7 ms·

So, 'the brexit' wasn't all that much out of character? *sadly

dijit 3y ago
I mean, people are consistently voting conservative. Its hard to fathom for me, true that I was raised in a labour strong-hold; but the decimation of industry, housing and the selling of previously nationalised infrastructure has had long reaching and devastating consequences for a large contingent of the population. But people keep voting them into office, literally the worst of all alternatives. (except maybe UKIP/Brexit/Reform which is the same party that keeps rebranding)
- sph 3y ago
  While I believe this might not have come out under a Labour government, do you think Starmer will backpedal on it? Of course not, and his excuse will be "the Tories will use that to paint us as anti-children", when in reality, the surveillance state is older and more engrained than any party. The Tories have ruined the country, but I wish people stopped seeing them as pure evil against the pure good that is Labour, which is far from the case. They're all rotten in their own way, and it's not them pulling the pervasive surveillance strings. I wouldn't know who is for certain, but it's a combination of being in the Five Eyes, our friendship with the USA, the very favourable media, and the cultural fact that British people have been OK with total surveillance for decades.
  - dijit 3y ago
    The weird effect right now of conservatives winning elections is that more parties will be more like them in order to attract voters away. We all lose. That's why "starmer is a red tory" doesn't jibe with me, Blair is also a "red tory" and is/was painted as such; but he won by a landslide on that. The media was so against Corbyn, progress away from conservative ideology will be long and it requires people to show determination to move away. Even if it's little by little.
  - pydry 3y ago
    Starmer wouldn't but Corbyn would have and people voted against him in a landslide. Even now there are millions of people convinced that this is better just as there are millions still convinced that Brexit was worthwhile. As HL Mencken said, Democracy is the theory that common people know what they want and they deserve to get it good and hard. The UK really did have an alternative and they chose to be ruled by psychopathic, greedy incompetent old Etonians.
    - sph 3y ago
      Well, we might not have had Brexit if Corbyn had had a little spine and/or actually was against it himself.
      - pydry 3y ago
        It wasn't his job to manipulate the public into voting against it, nor was he able to do so. It was his job to present his honest opinion and he did. If you want somebody to blame you need to look at the British media barons. Lord Rothermere, etc. They were the ones who manipulated two rather pathetic warring tribes into existence and played them both like puppets against each other.
        sph 3y ago
        Oh certainly, Tories and perhaps the Russian influence on the Brexit fiasco had much bigger effect than Corbyn. I do not disagree.
      - stephen_g 3y ago
        It was kind of the opposite - the party forcing Corbyn to support a second referendum lost a lot of votes in the North and led to them losing the election. The alternative that possibly could have happened was a sanely negotiated Brexit, which would have been fine (lots of countries aren’t in the EU but have extensive trade relations etc.) but no brexit wasn’t really going to happen at the time.
      - Fluorescence 3y ago
        Blaming Corbyn for Brexit is one of the dumbest agro-centrist bits of nonsense that will not stop. It was concocted on the day after as part of the "chicken coup" to try and push out the democratically elected party leader and hasn't stopped since. You'd think the head of the Remain campaign might deserve a little blame? Totally blameless for their failure apparently. The actual strategy of the campaign is never even discussed. It's just "how dare Corbyn cause Brexit! The Fiend!" How about all the other names and faces leading the Remain campaign? Cameron, Osborne? Nope. He gets more blame than fucking Farage. I have no respect for anyone that pushes this shit. It's just disgusting post-factual factional lying crap. Stop it.
- dontlaugh 3y ago
  It's not so much that people vote Tory more, but rather that people that used to vote Labour don't vote at all since Labour abandoned them. First-past-the-post will always allow the Tories to win with a minority of the national vote. However, politics do exist beyond elections. Strikes have again become common, which could build up to larger campaigns and even a general strike. The organised working class can force even a Tory government to act or face the beginning of revolution.
