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Its a very big if but if the tory and reform vote got merged plus a few idiots
At the election (I know) Reform and the Tories between them got less than 8000 votes. Gorton is University world, Longsight, Fallowfields (next door ward), Levenshulme, it's all either Muslim or university students, uni workers or staff/students from the MRI and eye hospital (which are both straight up the road)- you get the picture. the closet these folks get to voting right wing is the LibDems, and even they're tanking support. For it to go Reform, you've got to have all the residents of Gorton either collectively losing their minds or just not voting at all.
the closet these folks get to voting right wing is the LibDems
Labour is further right than the lib dems in its current form. It was when Starmer had some teenage protesters on stage, after his green deal U turn, that he revealed his true colours of oligarchs over the environment and the poor, he would have fitted nicely into any tory cabinet in most of my lifetime. That was when I ended my labour party membership.
There is a paragraph in the huffpost article linked above that pretty much sums up the current labour voters.
Polling shows that voters who are struggling financially are shifting to both the Greens and Reform, with Labour’s vote share now highest among those who are comfortably off.
It's the people who are sitting on assets, 20+ years in a pension pot, mortgage paid off or nearing completion, more interested in their unearned gains than the damage asset inflation and wage suppression has done, people who a generation ago would have moved from labour to tory in middle age can now lie to their conscience because they can just change to right wing policies without changing the name of the party they vote for.
Reform abuse the problems the ever further drift to the right has caused to offer false hope, labour offer no hope and just the continuation of tory right wing economic dogma and oligarchy hegemony, the greens are the only ones in England offering a real alternative and some actual hope, hope for the environment and hope for the majority of wage earners, that's why I joined the greens.
A plumber without a watersafe ID, Gas Safe registration, or CSCS trades card?
That’s, erm, interesting….
A plumber without a watersafe ID, Gas Safe registration, or CSCS trades card?
That’s, erm, interesting….
Not as interesting as the previous Labour MP who went on a WhatsApp rampage insulting just about everyone.
A plumber without a watersafe ID, Gas Safe registration, or CSCS trades card?
That’s, erm, interesting….
Not as interesting as the previous Labour MP who went on a WhatsApp rampage insulting just about everyone.
Given the number of positions Burnham has taken and his vile playing of the race card in his first mayoral election
I'm not Burnham fan but can you explain what you're on about here? Apologies if I have missed the explanation but you keep alluding to it.
I his first mayoral election he made a series of rather nasty statements about immigrants. Carefully done to be deniable but a clear "playing of the race card" talking about how immigration has made our streets less safe and threatened community cohesion. I'm struggling to fined the exact quotes as its all lost in a fog of the recent mess
"
The free movement of people within the European Union has made British streets unsafe, a senior Labour MP suggested on Wednesday.
Former Labour leadership contender Andy Burnham, said a failure to deal with people’s concerns about immigration was risking public safety.
“It is time for many of us on this side of the House to confront a hard truth,” he told the Commons, during an opposition debate on Brexit.
“Our reluctance in confronting this [immigration] debate is undermining the cohesion of our communities and the safety of our streets."
“I am no longer prepared to be complit in this His speech did not make clear why public safety had been put on risk.
Burnham said that immigration numbers needed to fall because “there is nothing socialist about open borders.” The free movement of people within the EU had been “defeated at the ballot box and is no longer an option,” he said.
Burnham claimed that the large influx of EU migrants was “not working for the most deprived areas of our country” and suggested that it had “made life more difficult where it is already hardest”.
there was other speeches about this as well. Plausible deniability but a clear dog whistle. During the first mayoral campaign anti immigrant parties were making inroads and this was his response - a series of deniable but clear dog whistle anti immigrant statements
Burnham has also flip flopped on brexit and has shifted right to left as it suits him. a weathervane politcian
Plausible deniability but a clear dog whistle.
Thank you for responding.
I would say it's pretty explicit in stating that immigration has made streets less safe. I think you can have doubts about the wisdom of EU membership (personally, I'm in favour) and open borders (that's not what we had before) without being a xenophobe, but that's not what Burnham was doing there.
Also, I never knew he was a Lexiteer.
he wasn't a lexiteer as I remember but he did go with the "must respect the decision and make the best of brexit" nonsense, now he is saying its a disaster,
What’s a lexiteer?
Leftists who wanted to leave the EU (see also Corbyn).
There was a reasonable left leaning case for this at the time, a lot of people were upset at the way Greece was railroaded into a deal it didn't really want by free marketeers in the French and German governments.
left wing brexiteer. those who believe we needed to leave the EU to have a socialist paradise
There's this whole idea that Brexit is responsible for everything that has gone wrong about the economy and society in the UK
It needs to stop - the downward trajectory of neoliberalism was wall underway - whilst within the EU.
Let's not frame every single thread about the politics this way.
Many of us want the UK government to get on with fixing what's around us and that includes many things that being in the EU won't fix.
It's not anything to do with socialist paradise at all. That's a misrepresentation.
And for all the shit socialism gets the country always relies on it in times of crisis and pretends it doesn't exist when markets are making a total hash of everything.
However this is the point about the Greens they are mostly pro-EU, redistribution and UK investment.
We can all have slice.
Many of us want the UK government to get on with fixing what's around us and that includes many things that being in the EU won't fix.
This is true. But it also includes many things that leaving the EU has caused.
You can argue against any claims that brexit is the cause of everything (is anyone actually saying that it is?) and that would be a reasonable stance, but by turns it's disingenuous to handwave it as not being instrumental.
