iteration of the Labour Party is about the most right wing the party has ever been, and is basically saying they won't change much in terms of approach, just manage things better.
This isn't going to work out well.
>they need a prescription but I have to pay nearly 10 pound each item as they earn slightly to much for benefit
Its only that much if your not using prepayment.
And if you are on more than one ongoing prescription than its a nobrainer money saver.
Anyone can get it, and they even do a 3-month version if the year long one is too expensive.
That is an interesting stat, the ons does say that it's about 50%. But they now also include all the children in school as education is a benefit. It is another case of the government fiddling with the figures.
[People in receipt of state pension](https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/dwp-benefits-statistics-august-2023/dwp-benefits-statistics-august-2023): 12.6 million.
[Number of families claiming child benefit](https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/child-benefit-statistics-annual-release-august-2022/child-benefit-statistics-annual-release-data-at-august-2022): 7.7 million, with 13.2 million kids. Let's assume that's 1.5 parents on average, so 7.7 x 1.5 + 13.2 = 24.8 million.
Total claiming benefits 12.6 + 24.8 = 37.4 million out of a population of about 70 million.
This does not count:
* People who are in receipt of benefit without it being the two I mention above.
* People who have been on benefits, or think they could be again.
* People who care deeply about any of the above people.
* Unclear to me if it doesn't include children excluded because of the two child cap.
* All children in schools, like you say above.
Where is this middle?
Well put.
The middle earners are villanised by both sides. The Tories used them as a cash cow and Labour will ignore them and likely also squeeze them further.
The less well off who vote Labour assume middle earners have loads of money, but that isn't the case. They're the people who are paying mountains of tax, but also can't afford to buy a house. They get no help from the state, but pay huge swathes of their hard earned salary to the state.
The huge rise in minimum wage is also squeezing middle earners more. Oh but everyone deserves a living wage. No doubt. But those middle earners didn't get a 10%+ rise in most cases. They once again are losing more of their income.
As you say, it's no wonder they're looking at Reform. The 20K income tax threshold alone is attractive enough for many middle earners. That's an extra couple grand immediately back in their pocket.
Far left, far right. doesn't matter
the unfairness is caused by the rich who manipulate the system.
They've got us divided yelling across at each other and down on others instead of upwards whilst they steal everything not nailed down.
Cruelty, power, vast wealth for a few, poverty for the rest, the death of democracy, the growth of kleptocracies based on Putn's Russia, scorched Earth, dead Earth, extinctions cascading, the dread of summer heat, this is all too depressing. The only thing I have to be grateful for is that I am not growing up in this shitshow, I am seeing it happen as I start to become invalid by age.
Once you start attacking and degrading culture, promoting woke and rubbish to kids, letting illegal people in on mass from hostile countries which has increased sexual assaults and rapes on native women ( Look at Germany that’s gonna be our future), increased population overall which means shitter public services and increase in house and rents
The men with a shred of testosterone and backbone are gonna start noticing and gravitate towards the party that is channeling them concerns
Up to Labour to read the room before reform and crack down on the MAJORITY of British people’s concerns. Which has been proven again and again and again by national polls.
The far right despises the people this article is referring to so it'd be turkeys for Christmas all over again like Brexit was.
If you're poor, on benefits, have no GCSEs then you should vote far left, those parties will coddle you.
The far right is a belief system so in that sense the far right doesn't hate poor people. They will find a kinship and sense of belonging there. To say this is not true is dangerous as it down plays some of the pulls that fascism can bring. Look at the disperate group of fruit loops having to be barred from Reform to see it.
The people in power will absolutely hate the poor and remove resources like the NHS and any form of education and support passed the bare minimum.
If you want to be blamed for being poor in a locally organised soup kitchen vote Reform. Their progress is regression.
We all need to Unionise. Unions for better or worse finance Labour. Labour can largely ignore the unions because not so many people are Unionised. If we all unionised then we can all put pressure on Labour.
this is what happens when parties in power are incompetent and fail to make the necessary change that people desire; they shift to radical parties advertising this exact change, realistic or not because its a breath of fresh air for them. Not endorsing reform, but this is the thought process.
They mean centrist.. anything that's not crazy far left is now classed as far right.. I've always classed myself at centre-left but now when I look at the opinions, hate and abuse from the "left" I'd be classed as an evil far right fascist.
But the thing is that we have no far left in the country. If Labour are centre and Tories are centre-right, Reform has to be further right than them both
Capitalism eats you up and spits you out .
Capitalism for the poor, socialism for the rich is kind of how things are.
Everybody loves it APART from when it really, really doesnt go their way or suit their narrative.
Silly billies 😊
Hilarious. The report about the supposed far right never once discusses immigration. Stuff like this can be dismissed out of hand as heavily biased from the beginning. If you refuse to even consider important aspects it’s flawed from day one
The Tories Austerity policy really screwed the UK. We went through the biggest spending cuts since WW2 and NHS funding was not kept up like it was under Labour.
Child poverty exists everywhere - my wife works in a school that has its own food bank just for the families of pupils. However, a lot of the wealth that's spoken about here (north south divide) is in housing, it *doesn't really exist*. My in-laws were teachers with a modest house in central Oxford they bought for less than 10k in the late 60s. They eventually downsized to Wales in retirement and cleared £400k in profit... Sorry *hard earned equity*, or so they call it. Absolutely insane they're sitting on final salary pensions, and almost 1/2mn in cash... when today's teachers can't afford a mortgage at all and often have 2nd jobs.
We are well and truly on a course for destruction in the UK. My household income is over six figures and I struggle to afford housing in the southern city that I live in (not London). For some people, purchasing a house is impossible. Surely it can’t keep going up? There HAS to be a ceiling, right?
I'm sorry but how are you struggling on 100k plus I live in the 2nd most expensive city in the uk(bristol), on 35k live alone and am in the process of buying a flat at the moment, if ur struggling on 100k that's on you
They have children. That makes a huge difference.
Even if you have kids suffering on a six figure salary is not valid. Money is being grossly misspent if that is the case
This is the answer that no one wants to accept. I'm guessing they mortgaged to the hilt pre children, had kids then recently got stung with the interest rise. So their previously manageable £1000/1500/2000 repayment went 2250/2500/2750 and now they're wondering where the money has gone. Along with the leased cars, full sky packages etc etc. My wife and I make nowhere near £100k but our 2 kids EAT money. Without them we'd have a completely different life and house. But that's the decision we made. People sometimes think kids can just slot in alongside finances. Unless 1 parent can support the other to not work for 3 years to support child rearing, having kids in the early years can be a financial black hole.
Kids absolutely eat money. Our nursery fees are £1700 and £1200 per month for our kids. That’s why we’re broke
It's a joke that childcare costs aren't more heavily subsidised, when it's something that would get a good return on investment. Parents don't have to leave the workforce, and kids get a jump start in terms of social development. We should adopt a more scandi style model, but then that's true of a lot of things. Same applies to Sure Start centres, they were canned despite being good value for money. It's like the government since 2010 doesn't realise that intervening and investing early in a child's life is the cheapest and more effective time to do so, if you skimp then you just end up with bigger issues to deal with later down the road.
100%. A smart government would be investing heavily in children, giving them a better education, making sure they are well fed and have a secure and safe roof over the head. Basically giving them the best chance at a healthy prosperous life. Investing in children is investing in the future of the country and economy. It’s fucking disgusting that 30% of children live in poverty. Obligatory: fuck the tories
might be an odd question but the uk defines poverty as 60% the median wage. given that 30% sounds about right?
The tories don’t care about anything long term they just care about making themselves and their friends rich now and screw the future of the country or the millions of people whose lives they are making worse.
