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… except that trying to out-Farage Farage (by being bastards to asylum seekers) will lose them many of their traditional supporters (who are not big on being ba

by gmac 1y ago

… except that trying to out-Farage Farage (by being bastards to asylum seekers) will lose them many of their traditional supporters (who are not big on being bastards to asylum seekers) and seems unlikely to gain them many Farage supporters (why would they take some half-hearted populist bastardry when they can have the real deal?). The ‘small boats’ narrative is ludicrously over-reported here. It’s such a clear case of those with most of the resources scapegoating those with none of the resources as the cause of everyone else’s problems.

Nursie 1y ago
I don't think any of that matters any more, the issue is so firmly in the public eye that Labour need to show that they've solved it whether it's a 'real' problem or not. > unlikely to gain them many Farage supporters Farage is polling ahead of both major parties at the moment. That support came from somewhere. To characterise all of those supporters as only interested in populist bastardry seems a bit of a surface take on the issue. Why have they turned to someone like that? Most likely they feel their own lives and prospects getting worse and in their dissatisfaction have turned to an easy answer, someone who promises to change everything and blame the outsider. To put it starkly, reductively even, you don't get nazis when everyone feels like their life is on the up and up. Well not many anyway. The mainstream of UK politics needs to get to grips with (perceived?) worsening standards of living and failing services, and actually take action that makes people's lives better. Instead for decades now it has just tinkered at the edges, seemingly run by ambitionless accountants. Shuffling half a percent here, half a percent there, not really achieving very much but spewing vast volumes of hot air. It's not really a wonder to me that a sizeable minority are looking outside of that, or are getting frustrated that they can't get a doctor's appointment or the roads are falling apart. It's all too easy for Fartrage to say - look over there!
- ryandrake 1y ago
  > Instead for decades now it has just tinkered at the edges, seemingly run by ambitionless accountants. Shuffling half a percent here, half a percent there, not really achieving very much but spewing vast volumes of hot air Speaking from the other side of the pond, we can say quite confidently that the solution is not electing someone who will make reckless, bold moves. The brain trust here voted against “ambitionless, measured improvements” and for that, we got a chaotic circus.
  - Nursie 1y ago
    Agreed, but unfortunately at times when things seem not to be going so well in general, people are prone to electing the person that promises them large positive changes by throwing out the stale old rulebook. Even if it’s not credible. Even when large parts of what’s apparently going wrong have been invented by that same bad actor… I think this is part of why Brexit got through as well, some people felt it was a way to shake up a crusty, unresponsive establishment. That didn’t go so great!
  - ratelimitsteve 1y ago
    we spent decades dying to "measured improvements". I don't like what my peers did about the fact that they're angry or what in particular they demanded but I don't begrudge them being angry or demanding something. You can only bullshit people about their basic living conditions for so long and long ago our political class gave up on the idea of working for people as their raison d'etre and decided instead that their job was to give us as little as it takes in order to get our votes and then use the power we give them to funnel money back to their donors. The mistake wasn't in realzing that the "left" wasn't on their side, it was in thinking that the right was just because they were the ones who pointed out how feckless, entitled and self-absorbed the center-right elitists that pass themselves off as the left had become.
- jodrellblank 1y ago