- cs02rm0 3y ago
  But people keep voting them into office, literally the worst of all alternatives. I think for the last 50 years, possibly excepting one Labour leader, the wider electorate have seen Labour as literally the worst of all alternatives. That's why the Conservatives are consistently voted in. The problem isn't really either of our two terrible main political parties though, it's the absence of any realistic competition. If there were an obviously better alternative I believe that despite any historical affiliations voters today on all sides would leap to it. We've had that 50 years to find an alternative and there's still nothing palatable waiting in the wings. Why this is, I think is more debatable. Maybe the answer is PR, maybe we need to pay MPs more in line with historic rates in real terms (and more than some recent software dev grads), maybe it's something else. But it's pretty clear to me that as much as people don't want the Conservatives, they really don't want Labour either.
  - gambiting 3y ago
    I've heard more than one person completely honestly say "I hate the Tories, but not as much as I hate labour". There is some national belief that labour would destroy the country(even more than the Tories do) so in response labour is slowly morphing into Tory Party 2 just to get some voters over. Even if they win the upcoming election(and I really doubt that) I don't think the overall policy would be much different to what we have now.
  - contravariant 3y ago
    I think you're making an assumption that the parliament is in any way an accurate representation of the opinion of the wider electorate. Which, given the UK's insane voting system, is very unlikely.
    - andrekandre 3y ago
      > the UK's insane voting system i don't live in uk so i'm not familiar, but what is particularly bad about it?
      - contravariant 3y ago
- funnybeam 3y ago
  The thing I keep reminding myself is that most people don’t actually vote conservative, it’s just our skewed voting system that makes them appear to have vastly more support than they really do. And the post 2019 Conservative Party effectively is UKIP - they were thoroughly infiltrated and most of the old school tories left the party
- polshaw 3y ago
  Most people are not voting conservative though, they win power on the back of 35-40% of the vote due to the electoral system.
- ClumsyPilot 3y ago
  > worst of all alternatives. (except maybe UKIP/Brexit/Reform I would prefer UKIP victory - it would be brief, exciting and painfull, and a lesson that lasts. Like this isn't a slower burn with greater total damage.

I mean, people are consistently voting conservative. Its hard to fathom for me, true that I was raised in a labour strong-hold; but the decimation of industry, housing and the selling of previously nationalised infrastructure has had long reaching and devastating consequences for a large contingent of the population. But people keep voting them into office, literally the worst of all alternatives. (except maybe UKIP/Brexit/Reform which is the same party that keeps rebranding)

sph 3y ago
While I believe this might not have come out under a Labour government, do you think Starmer will backpedal on it? Of course not, and his excuse will be "the Tories will use that to paint us as anti-children", when in reality, the surveillance state is older and more engrained than any party. The Tories have ruined the country, but I wish people stopped seeing them as pure evil against the pure good that is Labour, which is far from the case. They're all rotten in their own way, and it's not them pulling the pervasive surveillance strings. I wouldn't know who is for certain, but it's a combination of being in the Five Eyes, our friendship with the USA, the very favourable media, and the cultural fact that British people have been OK with total surveillance for decades.
- dijit 3y ago
  The weird effect right now of conservatives winning elections is that more parties will be more like them in order to attract voters away. We all lose. That's why "starmer is a red tory" doesn't jibe with me, Blair is also a "red tory" and is/was painted as such; but he won by a landslide on that. The media was so against Corbyn, progress away from conservative ideology will be long and it requires people to show determination to move away. Even if it's little by little.
- pydry 3y ago
  Starmer wouldn't but Corbyn would have and people voted against him in a landslide. Even now there are millions of people convinced that this is better just as there are millions still convinced that Brexit was worthwhile. As HL Mencken said, Democracy is the theory that common people know what they want and they deserve to get it good and hard. The UK really did have an alternative and they chose to be ruled by psychopathic, greedy incompetent old Etonians.
  - sph 3y ago
    Well, we might not have had Brexit if Corbyn had had a little spine and/or actually was against it himself.