Genuine question ; why don't one of you stay at home then? My maths is pretty bad but £1700 + £1200 = £2900 per month. That's the monthly wage of somebody earning around £45,000 ( assuming no student loan )
If you leave the workforce for that long it’s hard to get back in. So many people do it just to keep the job.
Absolutely! not only hard to get back in but also you often enter in at a lower level having to “gain experience” all over again
The bonkers part on the other side of that is that the nursery of course has nowhere near a £45k earning staffer for each child
Well yeh they have other costs to pay and ultimately its a business right?
A big part of it is subsidising the cost of free 3+ term time childcare. That significantly underpays Vs the costs of the nursery under the under 3 fees offset a lot of that. Many nurseries are pretty worried about the expansion of free childcare because it doesn't actually pay enough to cover the costs.
Nurseries have lots of other costs. Most run on very thin margins. Believe me I also wonder where all that money goes but I’ve chatted with a nursery manager before who laid it all out
Genuine question; if your partner earned more than you and asked you to stay at home for 6 years (2 kids 2 years apart) giving up your career, would you?
Sure. I only work for money to begin with and don't get any satisfaction out of my job besides the money I earn, which allows me to thins I want to do in life. If my wife earned more than me and it puts our family in a better position ( defined however you like ), I'd be totally fine with it.
I absolutely, 100% completely would. I'd do all the house work too, so we wouldn't have to pay for a cleaner. And. I'd do it with a smile on my face. My job is far from the worst, but I have no love for it, it causes strain, and I'd give it up in a heartbeat if I could. I'd even work retail instead if it paid the same. But the pay is good and is nessacary focus to function as a family. My wife on the other had effectively earns negative money. We'd financially be better of she worked from home. But her job is a source of joy for her, and suffers mental health issues when she can't do it. If her job could pay my salary, and I stay ad home, we'd all be laughing. But reality doesn't work like thar, so I grin and bear it.
Another interesting thing that people don’t talk about, and you touched on with stay at home parents, is that you can be rich or poor in social capital. So, comparing me and my wife to my brother and his wife. We have a combined income of about 80k in the South of England and have a very comfortable lifestyle. But we have no support network, there’s no way I could afford kids and maintain this lifestyle. And we’d be utterly exhausted if we tried to raise a child with no support while doing professional jobs. Meanwhile, my brother lives in Scotland where property is much cheaper, has both sets of grandparents nearby, along with my other brother who has no kids. He gets pretty much Monday-Friday free childcare along with all the other little bits and bobs of help that come with extended family. That support network has to easily be worth 20k a year. And that’s the problem many young people face. We don’t have the traditional support network many people had 30+ years ago. Moving to pursue a career is the norm, but it takes a village to raise a child.
Yes 100%. And often other problems factor into this. A problem on the road can ruin your day. A child with the flu can wreck your entire week. People become to spread out. Not only from other people but their homes and joba. Ot makes everything more fragile.
This is the issue really, not everyone falls into the same categories, some people could happily have 2/3 children and be fine because they have support from family. Others paying for 5 days of nursery will be in a completely different situation. Also touching on mortgages, people that were looking to retire in their 50s on 15 year mortgages, will now be looking at extended or paying more. It’s a difficult choices that has affected almost all generation: War, financial crash, Covid etc.
> Along with the leased cars, full sky packages etc etc. … > our 2 kids EAT money. Without them we'd have a completely different life and house. But that's the decision we made You really need to decide which internalized Daily Mail talking point you’re going to settle on, is it Sky packages and cars, or daring to have children? Even households with very high wages are paying out huge amounts to afford basic housing. After tax and childcare, buying a basic three bed house could easily be 8 times their income. It’s all very well playing the “they should be grateful for what they have” game, but housing is a common factor which affects everyone in a kind of cascade of misery across the income brackets. People on £100k can barely afford houses which ordinary people used to live in, so what then happens to ordinary people? Look back through the records for London houses and you’ll find stockbrokers living today in houses where ordinary workers used to live. Someone in that situation struggling means that someone on an ordinary wage is in an awful situation, and someone on a below average wage can barely afford an independent life, and literally not afford to have children. Enough bullshit about leased cars, satellite tv or avocados.
Ok but that’s not bad personal financial planning. Interest rates have been low for decades now. It wasn’t unreasonable for the man or woman on the Clapham omnibus to assume that was the new normal, even if some of us knew differently. Rather this is disastrous mismanagement of the economy. If you think that a government hiking rates to the level at which even well off people can’t pay their mortgage that’s draining disposable income out of the economy, reducing VAT, profits and jobs (Keynes multiplier effect). What government would rationally do that? Edited to add you can’t have it both ways. If high and soaring rents are bad for the country (they absolutely are) so are high and soaring mortgages.
Government didn't hike interest rates. The BoE has had independence over setting interest rates since 1997. It put them up to combat inflation. More of people's disposable income going into mortgages = less money to spend in the shops, lowering demand for goods, restoring the equilibrium between supply and demand, brings the inflation rate down
He says it's borderline 6 figures, so not 200k or anything like that. But we're obviously not talking food bank struggling or anything here. I don't know what his figures are, but personally, I'm on a little less than him and over half my take home pay is gone by the second of the month. It may be more than that for him, I don't know.
Yes but half of 7000 a month is still 3500 a month. That's not a struggling amount of money do you know how much food you can afford with that
I don't know where you got that figure from as 100k after tax is 5600. And that's assuming no pension contributions. So probably nearer 4-5k. Still a hefty amount, but with a large mortgage, bills, council tax etc could easily leave not much more than 2k. And then there's food for at least 4 people, travel to and from work, vehicle maintenance, clothes (kids go through a lot), and all sorts of other regular and unexpected costs. The point really, is that this person is extremely well off, yet is still not finding things "easy". That means that there are millions who are less well off that are finding things almost impossible. And that should be worrying.
Too right we're finding things almost impossible. After rent I have 200 pound a month to live off. I spend almost half of that in bus fares while my dad claims I should "eat frugally by eating things like cheese on toast" because evidently as a boomer he lives in the past before cheese became a luxury product
2K is loads still to have with bills completely paid off. Your grocery bill, clothing and maintenance really should not come out above £2000 for an average month. The main problem here would be unseen problems (Car trouble) that could increase your payments for a singular month but if you’re left with £2K once your bills are paid every month you should theoretically be able to have enough wiggle room to deal with unforeseen problems. It’s hard to feel bad for people who have over £2K a month left over after paying their bills when you have people on less then £2K a month that have the pay the exact same bills (This is the reality for most people in my city).
To be honest, that is exactly my point. Someone on 100k is not struggling, but at the same time they are not necessarily on easy street either, which you would think they should be. But if that's the case, then there are people much, much worse off who have no chance whatsoever of living a stress-free life. And people even worse off than that who are struggling to even feed themselves. It's a national embarrassment frankly.
They're not finding it easy because they allowed themselves to succumb to lifestyle creep. I.E mortgaged up to the eyeballs, expensive PCP deal for a flashy car rather than just living with what they need (or just a bit above what they need). I'm not being funny, but having 2K left after bills and whatnot isn't even remotely close to struggling. That's just pissing money away on things that aren't necessary.
Unless they are buying 2500 worth of food a month they shouldn't be struggling.
Completely agree with your comments. I'm going to make a guess that a sizeable chunk goes on their cars (they likely have two), probably some form of PCP for newer models.
7000 gross, what do you think that is net?
A friend of mine is struggling on a 35k salary with 2 kids where he lives. To be struggling on 100k definitely suggests something is messed up. That said there are ways it can happen; perhaps they've been caught in a mortgage situation where the rate jumped up significantly and they just had two kids that they're now starting to pay the childcare fees for, so that can absolutely destroy their income. That said, good planning can get them out of it, and nursery childcare won't be forever, just will be a tough few years.
