Senate The UK Politics discussion

Our country our laws

We have free speech, we just don't have consequence free free speech.

You can criticise and take the piss out of anyone and anything. The moment that speech starts inviting unrest (see Southport) breaks court orders (see Stephen Yaxley-Lennon) or is done in one of the very few and very specific locations where certain types of speech is limited for very specific reasons (see abortion centres) then you will face the law but otherwise, have at it and you're invited to do so.

 

I was going to post the exact same thing.

We need to be trading more with Europe and rejoin the single market, but sadly that’ll never happen.

 

I wonder when these preconditions will be placed on the Gulf states? Even though I think European countries can be a bit overzealous when it comes to speech laws (some of the ones in Germany are bit insane, and apparently fairly ineffective), it’s insane for America to be demanding this of its allies.

They are only making this demand because the United Kingdom can no longer shelter in a trade bloc. Another consequence of Brexit.

 

It’s bad enough what they are doing to their own country, but trying to force the rest of Europe backwards is appalling. We can’t follow Trump’s America down this road no matter how traditionally emotionally dependent we are on them. We really need to find our balls and say ‘no’.

 

I've been saying this for a while. Fascists here are never going to be satisfied with taking over a single country, they're going to export their ideology. And unlike Spain, Germany, or Argentina, the USA is the most powerful country in the world.

 

Irrespective of anything anyone says


Trump can get bent just on principle that he's a prick and opposing him should be the go to position.

 

Actually I think it will come with a defense cooperation which they are working on right now. Ten years from now. Not as it was, but the UK will eventually return to at least a partial free trade partner. Also they won’t have a say in the EU regulations of products of course, which will make it a bit of a different experience I suppose.

 

Who wants anything Trump is offering?
He can whine all he wants about the fact countries aren't buying enough American cars, but has he thought about, maybe, making them better?

 

100% uncritical support for Kneecap against whatever the tyrants of the UK government are planning for them.

 

Nothing should happen to them, they're a political band who have said no worse than many other bands have on stage.

Yes, saying kill Tory MP's isn't great especially considering we've had two MP's of both stripes killed in not too dim a memory and they've already come out and stated that they don't believe MP's should be killed. They've said its been taken out of context (which is a stretch).

Also, the focus on this is ridiculous considering all the other issues that we 100% should be focussed on and in reality the most we should see from our "tyrannical" government is Starmer ignoring them and actually doing something about //points at all the stuff going wrong in the UK and abroad//

 

Sigh, we got a lot of trusting fools in this country.

 

Yeah, nobody in the UK should look at what's happening in America and feel superior. Farage and his pals have a much bigger base than we like to think.

 

But why?
That's what Labour are failing to understand and address

 

Yeah, all right but why do so many keep letting Farage off? He backed Brexit, it's a disaster, he just keeps doing his usual line of bullcrap. That over that hill, tomorrow, it will be glorious.

But you're never over the hill and tomorrow is always out of reach, yet people keep believing his crap. That likely includes his constituents fir whom he's probably done zero for.

In a better world Labour could be doing everything right and still Farage would be indulged.

 

People are disenfranchised with the Torys and for good reason. Labour will be forever pilloried for getting rid of the winter fuel allowance and not undoing the two child cap but as Ben says, they could have given everyone a cash payment of £5k and Farage would still be getting top billing.

He has fewer MP's than the Lib Dems and the same as the Greens and yet he gets far more airtime as do right leaning policies get more airtime than left leaning ones.

Take Tice and his continual "Net stupid zero" mantra. The price of our electricity is pinned to wholesale GAS prices, the green levies have been pretty static for years but our energy prices are high because there are no caps on standing charges and the baseline cost is pinned to the price of gas. Break that model and prices will reduce. This was explained to Badenoch on Peston the other night (to only get blank blinking from her) but is never pushed back on with Tice and his ilk.
General Reform voters don't watch Peston or Question Time in general but they see TikTok and twitter clips so Labour and left leaning activists need to start getting these messages out and ITV/BBC etc... need to start fact checking and calling out the lies (on both sides).

 

For those of you in the UK: with the growing surge for Reform, I want to ask, are you witnessing a change in your neighbours, friends, family, coworkers? Are these votes for Reform protest votes against the stagnation of Labour and the Tories, or has there been a legitimate populist shift amongst Britons in rhetoric, opinions, political persuasion, etc.?

