It’s not even a long shot. People have been getting their ‘facts’ from questionable sources for a decade now. Social media is a means to connecting with people that share similar values to yourself and those connections help support and prop up your beliefs that they are correct.
Reform will no doubt stink the place up then the same voters will go to their questionable sources again and together they will conjure up the belief that, ‘no it was x,y,z that caused this’. We unfortunately live in a world where the politicians that lie through their teeth and promise the earth will receive no fallout when they fail to deliver on any aspect.
I’ve called voters stupid plenty of times in the past, but I actually feel it’s 99% a combination of naïvety and delusion. They will be told an alternative reality exists by parties like Reform and they will completely buy into it. Like they did Leave. Like they did Maga. Like they did with the Corrupt Tories. Yeah, that probably leans heavily into the ‘stupidity’ category as well I suppose.
I just fucking hate though when politicians effectively have a mandate for massive change like Starmer had with his majority then back out of every element that would do good because they are thinking about how to secure the next term. What I find ironic is the naïvety these politicians themselves possess thinking there will even be a second term when they are sitting on a poisoned throne with no way to control the narrative as they don’t control the message (RW media). They have the choice of sitting only one term and make no change for fear of losing support, or implementing everything they can and still sitting one term. Backing out of electoral reform (in both houses) because you are afraid of the political fallout? Fuck off Starmer. The only people’s politicians are those that believe in the honour to serve. Which you aren’t doing if your mind is on opinion polls.
It’s not just Starmer though: it’s happening here in Aus with the gutless Albanese government. We might actually finally get some reforms to CGT and negative gearing next week but I don’t actually have faith it won’t be a watered down version where they grandfather tbe CGT discount. After all; Albanese was a massive beneficiary of both the CGT discount and NG to build his multi-million property portfolio.
Sorry. Wrong thread. But maybe relevant re: gutless and naïve politicians. Go out with a bang. Leave a positive legacy!
Nice one, you are spot on ,on all counts, all politicians think of is the next poll and looking after themselves and their mates.Over here Albanese is considered by rusted on Labor voters as a disgrace, and every time he opens his gob he confirms that view.
His latest mistake in refusing to tax gas exports so the Overseas companies can continue making obscene profits,while we have possible shortages ourselves, probably put him on the road to oblivion, and sadly Labor with him.
When I read some of the things this Reform leader says especially on immigration, I shudder to think what he will do when he gets into power. However, blaming it only on media and voter ignorance is exactly the wrong thing to do. The 2 traditional parties which voters have been very comfortable with now has to look within themselves and ask what had not been enough?
Voters tend to have 7 key traits or drivers for voting:
f - Fear (fear of losing something)
u - uselessness (feeling thereof)
c - consolidation (keeping things they have or getting more)
k - knowing (knowing what is right)
w - wilfulness
i - ignorance
t - treacherous (not afraid to go cross the line to achieve a perceived end)
s - senseless (voting for things that may directly negatively impact them)
The start of the rot was the 2008 financial crash. That was the starting gun for the golden age of people lives being fucked by billionaires and convinced by the same billionaires to blame people who had nothing to do with it.
Why did we have the biggest recession since the Second World War? Because an industry of cocaine addled traders collapsed the global market speculating on unstable derivatives? Nah, it was obviously because Labour gave too much money to disabled people. I saw it on Facebook.
It’s been the same ever since. Brexit. Covid. Liz Truss. Fucking billions taken out of the pockets of poor people and handed over to people with already more money than they know what to do with. The billionaires ability to fuck over the country is only matched by their genius at convincing people that it was actually some poor, defenceless minorities fault.
I started a long post yesterday but deleted it…got too angry.
We are where we are because the UK is organised around a principle that exists solely to funnel money upwards. The end.
Whatever angle you look at this from, whichever way you approach the issues, the ever increasing concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands makes meaningful change impossible.
Political arguments should not be framed as left/right…they should be framed as haves/have-nots. The myth that capitalism will deliver each generation an easier time than the last has been proven to be exactly that…a myth.
Pleased to report that Reform were largely repelled in my council elections in North Liverpool.
My council area includes Bootle, a very working class run down town with a high percentage of people on benefits. I spent my early life there. It has sometimes been called Labour’s safest seat with a 22000 majority in the last election. It has now been rumoured that the MP might stand down to give Andy Burnham a guaranteed return to the Commons for his leadership bid.
But guess what…they returned a Reform councillor on Thursday.
Birkdale, which is rather posh and is where Kenny and Alan Hansen live, also returned a Reform councillor so the poorest and the wealthiest parts of Sefton have at least got one thing in common now.
Bootle returning a Reform councillor is the least surprising result of the lot.
It’s a poor, massively deprived area of the region and has become a dumping ground for immigrants/asylum seekers in recent years. I don’t use that term lightly.
Birkdale, on the other hand…
To wade in both politicians and people can be blamed. @jaffod is right that politicians need to read the room, and they are guilty of playing the game of filtering money upward.
We are stupid for not understanding the problem and doing something about it (as a population).
The entire system is rigged to suit the few.
With regards to when this started, it’s been decades in the making. 2008 was the point it ramped to a new level. The foundations were built decades before. 2008 explicitly exposes how, in the US at least that if you’re part of the big corporations that actually control everything, you are free from prosecution.
Not sure it helps. Labour came to power with a majority but one that had no real cohesion. The only thing binding it was a dislike of the Conservative government. That’s now gone.
It’s now being pulled apart as those factions go there own ways.
And, it is difficult to see the economic climate improving quickly enough to come to their rescue, particularly because Trump will outlast it and has been a particular thorn in their policies.
It’s a fair comment, and I think the way the previous government ran up a huge backlog of asylum cases was horrendous. It’s also tied into regional development going to pot.
At one time, a bulk of the regional development money came via the EU, but since Brexit I don’t think it’s being targeted. I suspect it gets targeted on a political basis.
Some mostly left wing think tanks have done studies on things like whether it´s a tax positive or negative but there are wayyyy more economic factors than merely tax. And even those tax studies often don´t look at the non-direct tax burden very well, if at all in some.