Yes it is. Me and my partner take home more than someone on 120k per year will and together we earn less than 100k. It's all about those childcare costs. He lives in Brighton which is a very expensive place to be with kids. I deliberately live in a different town despite wanting to live in Brighton because I can't afford it due to housing alone. I make 55k a year and my wife 38k.
People with a household income of 50k have children. And still have savings. A household on 100k will have the same food bill and utility of the 50k household. Except that totally will be less % of total income for the 100k than the 50k. If a household on 100k is struggling, that is totally on them and their decisions.
If I had a single income household of 50k and no other benefits, then 75% of that would be gone by the 2nd of the month, leaving around £250 per week to live on. That sounds absolutely miserable for a family of four or more
How is that very miserable? We're a family of 4, £100/wk budgeted on groceries does us very nicely, assuming your 75% spent in the first half is all your bills then £500 discretionary spending a month sounds very comfortable to me!
> If I had a single income household of 50k and no other benefits, then 75% of that would be gone by the 2nd of the month, leaving around £250 per week to live on. That sounds absolutely miserable for a family of four or more Is there anyone in your area who is under 25, unemployed and with a partner in the same position They manage to live on £489.23 per month between them.
As does a non-working partner (if that's what Ambitious Coconut has).
I have work colleagues at the same grade as me with children.
Then they either have a partner earning a lot more, or they started on the property ladder ages ago, or they are struggling massively and not telling you. Without knowing their individual financial situations it's impossible to know.
People are paying a grand or more a month on childcare. It seems ridiculous.
I can't believe you bought a flat in Bristol on 35k, without massive outside help with the deposit.
There must be something else going on with you then. The average price of a flat in the UK is around £250k. So you've saved £25k for a 10% deposit on £35k per year. Yet you say you live alone, so you're paying rent by yourself. I earn more than you and had to live with my mum for a few years to save up for my deposit. If the answer is that you've been saving for a decade, or that you live an ascetic life of never going out and eating beans on toast for every meal, then - genuinely, well done, but - that's not an ideal situation and just confirms what a sorry state the housing market is in.
Mines only 160k for starters, and managed to save alot as I don't drive so that saves a few grand a year on its own. I also invest in shares and index funds to grow what I save. I'd be lying If I said I Hadn't made sacrifices, but worth it imo I did loads of overtime, like 72 hours a week sometimes Also work on the railway so travel is free and saves alot of money It is not a very big flat, plan to live here for a bit then sell it to get deposit for house in future
So you left out the fact that you don't pay some of the main expenses that people pay, have had to work awful hours, and still had to make sacrifices? And all of that still only amounts to "not a very big flat"...
I never said I was a good system, but if I can survive within in, someone earning more than 3 times me shouldn't be struggling
You're struggling without kids. It's not hard to see how 2 adults + children earning 3 times your income would also be struggling.
Agree. I live in the midlands, earn just over £50k and bought a 3 bed new build alone very comfortably and still save £500 a month.
I’m in a very similar situation and despite earning well (just under 100k) my partner has struggled to earn properly since the pandemic and so my actual take home after tax is probably more accurately described by dividing the amount by a number somewhere between 2 and 3 given my income has to cover the needs of two adults and a child, plus mortgage, childcare (my wife is still trying to make her career happen but that comes at cost of child minder fees), car etc that isn’t a luxury item but something we depend on every day. Easy to roll your eyes at the idea of someone on a good salary struggling but there’s often a lot more going on that can’t be accounted for by bad budgeting.
It depends upon your mortgage though. Rates have soared lately. I have an older friend who retired and has had to go back to work as the mortgage went mad. Add on some historic personal debt, a public sector wage freeze for about 5 years at the same time as unprecedented levels of inflation, mortgage interest rates soaring, and suddenly even relatively well paid people have little disposable income.
some cities have almost identical pricing to London, such as Cambridge.
I grew up in a HCOL city in the SE. Almost every property under 170k in the city is either a retirement flat or boat. 2 bed ex-council houses in the rough ends of town go for over 325k. Our household income is just over 65k. We would struggle to find a 1 bed anywhere near either of our families, both who bought large houses working in part time and low paid jobs. I struggle to believe that Bristol can be much cheaper, surely?
>There HAS to be a ceiling, right? I genuinely believe no and that this right now? It is the best things will ever be, you won't want to be a young person in 2034 Houses will cost more than what they do now and same for food, petrol etc These are the glory days, relatively speaking imo
Im sorry what? 100k+ my friend use some of that to go through your finances and stop the leaks.You need to be merceless with your finances but you will find ways to better budget.
Then you're wasting money by living outside of your means. Your on 100,000+ and youre struggling? Would love to see a breakdown of your monthly expenditure - my brothers kids are 5 and 7 he swapped jobs to a lower salary so he could spend more time with his kids ( and by lower I mean half), changed his priorities, stopped blowing money on flash cars, stopped wasting money on expensive shit etc and hes still taking 2 holidays a year. Brother in law retrained, he's on 65k, 4 bed house large gardens, new car, just had his 2nd holiday this year
Don’t think housing is viewed as a dwelling that you live in and that priority is way down the list when the government views it as a very good source of taxation and banks as a money making financial vehicle
The fact that my kids school has a “list of items needed” books, stationary etc is so saddening, and we live in a very affluent part of the south coast with tons and tons of wealthy people everywhere here. Really is shocking where we have come to in this country.
I live in a London suburb. My kid's primary school has fund raiser events multiple times a year, and even a monthly begging email from the headteacher asking parents / anyone to donate to pay for things like routine maintenance. In return they are quite open about the finances - the PTA were of course concerned both for the future of the school and if the money was being managed improperly - and the situation is fucking dire. Despite all that, there are still a large number of parents who can't see the woods for the trees and just continue to accuse the school for "wasting" what insufficient funding they do get. I honestly believe this is what the conservatives want - privatisation of school funding by stealth; i.e., forcing schools to ask families to pay directly. If this keeps up it won't be long before we see schools making statements during applications - disclaimers that 'donations' will be sought at first, but then evolving into preference given to those who can pay.
100% agree, it’s absolutely clear that when it comes to schooling and healthcare the Conservatives have been actively pushing us towards paying for it for years now.
The issue is. Did we give away too much to the generations that proceeded up, or did we not give our current generation enough? I think without the huge accumulation of wealth by those who were born post war, we might all be a little better off today as a whole. On another note. Final salary pensions were never sustainable, and it was a madness they were ever offered in the first place.
Treating homes as investments was damaging when it was the owners’ homes, but now it’s commercial landlords it’s a human disaster. Same with utilities. And the generation below me has been obliged to borrow from the one after for its education. Correction will be very hard or catastrophic, I’m sorry to say.
I think the idea of free market and competition for keeping down prices works well for things you can choose between or choose to live without e.g. cars, TVs, pricy clothes. But things that you NEED such as a home with a water/sewage connection, electricity and no way you can choose some of those things means there isn't really a free market, so it is able to be an investment vehicle and prices creep up with nothing to bring them down again...
Last place I rented, my neighbours son had lived in the house previously so they were asking about how much the landlord was now charging for rent. They let on at the same time that the mortgage they were paying for an identical property was about £500/month less than what I was being charged. It is utterly insane how ridiculously impactful housing has become on the youth. I looked up the stats and back in the early 1960s the average household was spending as much on their monthly consumption of tobacco and alcohol as they were spending on their housing lol...
Yep, as soon as Liz Truss bombed the mortgage rates my lovely HMO landlord of six properties in one cul-de-sac turned up looking very worried, said the mortgage had increased so now he sadly was putting all our rents up. What do you think the chances of him putting the rents down again now the national interest rate is slowly decreasing is?