4 billion a year lost
Thousands of businesses damaged,
Loss of EU NHS staff
Etc etc
There's this whole idea that Brexit is responsible for everything that has gone wrong about the economy and society in the UK
...
Let's not frame every single thread about the politics this way.
That idea has not appeared on this thread and no-one has framed the thread in that way.
There's this whole idea that Brexit is responsible for everything that has gone wrong about the economy and society in the UK
Brexit is not so much responsible for it as a symptom of it. That people have been duped into voting against their own interests on a whole range of issues by the papers they choose to read, the channels they choose to watch and their own bassist instincts those media sources play on: hate, greed , xenophobia, racism, selfishness, wilful ignorance... .
Part of the problem with Brexit, ignoring the economic damage and the harm thats done, is that it was a gateway drug to Reform, its helped shift the overton window ever farther right.
Both the Tories and reform have a stated policy to forcibly deport nearly a million people who have been granted indefinite leave to remain, that kind of fascist ideology would have been unthinkable outside the BNP just a few years ago.
The left (green/lab/lib dem) seems to have its head in the sand over where things are headed
The left (green/lab/lib dem) seems to have its head in the sand over where things are headed
I don't think the greens have their head in the sand, they are quite explicitly stating the issues, and being attacked for it by labour, who are clearly no longer on the left. Pretending that labour and the lib dems are on the left is just as big a part of shifting the overton window.
People really need to brush up on their definition of fascism.
Part of the problem with Brexit, ignoring the economic damage and the harm thats done, is that it was a gateway drug to Reform, its helped shift the overton window ever farther right.
Not really - Brexit is a product of ignoring the state of people's lives in the first place.
Like I've said - some moderates seem to think politics started to fall apart with Brexit - it didn't. It was well underway before that but low-interest rates gave the middle-classes belief that everything was just fine and Audi.
The country has been falling apart for a long time - and that's what created the Brexit vote - or a large part of it.
That can be somewhat corrected by actually trying to improve people's lives and investing in communities - rather than the awful Centrist politics that are responsible for people moving to the right.
People really need to brush up on their definition of fascism.
Yes, you do.
Like I've said - some moderates seem to think politics started to fall apart with Brexit - it didn't.
Please stop with the strawmen. No one has made this claim.
Like I've said - some moderates seem to think politics started to fall apart with Brexit - it didn't.
Please stop with the strawmen. No one has made this claim.
'Some' moderates believe this.
James O'Brien believes this. Otto English believes this. Ian Dunt believes this - and then imagine their reach. It's not a strawman at all.
It's only natural - if you're a middle class benefactor you're hardly interested in not protecting the status-quo.
The Brexit discussion thread on here has more support than the poverty and effects of neoliberalism thread (which doesn't exist.)
Anyway another dull EU thread-a-long apart - The greens do support correcting all of these things. So there is no head in the sand moment.
The head in the sand is the Labour party.
No, I was listening/reading to both of them before Brexit. They were both pointing at the short comings of the government of the time, and the circumstances they were working under. What they have in common though is that they pointed out that people were conned into making things WORSE over Brexit... neither in any way suggest that we went from a system working for all, to a one that suddenly doesn't... they have pointed out how Brexit hasn't helped the people who voted for it, has made many of the things it was supposed to make better worse, and the same tactics are now being used by the renamed Brexit Party as they surge towards power. That despite what has happened due to the 2016 and 2019 votes, the electorate looked set to double (triple?) down and vote for "change" that will makes things worse not better. Someone else who points all this out is Polanski, and that is part of his appeal to those shouting CAN'T YOU SEE WHAT IS HAPPENING!?!
Not really - Brexit is a product of ignoring the state of people's lives in the first place.
Nah, the state of their brains.
People really need to brush up on their definition of fascism.
Do we wait till a judge/jury/outside body adjudicates “fascism is happening” before we take action or call it out?, much like the governments of western nations waiting for genocide to be called out by the ICJ before crying out “well of course it is/was but we had to wait”
Ohhh I wonder……… who could we possibly take direction from on what defines fascism if our minds are confused .….. fascism eh?……. such a tricky definition to pin down……. but hang on…… theres a little known back street professor called Timothy Snyder who may be able to pass judgement on what fascism is and what it isn’t.
Odds have increased in Greens favour for Gorton & Denton.
Betting market now suggesting Hannah Spencer, Green, more likely to win Gorton & Denton than not, 51% probability; Matthew Goodwin, Reform, 32%; Angeliki Stogia, Labour, 18%
Some very worrying comments from Polanski, i genuinely don't understand why some on the left are so soft on him, in spite of all the horrors hes unleashed
https://bsky.app/profile/onelifestand87.bsky.social/post/3mk4izcqap22p
He's technically not wrong... Putin had the sense not to announce his intention to carry out war crimes on social media before he did them. Trump... eh, not so smart in that regard.
Is there really any question of who is worse?
Putin is operating with near absolute power. Trump, despite the best efforts of the Republican party, is still operating with many of the constitutional guiderails and checks and balances still in place. For now.
Can you imagine a world where Trump could act with the same freedom Putin enjoys?
Sorry, but there is no question which of the two is 'worse'.
I suspect Trump has killed more people but many of them indirectly Wheras Putin its more directly
Love this response to the rumours…
Since this, I've been following Spencer on instagram and sadly it's been very disappointing. I get "using Reform's tricks but for good" point of view... claiming opponents have said things they haven't etc... but it's really not for me.