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Reform's response to this is actually disgusting. on 23:46 - May 21 by SuperKieranMcKenna
Yes you are correct, rationality had gone - but I think it’s important to a knowledge that’s not one sided.
Middle ground people are derided as ‘centrist dads’ in a derogatory way. I’ve largely stayed quiet because the middle ground seem to be the target now. We have a left trying to get Starmer out (who I’ve been critical of) whilst having more socialist policies than Blair, wanting to take us back to the likes of Boris and His corrupt buddies for ideological reasons they ingnore the warnings on experts because the IMF doesn’t align with their views (exactly the same argument against Brexit ‘who needs experts’.
And they want to pivot to China because Trump had mean tariffs whilst China help Russia attack Europe. World’s gone mad mate. That’s how we end up with wronguns like Reforn.
Damn the left, and especially Wes Streeting.
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Reform's response to this is actually disgusting. on 08:00 - May 22 with 982 views
Reform's response to this is actually disgusting. on 07:41 - May 22 by jasondozzell
Incomprehensible rubbish I'm afraid.
The reason we're getting Reform is entirely because of Starmer and the Labour Together project that wrecked an organic anti austerity agenda that was popular for their own selfish ends.
Centrist triangulation results in fascism.
The very people who spent an age telling us that Starmer was 'forensic' and that a tired 30 year old third way was the answer still refuse to take any responsibility!
RIP David Graeber
Worth reposting the following which I posted in February.
As a former Labour member, this article perfectly sums up my view.
"Finally, there is of course the landslide of 2024: a historic and remarkable turnaround, yet not the triumph that McSweeney and Starmer hoped for. They believed that flags and tanks might win over “hero voters” who had once been red but then turned blue. It didn’t. Labour’s overall vote share only rose by 1.6 percentage points on the great wipeout of 2019. The person who actually won the 2024 election for Starmer is clearly Liz Truss, a disaster in office while splitting the rightwing vote.
The net result is that Starmer has a bigger majority than Clement Attlee in 1945, but a platform closer to Sunak’s. In a forthcoming textual analysis of the manifestos of the two parties down the decades, York University’s Kevin Farnsworth observes that Starmer’s manifesto for “change” was strikingly similar in language and positions to Sunak’s manifesto at the same election. It was, he writes, “a decisive embrace of positions historically closer to Conservative than Labour platforms”.
Politicians and journalists love myth-making, but the danger of preferring legends to history is that you have no guide to take you forward. One of the guiding attitudes of Starmer and McSweeney’s regime has been that grave danger lies in looking even a few millimetres left, which is why he and his team have felt no compunction in taking pops at Andy Burnham and Sadiq Khan, and trying to kick out of their party anyone who even looked like a dissenter. Not just Jeremy Corbyn but peaceable figures from the soft left such as Neal Lawson (threatened with expulsion for endorsing a call on Twitter for cross-party cooperation).
I’ve watched every minute of the hour’s worth of footage of the former Labour metro mayor Jamie Driscoll getting browbeaten by party bureaucrats for simply sitting on stage with the legendary leftwing film-maker Ken Loach. I’ve also read the accounts of long-serving councillors and community figures barred from even being considered as a Labour candidate for parliament for such apparent misdemeanours as “liking” a tweet from Nicola Sturgeon saying that she was free of Covid.
This is McCarthyism dressed up as election-winning politics and it has failed. The result is not much of a government, and barely even a party. It’s a faction, a nasty narrow rightwing faction of what was once one of democracy’s great pluralist traditions. In place of real politics, it has office politics. The refrain that Starmer is a “decent” man does not fit his record of deceiving his way to the top of the Labour party, sitting on his hands during the massacre in Gaza or clamping down on protest against it.
This government is already toast, one Labour heavyweight told me this week, but the Labour party – a 125-year-old political project – may not survive Starmer and McSweeney. The diminution of the party’s horizons is clear when one considers the leadership election to come. Fifty years ago, the battle to replace Jim Callaghan drew heavyweights from Tony Benn to Roy Jenkins. In 2015, the range went from Corbyn to Liz Kendall. This year we are likely to have Streeting, a former student politician, versus someone from the soft left. There are no ideas in contest here, little semblance of a plan for change.
Now the shrinking is being done for them by us, the voters. Labour’s polling is disastrous. At each election, leftwing voters ask: who is the candidate to stop Farage’s candidate? In Caerphilly, it was Plaid Cymru. In Gorton and Denton this month it may be the Greens. But it rarely seems to be Starmer.
Voters are actively searching out alternatives. Because why should they settle for less?"
The worrying thing for me is that the entire political and media establishment went along with what was going on, and look where it has left us.
[Post edited 22 May 8:11]
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Reform's response to this is actually disgusting. on 08:08 - May 22 with 954 views
Reform's response to this is actually disgusting. on 07:49 - May 22 by Benters
She’s not just any woman though is she like your Mum or Granny?
So because she's Chancellor that makes it not only okay for someone to shout at her repeatedly in public but you think such behaviour should be rewarded?