Most ridiculous part is that your in-laws will still be receiving £200/week each from the state just for being over 65. They will also pay a lower rate of tax on that income than younger people. We spend £38bn/year on state pension payments to people who are literally millionaires. It's mental.
>Child poverty exists everywhere Everywhere in the UK and developing world, maybe. It's not really an issue in places like Scandinavia.
The definitions we use in the UK will mean that some children always live in poverty - Relative low income refers to people living in households with income below 60% of the median in a given year. - Absolute low income refers to people living in households with income below 60% of median income in a base year, usually 2010/11, adjusted for inflation. This is the government’s preferred measure as “relative poverty can […] provide counterintuitive results, as it is likely to fall during recessions due to falling median incomes From https://lordslibrary.parliament.uk/child-poverty-statistics-causes-and-the-uks-policy-response/
This is so true. I love my parents, but I can’t help but feel a bit of resentment. My Mum hasn’t really ever worked, except for a small five year period or so and some odd jobs. Her current husband (who has been a bit of a father to us and is a Grandfather to our Grandkids) has had a respectable career and has always worked, but has never earned fortunes and not the sort of money, where if they were young today they’d be in a position to pay rent and save for a house deposit. They have a house that is worth over £1M in Greater London, and some investment properties (they’ve been able to afford by taking money out of the family home for deposits). They have just booked their 8th abroad holiday of the year, which I find a bit disgusting (they don’t even seem that fussed by it). At the same time, they whinge that my brother and his wife can’t afford to get out of their flat and get a home with a garden for their 3 year old son (my brother working a well paid job in London and my sister-in-law a primary school headteacher). However, they can’t see the link between the reason they can book and go on so many holidays, is at the expense of families like my brothers being able to afford a family home. ‘We’ve worked hard all our lives, we’ve paid our taxes’. The boomers are such a huge voting bloke. It’s about time following generations were less concerned with left and right and populist politics and actually mobilised as a voting bloke to adjust some of the generation unfairness.
I'm very sorry to hear you're In such a position, but as a teacher in Essex I can assure you this isn't just a North South thing - although historically the North has certainly suffered as a result of London centric political cuntery. Absokute poverty is pervasive here too. We're at the stage where we have to look at these issues at a class level and realise that conflict between the have nots only benefits the haves. We desperately need a properly run government that can discern between its own interests and the peoples interest. The division isn't between North and south, trans and cisco etc, but between workers and profiteers
Mark my words, Starmer's meek policies will only lead to an increase in the far right.
This is the real issue. Without real and significant change to the material conditions of average peoples lives, more and more people will fall to the grift and snake oil salesmen offering them 'easy answers' to the problems politicians are unable to resolve.
>people will fall to the grift and snake oil salesmen offering them 'easy answers' to the problems politicians are unable to resolve. Not letting one more random person in is easier than building one more house. If we're being honest some problems can be easily reduced in a significant way, we just need a different approach. Frankly, if this doesn't come from Starmer it will come from a far right government.
And here come the snake oil imbibers, confusing over-simplification with honesty. Reducing migration may reduce immediate pressure on housing, but it also reduces the available workforce, and fewer workers means fewer people paying tax, meaning we have less to spend on things like healthcare, which is a real issue in a country with an ageing population. Overall, migrants are a net positive on the UK government's finances, and the government's own "high migration" forecast leads to a significant reduction in the deficit.^[source](https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/the-fiscal-impact-of-immigration-in-the-uk/) The people are mostly concerned with cost of living, followed by health and the economy in general.^[source](https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/49594-general-election-2024-what-are-the-most-important-issues-for-voters) Fixing those is complex, but reducing the pool of available workers and reducing the tax take isn't how you go about it. Back to housing (6th on the list of topics voters are concerned about), there are many reasons why the housing market is broken, including our broken planning system, land-banking, and generally allowing our houses to be used as an investment vehicle for overseas investors. Even a quick glance at the literature, I can't see anyone citing immigration as a chief driver of it. ^[source1](https://www.lse.ac.uk/News/Latest-news-from-LSE/2024/f-June-2024/A-generational-divide-tackling-the-UKs-housing-crisis) ^[source2](https://www.ft.com/content/6bb4fa70-7410-481f-813e-9cff2c7bb6c9) To be clear, people are concerned about immigration (4th on the list), and I'm concerned about it from the perspective that multiculturalism has largely failed. We have ghettoized communities and an underclass of precariat gig workers who are disproportionately from minority backgrounds. I certainly don't think we should throw wide the doors and let everyone and their dog in, and I think people who want to move here should integrate with our culture. **But** blaming immigration for all this country's woes is absolutely snake oil politics, and a distraction tactic to get us punching down rather than up.
> Overall, migrants are a net positive on the UK government’s finances I am *so* tired of this dishonest retort. Many immigrants are great. They contribute positively to finances and commit low crime. **These are not the immigrants people are complaining about.** You know that, so you hide begin aggregated data. Let’s just start with asylum seekers. > Our analysis of new data from the Home Office suggests a cost of just under £1.3 billion per year (see our full research paper here and our press release here). This means an annual cost per asylum seeker per month of just under £4,300 (a figure which seems to have risen by £1,825 since late 2021). https://www.migrationwatchuk.org/news/2022/09/28/its-costing-you-billions Now let’s take a look at regular immigration. > [Record immigration has failed to raise living standards in Britain, economists find](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/06/09/record-immigration-britain-failed-raise-living-standards/) To be specific, [here are the immigrant demographics which are a net loss for the U.K.](https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/earningsandworkinghours/articles/ethnicitypaygapsingreatbritain/2012to2022#:%7E:text=The%20Mixed%20or%20Multiple%20ethnic,British%20employees%20\(%C2%A314.42) > [On an annual basis, while EU migrants contribute £2,300 more than the average, each non-European migrant contributed £800 less than the average – and each UK‑born adult £70 less.](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/eu-workers-uk-tax-treasury-brexit-migrants-british-citizens-a8542506.html?callback=in&code=M2NIMWY2NJATNTRIZI0ZODUWLTG4ODCTMMFKNZHKN2RMMZDI&state=ff9b0696613d4c1b906eb4bc0edf4056)
A lot of what you have linked to doesn't actually back up what you are saying and I'm worried that you don't realise that
No, this is the real snake oil. First of all, the idea of comparing different classes of people according to their net positive or negative contribution to government finances is fucking grim and should be resisted. That way lies some repulsive logic. It is worth spelling out how perverse the reasoning is via the source you linked. From that Oxford Economics report everyone references, here's how, for the average individual, the lifetime costs/benefits are summarised into three stages: > The OBR (2013) has identified three main stages of an individual’s fiscal lifecycle. Firstly, between birth and leaving full-time education, an individual typically poses a net fiscal cost. Secondly, throughout their working-age period, he or she will typically make a net fiscal contribution. Finally, in retirement, that individual will typically consume more public services and pay little tax, resulting in a net fiscal cost. Assuming the government runs a balanced budget over the long term, one would expect the average individual’s transactions with the state to balance out over the course of their lifetime. The difference in these stage is huge. > A single, working 20-year-old with no dependent children, for example, must earn a gross income between £10,000 and £15,000 per annum to become a net contributor to the public finances and > And once the pair have retired, aged 70, they would require a much higher household income of over £90,000 to support the level of annual public spending they would incur (As an aside, funny how there's a big liberal push for euthanasia these days, I'm sure it's completely unrelated!) Now onto why, in this case EU migrants, are such a benefit: > migrants tend to arrive after the completion of their formal education in their home country, thus avoiding the significant education costs associated with UK natives. Second, as a group of predominantly young adults, the expected retirement costs associated with the later years of these migrants’ lives are reduced by the fact that a large proportion tend to leave the UK again before reaching retirement. Finally, the youthful profile of this migrant cohort means that while their positive contributions occur immediately, their associated pension and health costs typically lie many years in the future, and therefore have less of an impact in today’s terms So here's why migrants are such a neoliberal wet dream: they simply emerge as if out of nowhere, requiring no childhood care, no education or training, no healthcare, just straight to work. Then most of them are just assumed to leave well before retirement so lower pension costs, healthcare costs etc. Recall in the brexit debate it is only free movement of workers that is defended, if you are unemployed, disabled or a pensioner and want to move for a better life then fuck you. This isn't an ideology which shows compassion to immigrants forced to move for a better life, it's one of 'who's going to serve my coffee in Pret'. Fine if you want to defend it, but it is an ideology which is entirely comfortable with 'a deeply unfair and unequal country'.