  Any ideas how leaving the european convention on human rights, deporting some barbers, takeaway owners and illegal construction workers, and stopping small boats in the English channel will reinvigorate Sunderland, fix South Wales after coal mining stopped, restart British Steel, bring life back to coastal holiday towns in the aftermath of cheap flights to warmer places, fire up the tired overworked Londoner on the crowded tube, bring European finance investment back into The City, tempt foreign industries to open factories in the UK, cause more doctors and nurses to be trained and paid better, and give little Sally and Timmy something to look forward to in life? "Freeze Non-Essential Immigration. Essential skills, mainly around healthcare, must be the only exception" - Reform manifesto page 5. The main thing Farage supporters are voting for is to see fewer Muslims and brown people and Pakistanis and Africans, and the main thing Farage is doing is stirring up is racist hate and division; Reform's own manifesto tells their supporters that they will still be seeing an awful lot of foreigners under a Reform government.
  - Nursie 1y ago
    Of course it won’t help. Never claimed otherwise. That’s my whole point - while everyone’s lives and the state of the country seem to get worse, people blame the other and look for the person offering them easy answers. If their lives were looking good, if government services weren’t a mess, and if they perceived the government was actually changing things for the better, reform would have a hard time finding suckers to vote for them. The small boats issue is enough in the public eye it’s going to have to be tackled. But beyond that, reform need to be beaten by the UK government fixing things and making the UK optimistic about the future, rather than just same-old same-old and the whole place feeling like it’s in managed decline.
    - jodrellblank 1y ago
      > "The small boats issue is enough in the public eye it’s going to have to be tackled" It has to be tackled even though it won't fix the things the supporters want fixed, because they're doing a surface level reaction. Your earlier comment opened with "To characterise all of those supporters as only interested in populist bastardry seems a bit of a surface take on the issue"; "blame the other and look for the person offering them easy answers" is the populist bastardry, it's not a surface take to say what people are actually doing. If you'd tried to argue that people are liking Reform's plans to scrap thousands of EU laws, cancel HS2, roll back labour protection laws, cancel ULEZ zones and give more kids asthsma, scrap 20mph zones except "where safety is critical" (because some pedestrian deaths are less important than car drivers driving everywhere they like as fast as they like), encourage smaller landlords (because housing will be better when the wealthy own more houses), etc. then you could say voting for Reform wasn't a surface take. How many Reform supporters are switching because of their pledge to bring in "online delivery tax at 4% for large, multinational enterprises"? Who thinks "Cut A&E waiting times with a campaign of ‘Pharmacy First, GP Second, A&E Last’" will put the Hope back into Land of Hope and Glory? And how many are acting along the lines of "Nigel hates the people we hate! he will hurt the right people!"? > "reform need to be beaten by the UK government fixing things and making the UK optimistic about the future, rather than just same-old same-old and the whole place feeling like it’s in managed decline." So far in this government, that's feeling very a very remote and unlikely future.
padjo 1y ago
It’s amazing to see Labour fall for the same trick that the Tories did with Brexit, and also incredible that Farage is still a political force after all the Brexit lies.
- card_zero 1y ago
  That's not a trick, it's how third parties have influence in a two-party system: the two main parties are compelled to steal any popular policy from a third party before it becomes a credible threat.
- whackernews 1y ago
  What Brexit lies?
  - padjo 1y ago
    350m for the NHS.
Erwin 1y ago
Because the same thing has happened successfully in most other European countries. Nationalist parties talk about scary immigrants, ordinary parties tighten immigration rules, and the nationalist parties fail to gain power. For example, Denmark created the highly criticized "Smykkelov" in 2016 which lets us confiscate any values asylum seekers have over 10.000 DKK (e.g. jewelry as the name says, but never actually used for jewelry just cash) in 2016. It has been hardly used (10 times in the first 3 years), but it had enormous press coverage. The largest left party (and the party of current PM) voted for it. The previously largest nationalist party (DF) have never been in power, despite existing for 30 years and getting 20+% of the vote in 2015 -- at most they were a support party to the right-wing government.