 

A large part is dissatisfaction in the main two parties as outlined above. There is however a legitimate populist shift that appears to be gaining momentum

Tory are tying to be Reform lite to try to pull their voters back and are failing as a result of the last abject 14 years
Labour are leaning far further right than they should and rather than trying to counter Reform and outline the positives, they're also trying to be a left leaning Reform lite and thats pissing Labour voters off and floating voters are going for the agitator purely because the last 14 years have been so crap. They also screwed themselves over by doing the country down from the day they got in and made no attempt at selling the probability of improvements coming along with a timescale. Its all been doom and gloom and still pretty much is.

Lib Dems are still hurt by their years in coalition and everyone has forgotten the good stuff from the coalition was from the Lib Dem policies and the bad were Tory policies.

Green are er... The Greens

That coupled with the broadly balanced BBC having a clear right leaning stance from the top with leading political interviewers (Kuennsberg) going kid gloves on the right and turning the screw on the left (thats not really changed for around 40 years though) then the messaging from the right is cutting through with no obstruction and some amplification but the left is in a soundproof box and any squeak gets grilled to the n'th degree.


So at the General Eletion, it was a vote to get the Torys out with a lot of protest votes for Reform. The latest run includes protest votes against Labour which have also gone to Reform.

It's going to be a concerning 4 years if Labour don't sort their act out.

 

I'm noticing a difference in younger co-workers. I work in pretty blue collar industries. Over the last couple of years (particularly in the last 6 months), I've noticed a strong swing to the right among men in their 20s and 30s. One co-worker wants Farage as PM to "shake up" British politics (he was always a Tory and has never been a racist). A couple of others (who once held very different views) now re-post Tommy Robinson quotes while posting some shockingly racist views of their own.

I haven't noticed much change in people of my age range (I'm 44). I think the far right are tapping into something with young men, like Trump did in the US.

 

No-one in my family has changed, they all think Farage is a ****.
But we mostly vote Green since Labour is a failure.

I don't generally ask the political opinions of my co-workers, but I've not heard anyone lend support to the talking points that Reform push.

 

My 21 year old daughter as vehemently anti Farage and his ilk, she does however know a fair few ex school friends who are listening to Tate etc... and arenow very Farage leaning compared to 5 years ago in school when they all came across as very "inclusive" for want of a better word.

He best mates mum is now in the Reform camp purely because Labour have betrayed her since they got in power and she would never vote Tory.

I hear, "Lets give someone else a try" a lot when I do talk politics

Scary times

 

UK Politics question... where do all the conservatives come from? I mean, the UK was more progressive than the US and still has institutions and laws from those eras, but it's too eerily like the United States in its current political environment. Over here in the US, we know a lot of that comes from the Southern states, from the evangelical movement, the megachurches, the Young Earth creationists, our long history of racial tension, our neoconservatives who want to always be on top in the world, etc. But it doesn't seem like the UK has those things? I know all "Western" countries have deal with the long-term political consequences of industrial jobs moving overseas, distrust of immigrants, some social conservatives even if of different stripes, and the interests of big business. But what are the regions and the demographics of the UK seeming to become so much more conservative in recent decades, or any other big reasons?

 

Go back long enough and you get the conservative aristocracy and upper class, these are your Macmillan oblige noblesse One Nation types. Very few around these days.

Then you have your Thatcherites, business types, got lucky and guard their wealth in a way a dragon would envy. Despises everyone on benefits, thinks everyone can just set up a business.

Anti-Europe pro-empire, 'you cannot say anything now' lot, aka the Four Yorkshiremen.

Then there's towns heavily hit by Thatcher's destruction of UK industry, high unemployment, they need someone to blame cue Farage.

The central pillar of it, that all you have to do is work hard to succeed, which neatly evades all questions of class, remains simple and seductive. That it's simplistic bollocks doesn't matter.

But it is arguable that the combination of an entirely right-wing owned media + numerous think tanks + social media has dangerously tilted things over the last 15 years. Plus the addition of wealthy women and BME conservatives, which allow the party to claim to be pro-equality. All its really proved is anyone can be a selfish bastard.

 

Basically, "Romney Republicans" with a milder Fox News, and those disillusioned working class who don't see those "Romney Republican" types as the cause of their issues. To put in U.S. terms.

But is there a specific region that really swings the entire UK far more to the right than it would otherwise be, like the US here? Or a single demographic, like those who never went to college, or old men, or suburban moms, or anything like that? Just a couple specific regions or demographics that just swing so hard to the right that it has unevenly swing the entire UK to the right, that if they "converted" or even just evened-out then the entire country would change? Or is it evenly-spread between most demographics and regions, with some preferences but nothing disproportionate?