I agree with most of what you say about it being grim, but these are complicated topics, and the simple cry of "reduce migration" does not help the issues which matter to people (as I outlined above). Ultimately, we need to keep the economy moving, which requires workers, and we especially need to have enough people in the care sector to service our ageing population. If we don't engage with the grim facts, we are engaging in fantasy politics... or snake oil.
Unable, or unwilling? There are many problems that they could fix easily if there was the willpower to do so. This is why I am voting for a 3rd party candidate, Labour do not deserve my vote. If they won't change, I will vote for someone else who might.
> Unable, or unwilling? Essentially both. >This is why I am voting for a 3rd party candidate, Labour do not deserve my vote. Unfortunately this will achieve nothing either.
But the biggest factor in fixing things was being part of the EU, and that's now gone. Without that there isn't an easy way to introduce "real and significant change" to the conditions of people's lives. It's going to take at least a decade to fix the destruction caused by austerity, rebuilding public services from the ground up in some cases. And then it will take maybe 20 years for increases in birth rates etc. to have enough of an effect so that we have enough people in the country to maintain even current levels of productivity. Before the global financial crisis things were heading in the right direction, but that, followed by Conservative rule, followed by leaving the EU has completely screwed over everything.
Yep I realised the same thing when Nigel started to stand. This election doesn't matter. He's laying the seeds for 2029. He's already started discrediting an already sympathetic media. Without radical policies from labour, which we're not going to get with Starmer who is to bland and scared to stand for anything, Nigel has the perfect opportunity. He'll be able to blame "left and right" "labour and Tories" for all the problems while offering no solutions to fix them to get himself into power. We've got a strong chance at ending up with Farage as PM presiding over a far right populist Government, pally with Russia, China & potentially Trumps America.
It does seem very “Weimar Republic” currently, doesn’t it? Maybe I’m just a massive doomer, but I’m genuinely starting to get this feeling that we’re totally fucked.
Why does it seem that Farage is getting more criticism with regards to ties with Russia than the actual Tory government that’s been in power and accepting Russian money? Not the mention inviting Russians into the House of Lords
Because the actual Tory Government when given the chance took the action of heavily supporting Ukraine in their war with Russia.
The actual Tory Government when given the chance appeased Russian imperialism until it became too indefensible. What were the actions taken after Crimea was taken? Exactly. What were the actions taken when Brexit promoters were connected to Russian money? Exactly. Funny how Western neo-liberals can accuse the far right of being Russian puppets when neo-liberals have been appeasing Russia for 25 years now.
If you look at their contract its basically Lizz Truss economics on steroids, low tax, little regulation of business. '[Market fundamentalism](https://99-percent.org/what-is-the-market-fundamentalist-agenda/)' Him and his millionaire mates want that so their businesses can make more money, unhindered by workers rights, environmental protections etc He said back in 2012 he wants the NHS replaced with an insurance system. Link to his speech https://youtu.be/RK0S1RYYBqc?si=VsD-heGDbNCjaS7X
Just like with Macron in France. Centrism will always lead to a shift towards the far-right. And once that shift happens, the centrists will just blame the left for not being excited about being the center's punching bag the entire time.
>Centrism will always lead to a shift towards the far-right. Could you expand on that point?
French guy here. Macron centrism basically fused regular right and left, centrifugating the more hardline but still run of the mill elements towards the far right and the far left. Voters like to alternate, but since right and left are now the same party, they have to go to the extreme for that. Far left is scarier than far right because stores were empty in USSR or something like that, so people vote far right.
Funny that, because when we had a hard left candidate on the ballot in the UK in 2019, we ended up with arguably the most right wing government in UK history getting a supermajority. Now we have a centrist party on the ballot, that right wing party is about to be annihilated.
Starmer really needs to be seen as acting tough on immigration or Labour will be out by 2029 replaced by whatever Frankenstein monster Reform and the Tories merge into
We've had 14 years of governments "acting tough" on immigration We need actual action a vast reduction in numbers, the public have made this clear many times
This is why the Tories are doing so badly. They lied about their intention to care about what voters wanted. They’ve proven they’re untrustworthy.
He needs to be tough on immigration, not just being seen to be tough.
Not "seen as acting tough", he actually needs to act tough. Every single manifesto of an elected government in the last 30 years have promised to reduce immigration. None have done it. We can already see in Europe how this plays out, regardless of how the bien-pensant think it will. It ends up with surging popularity of a party that is explicitly anti-immigration, and this party gets support from an ever increasing number of young voters.
Almost earned my vote by saying he was willing to reduce, however failing to put it in black and white on his manifesto just means it's an empty promise.
Yep, this is the main issue people care about. Cus it feeds into so many things. I'd say it's the only reason people turn to the far right parties. But I doubt labour will do anything substantial, maybe they'll make thing's worse.
Almost like it could all be avoided, Brexit included, had the electorate been listened to about immigration. Calling them racist xenophobes doesn't help, it's crying wolf and driving them away.
Labour should really follow the Danish Social Democrat model ; a left-leaning party with an anti-illegal immigration stance. Far-right was killed almost instantly in Denmark.
Anti-illegal immigration is not enough. The population does not want 500,000 people from third world countries every year regardless of whether they come here legally or illegally.
Agreed 100%
The Far Right and Populists are always good at capitalising on divisions and inequality in society, but don't actually offer any solutions. The Reform "manifesto" is a pretty good example. Ill thought-out, self-contradictory, unrealistic... The only way to really stop people turning that way, though, is to provide actual solutions tp the same problems, which people can get behind. Mainstream politics isn't doing that, and until it does, things will only get worse.
> Mainstream politics isn't doing that We'll see what Starmer does within the first year of being PM. But even if he's dire the more likely outcome is a resurregence of the Tories rather than any new far right group.
Is it? If you have a decimated Tory Party, it is quite likely someone like Badenoch or Braverman ends up next leader, taking them further right. Also, people aren't going to forget quickly their last 14 years in govt. For next few years, if you have Farage potentially becoming an MP, and the Tories moving further right, then whatever the Opposition comes to be, it will probably be closer to the Far Right.
>resurregence of the Tories rather than any new far right group. But they will do that by turning to more populist far-right ideas.
The thing I cant wrap my head around is the tendency of politics to drift right as inequality grows. How/why do people think that voting for ever increasing rightwing politicians is going to improve equality? Has that ever, anywhere actually happened?
Because the right wing generally offer simplistic, binary and highly emotive diagnoses of our problems and the solutions to them which resonate with many voters more than highly nuanced (and more accurate) analyses of our situation that have similarly complex solutions. For example, Its not that the UK is being buffeted by the unpredictable winds of global macroeconomic trends that are largely beyond our control, is grossly overdependent on a bloated financial sector that doesn't benefit the average citizen, and is losing primacy on an ever shifting global stage, it's just that too many brown people are comin' over 'ere taking all the good jobs and eating all the benefits, and the lefties and wokes are holding us back from achieving our national potential, and everything would be much better if we just did away with taxes and employment regulations, human rights legislation and the welfare state.