by gmac 1y ago

Nursie 1y ago

I don't think any of that matters any more, the issue is so firmly in the public eye that Labour need to show that they've solved it whether it's a 'real' problem or not. > unlikely to gain them many Farage supporters Farage is polling ahead of both major parties at the moment. That support came from somewhere. To characterise all of those supporters as only interested in populist bastardry seems a bit of a surface take on the issue. Why have they turned to someone like that? Most likely they feel their own lives and prospects getting worse and in their dissatisfaction have turned to an easy answer, someone who promises to change everything and blame the outsider. To put it starkly, reductively even, you don't get nazis when everyone feels like their life is on the up and up. Well not many anyway. The mainstream of UK politics needs to get to grips with (perceived?) worsening standards of living and failing services, and actually take action that makes people's lives better. Instead for decades now it has just tinkered at the edges, seemingly run by ambitionless accountants. Shuffling half a percent here, half a percent there, not really achieving very much but spewing vast volumes of hot air. It's not really a wonder to me that a sizeable minority are looking outside of that, or are getting frustrated that they can't get a doctor's appointment or the roads are falling apart. It's all too easy for Fartrage to say - look over there!

ryandrake 1y ago
> Instead for decades now it has just tinkered at the edges, seemingly run by ambitionless accountants. Shuffling half a percent here, half a percent there, not really achieving very much but spewing vast volumes of hot air Speaking from the other side of the pond, we can say quite confidently that the solution is not electing someone who will make reckless, bold moves. The brain trust here voted against “ambitionless, measured improvements” and for that, we got a chaotic circus.
- Nursie 1y ago
  Agreed, but unfortunately at times when things seem not to be going so well in general, people are prone to electing the person that promises them large positive changes by throwing out the stale old rulebook. Even if it’s not credible. Even when large parts of what’s apparently going wrong have been invented by that same bad actor… I think this is part of why Brexit got through as well, some people felt it was a way to shake up a crusty, unresponsive establishment. That didn’t go so great!
- ratelimitsteve 1y ago
  we spent decades dying to "measured improvements". I don't like what my peers did about the fact that they're angry or what in particular they demanded but I don't begrudge them being angry or demanding something. You can only bullshit people about their basic living conditions for so long and long ago our political class gave up on the idea of working for people as their raison d'etre and decided instead that their job was to give us as little as it takes in order to get our votes and then use the power we give them to funnel money back to their donors. The mistake wasn't in realzing that the "left" wasn't on their side, it was in thinking that the right was just because they were the ones who pointed out how feckless, entitled and self-absorbed the center-right elitists that pass themselves off as the left had become.
jodrellblank 1y ago
Any ideas how leaving the european convention on human rights, deporting some barbers, takeaway owners and illegal construction workers, and stopping small boats in the English channel will reinvigorate Sunderland, fix South Wales after coal mining stopped, restart British Steel, bring life back to coastal holiday towns in the aftermath of cheap flights to warmer places, fire up the tired overworked Londoner on the crowded tube, bring European finance investment back into The City, tempt foreign industries to open factories in the UK, cause more doctors and nurses to be trained and paid better, and give little Sally and Timmy something to look forward to in life? "Freeze Non-Essential Immigration. Essential skills, mainly around healthcare, must be the only exception" - Reform manifesto page 5. The main thing Farage supporters are voting for is to see fewer Muslims and brown people and Pakistanis and Africans, and the main thing Farage is doing is stirring up is racist hate and division; Reform's own manifesto tells their supporters that they will still be seeing an awful lot of foreigners under a Reform government.
- Nursie 1y ago
  Of course it won’t help. Never claimed otherwise. That’s my whole point - while everyone’s lives and the state of the country seem to get worse, people blame the other and look for the person offering them easy answers. If their lives were looking good, if government services weren’t a mess, and if they perceived the government was actually changing things for the better, reform would have a hard time finding suckers to vote for them. The small boats issue is enough in the public eye it’s going to have to be tackled. But beyond that, reform need to be beaten by the UK government fixing things and making the UK optimistic about the future, rather than just same-old same-old and the whole place feeling like it’s in managed decline.
  - jodrellblank 1y ago
    > "The small boats issue is enough in the public eye it’s going to have to be tackled" It has to be tackled even though it won't fix the things the supporters want fixed, because they're doing a surface level reaction. Your earlier comment opened with "To characterise all of those supporters as only interested in populist bastardry seems a bit of a surface take on the issue"; "blame the other and look for the person offering them easy answers" is the populist bastardry, it's not a surface take to say what people are actually doing. If you'd tried to argue that people are liking Reform's plans to scrap thousands of EU laws, cancel HS2, roll back labour protection laws, cancel ULEZ zones and give more kids asthsma, scrap 20mph zones except "where safety is critical" (because some pedestrian deaths are less important than car drivers driving everywhere they like as fast as they like), encourage smaller landlords (because housing will be better when the wealthy own more houses), etc. then you could say voting for Reform wasn't a surface take. How many Reform supporters are switching because of their pledge to bring in "online delivery tax at 4% for large, multinational enterprises"? Who thinks "Cut A&E waiting times with a campaign of ‘Pharmacy First, GP Second, A&E Last’" will put the Hope back into Land of Hope and Glory? And how many are acting along the lines of "Nigel hates the people we hate! he will hurt the right people!"? > "reform need to be beaten by the UK government fixing things and making the UK optimistic about the future, rather than just same-old same-old and the whole place feeling like it’s in managed decline." So far in this government, that's feeling very a very remote and unlikely future.

padjo 1y ago

It’s amazing to see Labour fall for the same trick that the Tories did with Brexit, and also incredible that Farage is still a political force after all the Brexit lies.

card_zero 1y ago
That's not a trick, it's how third parties have influence in a two-party system: the two main parties are compelled to steal any popular policy from a third party before it becomes a credible threat.
whackernews 1y ago
What Brexit lies?
- padjo 1y ago
  350m for the NHS.

Erwin 1y ago

Because the same thing has happened successfully in most other European countries. Nationalist parties talk about scary immigrants, ordinary parties tighten immigration rules, and the nationalist parties fail to gain power. For example, Denmark created the highly criticized "Smykkelov" in 2016 which lets us confiscate any values asylum seekers have over 10.000 DKK (e.g. jewelry as the name says, but never actually used for jewelry just cash) in 2016. It has been hardly used (10 times in the first 3 years), but it had enormous press coverage. The largest left party (and the party of current PM) voted for it. The previously largest nationalist party (DF) have never been in power, despite existing for 30 years and getting 20+% of the vote in 2015 -- at most they were a support party to the right-wing government.