Sampson

Exactly. It’s easy to look like a good public speaker when you just make up numbers or offer some variant attack of “you’re not patriotic and don’t believe in British people” towards the other parties/arguments for every argument. Sadly it’s not just the uk, it’s the whole of the western world. Seeing the headlines this morning in the bbc about the Greek coastguard are heartbreaking, but this is the path this rhetoric is taking us in the whole western world and sadly feel like just the beginning

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0vv717yvpeo Greek coastguard threw migrants overboard to their deaths, witnesses say. Just heartbreaking.

Interesting on the discussion on who the new Tory leader will be from those that remain

Thatcher was an economic extremist though and she won and transformed where the “moderate centre ground” is in this country still to this day. As were Cameron and Osborne’s brutal austerity measures. They were just good at dressing it up in a way that makes it sound acceptable to centrists, Farage does the same in a lot of ways too. I agree most people consider themselves moderate, the problem is when you have politicians who are very successful at moving the moderate centre ground.

I wanted to edit the thread title to say he sadly passed away but can’t seem to now. If a mod could that would be great

The one thing about Farage which gives me some crumb for comfort is he only seems to make headway amongst a certain generation of over 65s, all the polls show he never makes any in roads in people younger than that and well, without being morbid, he’ll have lost a lot of his voters by 2029 through natural causes. The guy’s popularity has a natural clock on it imo. The vote in the UK has become so extreme in its generational split that it’s hard to see the right not just being phased out of power for a long time as it’s hard to see the younger generation of current 13-17 year olds who’ll be 18+ come 2029 voting Tories or Reform and replacing the older voters who die and those in their late 40s where the median voting age lies don’t seem to switching from Labour to the Tories either and have spent most of their working life under 14 years of Tory government that’s only burnt the economy to the ground which will be hard to forget.

Sadly not unpopular.

The US already banned people under the age of 35 and people not born in the US from running, even if they are US citizens who have 2 US parents and lived in the US since the age of 1, surely that is more undemocratic? Every democracy in the world already has minimum ages you can run, how are maximum ages any different?

The problem with the “socialist state” stuff is it’s too long ago now. The Berlin Wall came down in 1989, you have to be 53 to have that in your adult conscience mind. The majority of voters don’t have that negative association of the eastern block to it, hence why the right in the uk only makes headways to older voters with this rhetoric. Younger people have instead seen the failiures of austerity and neoliberalism first hand so have that as a far more negative association. Not making judgement on anyone’s opinions of either philosophy, just don’t understand why the Tories think “socialist state” will wash off on anyone under 50, it’s too long ago and no one under that age has any real reference points to it. Just makes me feel like they’re still in the headspace of the world is still like it was and the population still is like it was in the 1980s. They’re going on about a bogeymonster that the majority of the voting public won’t remember.

Nothing to do with Starmer being boring, I’d happily take boring in a pm if they make the country better and let’s face it, that’s not difficult given how far it’s been run into the ground the past 14 years, and I get it’s not an overnight fix, it would just be nice if they ultimately laid out long term goals in the same way the LibDems said that the ultimate goal is to rejoin the single market but that’s probably an election cycle away (not saying it has to be on this topic just used as an example).

I’m very interested how far or watered down it would be. Starmer looked promising when he first became leader but seems to have rolled back all his promises and taken them off his website since then so we’ll see how much is actually in it.

I think a lot of it the obsession with older politicians and it’s even more exaggerated in the us than in Europe. It’s like you need to be in your 60s before you start being considered PM or president worthy in a lot of cases. The fact it was big news how young Blair or Macron were because they were in their 40s on becoming pm feels weird.

Labour one is released later today I believe. If not tomorrow

Yeah I imagine it’s one of those things millions of people have done and the police probably aren’t too bothered about usually unless they use the weapon in a crime and it’s extra charges to build up against them but being a public figure and admitting it in your memoir is setting himself up to be got at.

But there’s a lot more that goes into a child’s behaviour than their parents. The child has their own dna, brain chemistry, their peer group and schools play a massive roll on forming a child too. Even at home, parents cannot realistically police everything the child sees on tv and online. I get it’s an emotional case but setting legal precedent based on extreme emotional cases is not a good idea, it’s how legal creep happens and it’s just not realistic to say a parent should be held fully legally responsible for how a child turns out and their behaviour.

I’m sorry but as vile as this crime is, I don’t see how you can genuinely make the parents legally responsible. You can be the best parents in the world but kids can still go rotten in schools. You also have no idea of the parents situation, if it’s a single mother who can only find work on the night shift etc. so had to leave them with childminders a lot. Setting up such a frightening precedent to say parents much be held responsible for children doing horrific crimes and saying we should make the parent’s name public.

I’ve been considering it given they’ve come out and said they support rejoining the single market long term and I’d love to have them as official opposition which seems a genuine realistic proposition now which is crazy in itself. But realistically Labour are the only ones who can beat the Tories in my seat and that has to ultimately take priority.

I reckon they won’t actually win more than 2 seats but will have quite a high popular vote. Their vote will be only in 1 demographic and spread too much across the entire country to actually make any in roads seats-wise.

Lib Dem’s down to 3/1 to get 2nd most seats and be official oppositionn.

Reform only score well with the over 55s and virtually nothing under that, you need a broader demographic vote to get enough to win a constituency and not just a small spread in many seats over the country. I’d be very surprised if they get even half as many seats as the Lib Dems or the SNP regardless of their popular vote. Sunak just created another headline. He really has given up, as if you genuinely admit that it’s under your party that people can no longer afford a home.

Saw a video on YouTube showing that in German they are doing extremely well in East Germany and not so well in West Germany. Many in east Germany feel like they’ve been left behind after the fall of Berlin Wall, many left for the west for the jobs and better life and the cities in the east didn’t receive the infrastructure so many of those who stayed in the east after German unification feel like the optimism of unification hasn’t been fulfilled and so are understandably disillusioned with the major parties

What interests me is the different demographics of the EU and UK votes. In the EU, the lurch to the right seems to be amongst younger voters, whereas in the uk it seems to be amongst older voters as the right have never been less voted for in the under 50s in the uk.

He’ll go down as the worst Leicester player ever. You can talk about Akinbiyi, Junior Lewis, Josh Low or whoever but none had anywhere the negative impact on the side that Ward did and none were such a huge step down on what came before

65+ still somehow backing the Tories. The right wing vote is basically wiped out in the under 45s though, Tories+Reform have under 25% between them in all age groups under 45.

He’s lost his majority already so the parliament is struggling to push through anything, I think he hopes people who vote for other parties will get scared of Le Penn getting power and vote for Macron as a tactical vote