    - pydry 3y ago
      It wasn't his job to manipulate the public into voting against it, nor was he able to do so. It was his job to present his honest opinion and he did. If you want somebody to blame you need to look at the British media barons. Lord Rothermere, etc. They were the ones who manipulated two rather pathetic warring tribes into existence and played them both like puppets against each other.
      - sph 3y ago
        Oh certainly, Tories and perhaps the Russian influence on the Brexit fiasco had much bigger effect than Corbyn. I do not disagree.
    - stephen_g 3y ago
      It was kind of the opposite - the party forcing Corbyn to support a second referendum lost a lot of votes in the North and led to them losing the election. The alternative that possibly could have happened was a sanely negotiated Brexit, which would have been fine (lots of countries aren’t in the EU but have extensive trade relations etc.) but no brexit wasn’t really going to happen at the time.
    - Fluorescence 3y ago
      Blaming Corbyn for Brexit is one of the dumbest agro-centrist bits of nonsense that will not stop. It was concocted on the day after as part of the "chicken coup" to try and push out the democratically elected party leader and hasn't stopped since. You'd think the head of the Remain campaign might deserve a little blame? Totally blameless for their failure apparently. The actual strategy of the campaign is never even discussed. It's just "how dare Corbyn cause Brexit! The Fiend!" How about all the other names and faces leading the Remain campaign? Cameron, Osborne? Nope. He gets more blame than fucking Farage. I have no respect for anyone that pushes this shit. It's just disgusting post-factual factional lying crap. Stop it.
dontlaugh 3y ago
It's not so much that people vote Tory more, but rather that people that used to vote Labour don't vote at all since Labour abandoned them. First-past-the-post will always allow the Tories to win with a minority of the national vote. However, politics do exist beyond elections. Strikes have again become common, which could build up to larger campaigns and even a general strike. The organised working class can force even a Tory government to act or face the beginning of revolution.
cs02rm0 3y ago
But people keep voting them into office, literally the worst of all alternatives. I think for the last 50 years, possibly excepting one Labour leader, the wider electorate have seen Labour as literally the worst of all alternatives. That's why the Conservatives are consistently voted in. The problem isn't really either of our two terrible main political parties though, it's the absence of any realistic competition. If there were an obviously better alternative I believe that despite any historical affiliations voters today on all sides would leap to it. We've had that 50 years to find an alternative and there's still nothing palatable waiting in the wings. Why this is, I think is more debatable. Maybe the answer is PR, maybe we need to pay MPs more in line with historic rates in real terms (and more than some recent software dev grads), maybe it's something else. But it's pretty clear to me that as much as people don't want the Conservatives, they really don't want Labour either.
- gambiting 3y ago
  I've heard more than one person completely honestly say "I hate the Tories, but not as much as I hate labour". There is some national belief that labour would destroy the country(even more than the Tories do) so in response labour is slowly morphing into Tory Party 2 just to get some voters over. Even if they win the upcoming election(and I really doubt that) I don't think the overall policy would be much different to what we have now.
- contravariant 3y ago
  I think you're making an assumption that the parliament is in any way an accurate representation of the opinion of the wider electorate. Which, given the UK's insane voting system, is very unlikely.
  - andrekandre 3y ago
    > the UK's insane voting system i don't live in uk so i'm not familiar, but what is particularly bad about it?
    - contravariant 3y ago
funnybeam 3y ago
The thing I keep reminding myself is that most people don’t actually vote conservative, it’s just our skewed voting system that makes them appear to have vastly more support than they really do. And the post 2019 Conservative Party effectively is UKIP - they were thoroughly infiltrated and most of the old school tories left the party
polshaw 3y ago
Most people are not voting conservative though, they win power on the back of 35-40% of the vote due to the electoral system.
ClumsyPilot 3y ago
> worst of all alternatives. (except maybe UKIP/Brexit/Reform I would prefer UKIP victory - it would be brief, exciting and painfull, and a lesson that lasts. Like this isn't a slower burn with greater total damage.