Reform's response to this is actually disgusting. on 07:10 - May 22 by Benters
Old matey who had a go at Rachel Thieves was a scrap merchant I believe.
I too would like to buy him a pint or two.
The bloke is a boorish oaf Benters. Doesn't matter whether you agree with RR’s politics or not, ranting and swearing at a woman in a public place shows a lack of class.
“What is a club in any case? Not the buildings or the directors or the people who are paid to represent it........."
Reform's response to this is actually disgusting. on 07:10 - May 22 by Benters
Old matey who had a go at Rachel Thieves was a scrap merchant I believe.
I too would like to buy him a pint or two.
It's always handy to have 2p coin in your pocket when you see someone like old matey. They leave nice chip in the windscreen, also handy for people speeding along the road near schools or genuinely driving like idiots. So I'm told...
Reform's response to this is actually disgusting. on 08:22 - May 22 by GlasgowBlue
The bloke is a boorish oaf Benters. Doesn't matter whether you agree with RR’s politics or not, ranting and swearing at a woman in a public place shows a lack of class.
You may as well sh1t in your hands and clap old boy.
Reform's response to this is actually disgusting. on 07:41 - May 22 by jasondozzell
Incomprehensible rubbish I'm afraid.
The reason we're getting Reform is entirely because of Starmer and the Labour Together project that wrecked an organic anti austerity agenda that was popular for their own selfish ends.
Centrist triangulation results in fascism.
The very people who spent an age telling us that Starmer was 'forensic' and that a tired 30 year old third way was the answer still refuse to take any responsibility!
RIP David Graeber
But that’s just nonsense as usual not backed up by any facts. We don’t have austerity now - UK government spending (%GDP) is higher now than at any point since the post war period.
Kind of proves my point that some are more happy undermining Labour than Reform, repeating made up stuff like that is only going to help populists get into power.
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Reform's response to this is actually disgusting. on 10:18 - May 22 with 668 views
Reform's response to this is actually disgusting. on 09:58 - May 22 by SuperKieranMcKenna
But that’s just nonsense as usual not backed up by any facts. We don’t have austerity now - UK government spending (%GDP) is higher now than at any point since the post war period.
Kind of proves my point that some are more happy undermining Labour than Reform, repeating made up stuff like that is only going to help populists get into power.
You could argue that Labour are undermining themselves. The left of Labour has more or less been hollowed out, it's Starmer's fellow centrists who have the knives out for him currently.
Spending may be high but how much of that is taken up by servicing our debt and paying state pensions? Those are two huge areas of expenditure that don't contribute to things like improved pay and conditions for workers or better infrastructure or a functioning health service.
Reform's response to this is actually disgusting. on 10:20 - May 22 by Herbivore
You could argue that Labour are undermining themselves. The left of Labour has more or less been hollowed out, it's Starmer's fellow centrists who have the knives out for him currently.
Spending may be high but how much of that is taken up by servicing our debt and paying state pensions? Those are two huge areas of expenditure that don't contribute to things like improved pay and conditions for workers or better infrastructure or a functioning health service.
Around 8pc is spent on debt servicing, and NHS spending has increased.
Pensions do of course filter through the economy. That for me is the biggest thing holding back some of the larger western economies. I’d be far more radical and either create a funded scheme (rather than the ludicrous Ponzi scheme we have now), or shift it to the private sector. Denmark is a good model for this and has a much better fiscal position and public services than the UK.
If you created a national pension fund you could generate far higher returns than the cost of borrowing. Sadly nobody dares to reform the state pension, demographic change is only going to weigh the West down further.
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Reform's response to this is actually disgusting. on 10:36 - May 22 with 583 views
Reform's response to this is actually disgusting. on 11:52 - May 22 by Radlett_blue
But the journalists regularly heckling ministers as they walk into no.10 is fine?
I hate the way they do that. Totally disrespectful. I get that politicians don't help themselves at times. However, Its sends out the sort of messages that now gets the clicks on line. It actually creates an impossible environment of absolute negativity and stirs up the vitriol.
I am certain the media like everything a bit Sh!t.
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Reform's response to this is actually disgusting. on 12:10 - May 22 with 413 views
Reform's response to this is actually disgusting. on 11:52 - May 22 by Radlett_blue
But the journalists regularly heckling ministers as they walk into no.10 is fine?
I think Reforms response to journalists being annoying is to ignore questions, belittle them, or simple refuse to give interviews.
So yeah, good point, Reform are equally shIte at standing up to reporters, in the same way they can’t stand up for decency in society or be supportive of British values.
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Reform's response to this is actually disgusting. on 13:13 - May 22 with 291 views
Reform's response to this is actually disgusting. on 07:10 - May 22 by Benters
Old matey who had a go at Rachel Thieves was a scrap merchant I believe.
I too would like to buy him a pint or two.
So you approve of personal abuse of public figures? Still hardly surprising given your desire to have all refugees coming through the tunnel shot. Deeply unpleasant. No idea why you get a free pass on here by decent people
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Reform's response to this is actually disgusting. on 13:43 - May 22 with 223 views
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