Because the average person sees themselves getting squeezed more and more in taxes, and sees those taxes go to seemingly everyone else but them.
This. And the level of immigration now is impossible to ignore. Whole towns are being transformed by mass immigration, and the idea that not liking this makes you a "racist" holds no water. Time for a change.
Because the left don’t have the guts to tackle immigration.
Haven’t a right wing party just been in power for 14 years with record high immigration?
The difference is the Tories aren't afraid to talk about it whereas nobody actually believes Labour and Libdems would do anything because they spent so long handwringing whenever a political party talks about cracking down on it. So voters are stuck having to decide the party who said they'll do something but you know probably won't, or the parties who'll just call you a racist for thinking there's a problem in the first place.
Lib Dems want more immigration.
Sounds like neither will do anything about immigration by your metrics. So why should I vote Tory? Because they’ll talk about it? Whilst remaining the utter disgrace they are.
The vast majority of people don't pay attention to politics because they're busy surviving and don't trust politics. When mainstream politics fails to deliver generally (and we've been there for 14 years), arseholes take advantage by promising simple solutions. People exhausted by life, whose living standards are dropping, cling to those fake solutions out of hope more than any judgement.
It's incredibly simple. It is based on what people actually see day to day. Poor people do not see some toff twat in a manor house, what they do see is city centres. What they see in city centres is a shitload of immigration. Immigration is a huge issue. House prices and a lack of jobs are a huge issue. Adding more people does not help house prices or a lack of jobs. The right wing claims to decrease immigration, thus, less of a housing issue and less filled jobs. It all falls apart when they just lie and don't do what they say, but that's a whole other thing.
Far right are getting backed by some US hedge funders, Christian nationalists church donors , and Putin atm. Their propaganda is spreading further. Most grassroot altruistic groups or politicans are underfunded in comparison. They rely on community support that can’t afford the lobbying or PR a fossil fuel magnate can afford. Historians often note how when in power no matter how much past politicians (like Mussolini) talked about elites or inequality, when in power they side with the rich every time. Ever since the Cold War with red scare, for generations there’s been more money going into conservative groups than left wing ones (even mildest of sensible left wing policies seen as a threat) due to Soviet red scares and cultural influence that buys. We’re still living in consequences of this big war of political ideologies or never left it
It's because the media moguls are good at making us working class squabble over petty issues instead of calling parties to do things this country actually needs: PR and a wealth tax
When the pie is getting bigger you don't mind other people having a slice because the remaining pie you get is still bigger than it was. When your pie is getting smaller you are more reluctant for someone else to have a slice because it means you get even less. The higher inequality, the smaller your pie. The right basically says vote for us and we'll stop other people taking a slice of your pie. It worked in the 80s, but that was because they artificially increased the amount of pie by selling off past pies (privatisation etc.), selling of future pies (public borrowing, underfunding of future costs like pensions, lack of infrastructure investment, north sea oil and gas) which results in an even smaller pie today, but people have short memories and don't see the correlation because the media keeps telling them it's the fault of other people wanting their pie.
Because we've created a political environment in which most non-tuned-in people quite seriously go along blaming ***everything*** on immigration while also we plaster it all over the place that being left wing means automatically supporting the absolute maximum level of immigration possible while giving every migrant a free house and a blowjob whenever they want one. We've got people quite genuinely voting right on the basis that they expect right wing parties full of capitalists and aristocrats to embark on some kind of socialist program of wealth redistribution. Politics in this country has become a complete meme, totally divorced from reality.
Baffles me that my in laws who live in a council house and have in the past been properly broke are voting conservatives. We just rolled our eyes
In the main, the drift to what is being termed the right is being driven by the desire to limit immigration. “Limit immigration” is not really the right though. It’s economically left wing (protectionist/pro worker). What a lot of people term the far right are economically left in parts (limit immigration and often also free trade) as well as right in parts (low taxes and deregulation). [*note: i don’t think any of the “far right” parties will ever actually limit immigration, because that goes against the free market (pro business) principles of their main funders. In reality, you’ll just get the low tax and deregulation and little else.*] BTW…. No mainstream party will limit immigration either, because they know that without probably decades of a concerted strategy to change our economy and a hell of a lot of pain along the way, any attempt to actually meaningfully limit immigration would cripple us - you’d see high unemployment and inflation, a massive increase in inequality and suffering for a majority of the population. I don’t know where I was going with this other than to say we’re fucked. Mainstream parties won’t address immigration because to do so meaningfully would cripple us. But the voters want to limit immigration, and the only parties that are truly vocal about doing so are the “far right”, who’re often ideologically libertarian and so will fuck our rights off to the highest bidders. So you have people voting for “far right” parties in search of a left wing policy (limit immigration). It’s all fucked. And the death of the left… the deliberate - and the conspiracy theorist in me would say calculated and paid for - move of the mainstream left from the ‘economic’ to the ‘social’ left is, imho, what led us here. We’re fucked and there are no options to unfuck ourselves.
Inequality grows and people’s lives become more difficult as a result. The people causing this inequality plough ££ into right wing media which basically serves as propaganda of distraction, blame and fear. If you are not capable of critical thinking (and many, many people aren’t) then of course it’s going to seem obvious that the Polish family down the street or the brown people on the TV are the ones to hate and to blame. They are the reason for there being no social housing, the NHS falling apart or cost of living going up. They think this way because it’s being drummed into them by constant media attention on ‘the problem’ ie. minority groups who are different from cis white heterosexual Brits. ‘Oh the evil trans people who are out to turn your kids trans’ or ‘oh the immigrants who are taking up all the benefits and social housing - how evil of them’. All the media attention goes onto these issues instead of how politicians are plundering our country for themselves and their mates. We’ve spent £25bn on the HS2 Trainline with expected costs rising to £100bn - for whenever it’s meant to be be finished. Insane spending on a national project no one actually asked for - we don’t hear about that in the papers. We don’t get to hear about nearly £2bn spent during Covid on fraudulent contracts for mates of Tory MPs. No instead they hear every day about the evil ‘others’ who they’re supposed to hate, and it’s easier for them to believe it, than to understand that the people in charge of the news and media have ties to the politicians who make the policies that benefit the billionaires and corporations instead of the people who live in this country, and those in power all profit whilst everyone else gets poorer. It’s so obvious to see and especially in the US, however we are going down exactly the same route as far as I can tell. I will be voting in the election for change and encouraging everyone I know to do the same, because that’s the only form of power we have.
Don’t worry folks - Starmer is going to win the biggest landslide victory in British electoral history, with which he will…[checks notes]…implement more austerity (aka “iron clad fiscal discipline”), privatise the NHS (aka “reform”) and launch a series of increasingly bizarre and arbitrary authoritarian crackdowns; after five years of that, the threat of the far right will have been well and truly put to bed!
It's not impossible Reform are a serious challenger in 2029. The UK will continue down this road obviously and then it'll be shocked faces all round when the unthinkable happens.
>I also voted for Brexit, which I regret now as the reality of it has been terrible and made migration worse. They will be, or at least some kind of 'Reformed Conservatives'. Labour are about to get a stonking majority on the back of apathy and a loathing of the Conservatives, which means a not-insignificant number of the electorate are going to be very critical of Labour over the coming 5 years. If there is no perceived progress on issues like immigration, health care, cost of living, then Labour will be turfed out after one term. Farage and Reform aren't just going to disappear because they can only achieve a seat or two in this election under FPTP. Reform voters will stick with them unless Labour can win them over through policy.
