Sampson

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After the Tories hit rock bottom and started to increase in the polls arson, I think Labour are probably about to do the same, though how much they’ll increase is interesting.

I think it’s also that a lot of people struggled to get work in the country they were living in (both eu citizens in the uk and uk citizens in the eu) in the period between the referendum and Covid because of the uncertainty of it and so just left. Remember an old French colleague who’d lived in the UK for over a decade but I spoke to years later and she said she decided to leave the uk in around 2018 or 2019 because she’d been getting to final interviews but even told a couple of times a lot of companies were hesitant to hire people on EU passports because they didn’t know what would happen and if they’d have to leave or not so she ended up moving back to France. Remember that it kept being pushed back and Johnson was peroging Parliament and threatening no deal Brexits and all sorts and the deal only ended up getting pushed through at the 11th hour once Covid had kicked it out the news so there was very little actual certainty for 3 or 4 years and Boris’ absurd theatrics over the whole thing screwed with a lot of people as well. It wasn’t a very certain smooth period for a lot of people

I’ve met several Brits and Europeans whose families have been broken up or split in two, relationships and marriages that ended that otherwise wouldn’t have or careers have been put back a decade by Brexit by this point; and people still complaining British people aren’t allowed to “say it like it is” on immigration is so depressing.

Connections Puzzle #977 🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟨🟨🟨🟨 🟪🟦🟪🟦 🟪🟪🟪🟪 🟦🟦🟦🟦 Thankfully blue was my remaining category else I’d have never got it

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The problem is I think most people like to feel like they’re being productive to society I reckon. I was unemployed for a few months when I was younger and I remember it feeling terrible and made me feel worthless and was hard to motivate myself to get up in the morning. I’m not sure how many would cope with being on a universal credit system. Not to mention the power it gives to stop the universal credit from the state or mega tech corporations divvying them out

Thanks. Never heard that in my life though

Ok I’ll assume no one comes into the thread until after they’re doing and just spoil it - I’ve googled and still can’t even find a mention to word “moon” meaning lovestruck - I can only assume it’s some obscure 1950s American slang or something.

Yes exactly!

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20260210-tiktok-is-tracking-you-even-if-you-dont-use-the-app-heres-how-to-stop-it This stuff scares me I have to admit, especially with AI algorithms getting more and more sophisticated

There’s 1 word I’d never heard of that particular useage and the blue category today I still don’t really understand but don’t know how to use spoilers

It’s a good point. Wouldn’t surprise me.

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Failed today Is there a way to do spoiler tags on this forum?

Eh. We’ve all read your posts defending/deliberately creating muddy false equivalency to low taxes , anti-immigration, anti-eu, austerity, Musk, Farage, Trump and every other right wing position half the time with the “I’m actually a leftist…” proviso while never actually posting anything remotely left/centrist and only ever defending/creating muddy equivalencies to the other side. And most of us aren’t daft enough to fall for the “”I’m a centrist/leftist” who only ever makes posts defending right wing economic and social policy” line. That strategy has been around enough time now that it’s pretty easy to spot nowadays.

They’re trying to shut down the argument by getting offended over nothing. It’s standard right-wing snowflake rhetoric. I wouldn’t worry about it. How is saying “imagined past” low or offensive? It’s obvious what you meant about nostalgia naturally making things seem rosier in the past - it’s an evolutionary survival mechanic that all humans do.

It’s kind of a moot point as we’re 3 years away from an election but I don’t fully understand what you mean - - what counts as the centre? And what does that mean in relation to the parties? I’d say we’re much more right wing economically and much more left wing socially than we were a generation or two ago as a country, so the posts of what the centre is always change, both economically and socially. And all the data for 10 years has shown the remain/leave was and still is divided by age - and that’s very much the same division over party voting blocks. This isn’t a weird outlier, it’s been pretty much stuck that way for a decade now. I’m just trying to understand your argument because I don’t really get it, you don’t clarify who this half a percentage goes over to whom? And why that counterbalances the percentages they could win back from Greens or LibDems? Labour would currently get destroyed if there was a GE tomorrow and that’s because their voters have abandoned them to Greens and LibDems - both very strongly pro-EU parties, I don’t really see what you mean by movement over to the centre when Badenoch is telling her party she’s moving it rightwards and Reform obviously aren’t a centrist party? Aren’t the only centrist parties right now the Lib Dem’s and Labour? The point I’m making is the data clearly bores out that we are now in 2 seperate voting blocks - What does the centre mean in relation to your argument regarding votes for parties?. You think if Labour said they aim to rejoin the eu their voters would go over to the Tories or Reform but not win back any who’ve gone to LibDems or Green? Or am I not understanding which parties and policies you mean by centre, as otherwise I struggle to see how you come to that conclusion given how the votes have moved the past couple of years:

I think this is an early 2010s, pre-“The Age of Populism (2014-present)” view of the country that isn’t borne out by the data nowadays though - the voting data is very clearly and starkly split by age into a right and left block nowadays and a lot of that is that the Tories or Reform won’t touch the pension system - which parties do you think Starner is winning votes from on the right? Tories or Conservatives? And what about the 33% of his 2024 voters who’ve defected to Greens and LibDems compared to the 8% of voters who’ve defected to Reform?

I think you’re agreeing with me here . The point is how split the vote is on both sides and that Labour only need probably less than 10% of the vote back from the Greens and LibDems to gain a majority and they have way chance of gaining that back from the Greens and LibDems than they do losing it to Reform with a rejoining eu policy - so I don’t think what Farage or Badenoch says matters that much because they’re fighting each other for voters more than they’re fighting Labour. While Labour are fighting Greens and LibDems for voters more than Reform or the Tories - it’s not like 10 years ago where Labour and the Tories were fighting each other to hoover up the voters from the collapsing LibDems. They’re not going to unsplit the Tory/Reform vote by pledging to rejoin the EU, but they would gain plenty of votes back from their own side of the split I reckon.

I think buffalo in that context is American slang. There was type of dresses a couple of weeks back I failed because I’d never heard of half of them

This continues this weird assumption that voters will go from Labour to Reform which they aren’t particularly doing. Labour are losing votes en masse to the Greens and LibDems who are the pro-EU parties, not Reform. Reform gain voters en masse from the Tories not Labour. You don’t need to join the euro, many countries just never meet the criteria, but I think it’s a moot point regardless in terms of winning or losing votes, plenty of polls show joining the euro isn’t a particularly big discouragement from wanting to rejoin the eu. The Greens have pledged to join the eu and it’s one of the main reasons way more Labour voters have gone over to them than Farage. The opposition will shout whatever, the same way Boris said we’d still be using EU passport’ lines and Farage said we’d stay in the single market during the referendum, Badenoch shouts “betrayal” at a limited youth movement scheme - and Labour aren’t winning the next election currently anyway without pulling something really bold and statement making out the hat like this - who of the remaining Labour voters are really going to go to Reform if they say these things? Not many, but there’s a lot of potential to win back votes from the Greens and LibDems, so I don’t get your point? Farage will say these things anyway. But polls show a good majority thinks Brexit has been an overwhelming failure and want to rejoin.

Would be the one thing that would be certain to get me to vote for them tbf

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