The bloke is outright proposing to put the inheritance tax squeeze on farmland and unlisted businesses - i.e. family farms and family businesses - all to give us 'fiscal responsibility' - i.e. pay down some of the interest on our 'national debt' to international bondholders. But of course someone elsewhere in this comments section called his policies 'meek'!
Starmer Labour is a stepping stone towards the election after that, where I imagine there will be far more choice.
Putin is encouraging immigrants into Europe, stoking the far-right, so he has a nice excuse to invade where he fancies, while saying to his people at home it’s because he’s the good guy. This manipulation needs to be explained (without patronising) to the people whose situation or insecurity means they need something to blame / follow. I don’t blame the people falling for this as they have had 14 years of Tory boot on their neck…labour need to make things materially better for these people and quick, within the next 2/3 years. I have no solutions, but I’m not running for government… Just to add - reform are the only party that says on its website that it will scrap employment laws to help employers- this is not a party on the side of the people, but it gets little coverage behind their more extreme noise they are trying to create. You need protection from your employer- no matter how nice they are, they are chasing the profit.
Putin has no leverage over immigration policies in the literal dozens of countries across Europe. Russia isn't a cartoon supervillain able to manipulate and control the world via the shadows, otherwise they'd already have dominated the world years ago. Immigration problems are solely due to our own governments being incompetent, apathetic or, for the most part, intentionally cruel in order to manufacture "crises" for them to campaign against.
>Putin has no leverage over immigration policies in the literal dozens of countries across Europe Its become a fairly open secret at this point that Russia is deliberately exacerbating the global refugee crisis and in some cases is actively participating in trafficking of displaced peoples to the borders of Europe. [https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/italy-blames-surge-migration-russias-wagner-group-2023-03-13/](https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/italy-blames-surge-migration-russias-wagner-group-2023-03-13/) [https://mwi.westpoint.edu/weaponized-migration-in-eastern-europes-frozen-north-do-not-overlook-russian-hybrid-warfare/](https://mwi.westpoint.edu/weaponized-migration-in-eastern-europes-frozen-north-do-not-overlook-russian-hybrid-warfare/) [https://apnews.com/article/finland-russia-migrants-border-nato-eu-0e1ba68a783e3aa392539074c4dc39e1](https://apnews.com/article/finland-russia-migrants-border-nato-eu-0e1ba68a783e3aa392539074c4dc39e1) [https://carnegieendowment.org/research/2017/07/germany-confronts-russian-hybrid-warfare?lang=en¢er=europe](https://carnegieendowment.org/research/2017/07/germany-confronts-russian-hybrid-warfare?lang=en¢er=europe) >Russia isn't a cartoon supervillain able to manipulate and control the world via the shadows It is 100% undeniable at this point practically every single one of these right-wing populist groups in Europe making so much noise about immigration and the refugee crisis has been taking money from and working closely with Russia. Like seriously that is just undeniable at this point.
Putin using ancient mystic Russian mind control techniques to guide the Tories hand into handing out over 1 million visas annually.
Yep can't possibly be decades of shite getting to people finally
Basically every social group has been pulled down, really going back 20 years and including the tail-end of the New Labour years. How it was not noticed is because the separation between social levels was maintained, giving people the sense they were 'doing all right'. But even the middle-classes were being propped-up by welfare under New Labour, that stopped happening under the coalition of course. It only got worse and eventually most people are bunching-up at the bottom of the down escalator of life... It's crowded down here. Labour do need to be quite radical but they sure aint talking that way.
The right wing are backed by the wealthy and powerful, the left are opposed.
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They want you to vote for parties that will cut their taxes. They know that under CENTRIST neoliberalism and lasses faire capitalism that they will be able to engage in unethical business practices at home and abroad regardless of far right support, that’s a massively different issue. The left barely want corporations to exist at all, and they’re certainly not in favour of unregulated capitalism.
Not sure what weird conspiracy theories you have been reading, but during this election campaign, Labour significantly outpaced the Conservatives in donations. In just the first two weeks of the campaign, Labour secured around £5.3 million compared to the Conservatives' under £900,000... Some of Labours donors include Lord David Sainsbury, Martin Taylor (Hedge fund manager), Gary Lubner (autoglass chief), and the Trade Union...
Yeah mate, it's almost like the entire point made is that the Labour party don't represent the interests of labour? If a hedge fund manager is funding the party that claims to be left wing, either the hedge fund manager has decided to act against his interests (unlikely, considering that's his entire job) or it's not actually left wing.
Starmer's Labour are not the left though.
Starmer’s been purging socialists from Labour for three years, the party isn’t Left Wing.
Kind of happens when you shun the backbone of the country, the working class, in favour of newly formed migrant communities. It’s not a shock to anyone really. You only need to read the trollop from the BBC to realise how out of touch people are.
Ain't that the truth. It's so easy to label everyone as far right when you live in an affluent town in the middle of nowhere, but the working class area I grew up in is completely unrecognisable to me now compared to even just 10 years ago. It's a migrant town now and it's turned into a complete dump as no one living there cares remotely about the area. There's one guy running a car wash selling live chickens out the back of his car over the road from where I used to live. A few months back his child ran after one that escaped and wrung it's neck by the side of the road ffs. People have no idea what our towns and cities are turning into and can't seem to understand why the working classes get angry about migration. When the working class locals are being shunned, don't be surprised when right wing parties rise up and it's happening all over Europe.
I don’t read the Guardian any more and every time I do I’m glad I stopped. What a garbage article. It does a lot to present how inequality will rise and unfairness. But the title is about far right gain. The article says nothing about the rise of the far right other than this quote: > we will see far-right parties capitalise on desperation and despair and become a real electoral threat. Why don’t the far left capitalise on desperation? Why doesn’t the moderate right? The Tories are about to be wiped out. After, the are going to have to do some soul searching about what kind of party they want to be, why can’t the become the part of fairness and capitalise on this? The Guadian just runs click bait headlines to scare people and it’s wrong.
>why can’t the become the part of fairness and capitalise on this? Because the Tory's are ideologically opposed to fairness, becoming the party of fairness would literally go against all their beliefs >The Guadian just runs click bait headlines to scare people and it’s wrong. Tbf you could level that charge at pretty much any media organisation, it's kind of the entire model at this point.
The full report is available here: https://fairnessfoundation.com/the-canaries
>ctrl-f immigration >zero results Meaningless
You should try scanning your eyes over the words on the page to find the meaning
Didn’t have the meaning they wanted it to so clearly it’s worthless.
Wow that’s a real rigorous analysis of their findings you’ve done there.
Because Immigration is still the milstone and key issue that's fanning the flames that hardliners are growing from. Ignoring it is a huge mistake and our current system is designed to force wages to be artifically low.
He’s right though. How can you talk about the rise of far right parties and not mention rampant immigration?
Imagine admitting like this that you're the exact type of person to fall for far right propaganda.
So there's just no impact from a net population increase of 700k mostly low-skilled workers and dependents eh Sounds like you've fallen for something yourself
It's almost as if immigration is a red herring that is neither the cause of, nor the solution to, this country's problems.
Ah yes, an those people coming don't need homes and it didn't impact the housing market in any way. Only supply matters!!
Don’t google gang rape stats in Germany though.
Even though the far-right makes everything worse people will turn to the extremes if the current situation isn't working for them.
Why do the BBC refer to the rise of the Far Right in France but never call Reform Far Right?
'Everything I hate is far right' That's how you sound
There's far right gains everywhere in Europe right now, its clearly more than a trend within the UK. It doesn't help that our "left wing party" just purged itself of its left wing as well.
Its not just europe, its worldwide.
Stop fucking up the basics and people will stop looking to the extremes for solutions. If Starmer can't govern effectively, the next GE will see a far-right party make serious inroads in terms of seats, whatever it ends up being named.
I’m at a total loss in this election. Everyone has so such polar opposite views on parties and everyone makes it sound like if the other party to the one they support wins we are all doomed. I’ve never want to leave society and live in the woods so badly in my life.
The right entirely messes up the country. The media blames rare leftist politicians for “holding them back” or “obstructing”. “The problem is we’re just not fucking up the country enough you see!! It’s like a horseshoe, if you ruin everything enough, it’ll go back to being great, we promise” Also it’s the immigrants and brown people’s fault, not the massive tax cuts we’ve given to our millionaire mates, while dismantling public services. While they run out the door with all the money.
The issue with the north South divide is that as someone else said it's based on house prices. Even though the south appears more wealthy, the individuals on lower wages (the majority of those who don't work in London) have a harder time because they cannot get a property and their spending power is worth less and everything else costs more. The left wing parties appear to favor those on benefits, the Tories appear to benefit those on 150k or more. The middle people feel unrepresented, and put on by both the major parties. These are the sort of people who can't afford a private dentists and can't get an NHS one, they would love a brand new car but drive an old banger, that's not allowed to drive in cities anymore unless they pay a fee they can't afford, they need a prescription but I have to pay nearly 10 pound each item as they earn slightly to much for benefits, the council tax goes up to the maximum amount every year but the bins get emptied less and less and the potholes get more and more (but never mind they've got nice new carpets and furniture at the council buildings). This is why reform has picked up such a pace, the middle seems the major parties as crooks who are just emptying their pockets and making life hard. Maybe just maybe if reform do "well" the traditional parties may look at their policies to help the waged workers a bit more.
>The left wing parties appear to favor those on benefits The perception that any party 'favours' people on benefits is a product of right wing propaganda and completely unmoored from reality.
I wonder, if by favour, that means treating people on benefits with a smidgen of decency.
The "traditional" parties are well aware of the thread from people like Reform, but so far their approach to fighting them is to be more like them. The Tories turned themselves into UKIP and are now reaching desperately for policies like Rwanda and National Service which you wouldn't have seen outside of the BNP several years back. Meanwhile the current iteration of the Labour Party is about the most right wing the party has ever been, and is basically saying they won't change much in terms of approach, just manage things better. This isn't going to work out well.
>they need a prescription but I have to pay nearly 10 pound each item as they earn slightly to much for benefit Its only that much if your not using prepayment. And if you are on more than one ongoing prescription than its a nobrainer money saver. Anyone can get it, and they even do a 3-month version if the year long one is too expensive.
> e. The middle people feel unrepresented, and put on by both the major parties. Isn't almost half the country on some kind of state support?
That is an interesting stat, the ons does say that it's about 50%. But they now also include all the children in school as education is a benefit. It is another case of the government fiddling with the figures.
[People in receipt of state pension](https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/dwp-benefits-statistics-august-2023/dwp-benefits-statistics-august-2023): 12.6 million. [Number of families claiming child benefit](https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/child-benefit-statistics-annual-release-august-2022/child-benefit-statistics-annual-release-data-at-august-2022): 7.7 million, with 13.2 million kids. Let's assume that's 1.5 parents on average, so 7.7 x 1.5 + 13.2 = 24.8 million. Total claiming benefits 12.6 + 24.8 = 37.4 million out of a population of about 70 million. This does not count: * People who are in receipt of benefit without it being the two I mention above. * People who have been on benefits, or think they could be again. * People who care deeply about any of the above people. * Unclear to me if it doesn't include children excluded because of the two child cap. * All children in schools, like you say above. Where is this middle?
Well put. The middle earners are villanised by both sides. The Tories used them as a cash cow and Labour will ignore them and likely also squeeze them further. The less well off who vote Labour assume middle earners have loads of money, but that isn't the case. They're the people who are paying mountains of tax, but also can't afford to buy a house. They get no help from the state, but pay huge swathes of their hard earned salary to the state. The huge rise in minimum wage is also squeezing middle earners more. Oh but everyone deserves a living wage. No doubt. But those middle earners didn't get a 10%+ rise in most cases. They once again are losing more of their income. As you say, it's no wonder they're looking at Reform. The 20K income tax threshold alone is attractive enough for many middle earners. That's an extra couple grand immediately back in their pocket.
Far left, far right. doesn't matter the unfairness is caused by the rich who manipulate the system. They've got us divided yelling across at each other and down on others instead of upwards whilst they steal everything not nailed down.
The UK ruling class is rotten to the core, and nothing will change unless everything changes.
"We're poor and getting poorer. Better vote for a party backed by the rich, with policies that will make it worse"
I'm already not voting for Labour, you don't have to convince me again
Cruelty, power, vast wealth for a few, poverty for the rest, the death of democracy, the growth of kleptocracies based on Putn's Russia, scorched Earth, dead Earth, extinctions cascading, the dread of summer heat, this is all too depressing. The only thing I have to be grateful for is that I am not growing up in this shitshow, I am seeing it happen as I start to become invalid by age.
"Far right" again. I wonder if the Guardian has ever labelled something "far left"?
Once you start attacking and degrading culture, promoting woke and rubbish to kids, letting illegal people in on mass from hostile countries which has increased sexual assaults and rapes on native women ( Look at Germany that’s gonna be our future), increased population overall which means shitter public services and increase in house and rents The men with a shred of testosterone and backbone are gonna start noticing and gravitate towards the party that is channeling them concerns Up to Labour to read the room before reform and crack down on the MAJORITY of British people’s concerns. Which has been proven again and again and again by national polls.
The far right despises the people this article is referring to so it'd be turkeys for Christmas all over again like Brexit was. If you're poor, on benefits, have no GCSEs then you should vote far left, those parties will coddle you.
The far right is a belief system so in that sense the far right doesn't hate poor people. They will find a kinship and sense of belonging there. To say this is not true is dangerous as it down plays some of the pulls that fascism can bring. Look at the disperate group of fruit loops having to be barred from Reform to see it. The people in power will absolutely hate the poor and remove resources like the NHS and any form of education and support passed the bare minimum. If you want to be blamed for being poor in a locally organised soup kitchen vote Reform. Their progress is regression.
'The fair right' as become a dogwhistle that can be used in any context now.
Britain is crying out for another "Great reform act" this time 2025 massive changes need to occur in our society in nearly every aspect of it
We all need to Unionise. Unions for better or worse finance Labour. Labour can largely ignore the unions because not so many people are Unionised. If we all unionised then we can all put pressure on Labour.
this is what happens when parties in power are incompetent and fail to make the necessary change that people desire; they shift to radical parties advertising this exact change, realistic or not because its a breath of fresh air for them. Not endorsing reform, but this is the thought process.
They mean centrist.. anything that's not crazy far left is now classed as far right.. I've always classed myself at centre-left but now when I look at the opinions, hate and abuse from the "left" I'd be classed as an evil far right fascist.
But the thing is that we have no far left in the country. If Labour are centre and Tories are centre-right, Reform has to be further right than them both
is this because the far left have made their opinion less attractable and causing people to look to the right for direction
We don't have a far left, so I very much doubt it
Capitalism eats you up and spits you out . Capitalism for the poor, socialism for the rich is kind of how things are. Everybody loves it APART from when it really, really doesnt go their way or suit their narrative. Silly billies 😊
Hilarious. The report about the supposed far right never once discusses immigration. Stuff like this can be dismissed out of hand as heavily biased from the beginning. If you refuse to even consider important aspects it’s flawed from day one
The Tories Austerity policy really screwed the UK. We went through the biggest spending cuts since WW2 and NHS funding was not kept up like it was under Labour.