Sampson

I can’t think of a gaffe that plays into Reform’s hands more than ditching D-day commemorations. It’s like the ultimate red flag for the Right. Don’t think opposing parties could’ve come up with a better gaffe if they wrote it. No idea who is advising Rishi at this election.

Sunak getting slaughtered by the right wing commentators who usually are Tory mouthpieces over leaving d-day commemorations early to do an itv interview. Genuinely can’t believe how incompetent the team running his campaign are. He’s doing everything in his power possible to lose even the staunchest of flag waving Tories.

After Reform UK announced Farage as leader, I hear behind the scenes they’ve thought of new policies for the country including: 1. Nigel Farage needs to be louder, angrier and have access to a Time Machine. 2. Whenever Nigel Farage is not on our tv screens, all the other people should be asking “where’s Nigel?”

The one thing I’ll give them is they did fully introduce same sex marriage, instead of that “separate but equal” civil partnership crap beforehand. But that was way back in 2013 when they were in coalition with the more socially liberal LibDems who were the ones campaigning for it in the lead up to the 2010 election. After that I’m struggling.

Yep, they’re the ones. The leader guy who Farage just replaced was on ITV after the debate last night as well blaming the sun and volcanoes for climate change and saying humans contribute next to nothing to co2 and that he disagrees with 99.99% of scientists on the issue. Then claiming he’d save the country billions by scrapping the green energy costs and any green technology, when the presenter said “yeah but all the data shows the opportunity costs of not making these green changes are far higher so they need to done”, he just ignored her and started claiming Labour and Conservatives were both just socialists and Reform UK were “businessmen “ who offer the real libertarian utopia or something. Of course he definitely doesn’t have any alleged ties to oil or fossil fuel companies or anything. No sireeeey bob.

. Tories definitely going full on Sideshow Bob in his run for mayor with these dystopian videos. I fully expect the next video is going to be showing Sunak behind a campaign lecture while Laura Kuenssberg on voice over announces “and just look how happy he is”

When even the biggest Tory magazine going is starting to question the odious tactics of inventing statistics and lying about how they were independently created you know they’re screwed.

Why is anyone surprised? It’s what the Tories have been doing since 2016, although this goes beyond even the red bus fiasco. Completely fabricate figures from thin air then repeat the same 2-3 word slogan over and over again. “Clear plan” and “bold action” are just the new “get Brexit done /hands face space /strong and stable / coalition of chaos / taking back control / project fear /etc. etc.” It should be electoral fraud to just invent figures and claim they were independently collated by civil servants and then making it one of your key driving points of a campaign. There’s bending statistics to look a certain way, but straight up lying about the independence of statistics and that the civil service created them when they didn’t is fundamentally bringing into disrepute the independence of the civil service that is needed as a pillar of the checks and balances that make democracy viable, it’s also allegedly knowingly lying to British authorities which should be a crime. You only have to read the likes of Tommy G’s posts in the past few pages to see this shit still works.

It’s more of both parties endless march to the right. Labour’s current economic plans would be considered quite a way to the right of Edward Heath’s Tory government. Both Labour and the Tories are both the furthest to the right they’ve been in anyone’s lifetime (with the exception of Truss’ genuine brief attempt at full libertarianism). We essentially have the choice of a centre-right party in Labour and a hard right Tory party.

I would call certain Tories evil and certain Tories I wouldn’t call evil. Sunak definitely belongs on the evil side however. This isn’t some rich guy who made a great innovation and created countless jobs and made people easier or worked hard to contribute to society to become a great engineer or doctor or judge. It’s some rich guy who made his money *because of* and as a cause of the crippling 2007-08 financial crisis that lead to unnecessary suffering and death of thousands. He made his money by taking from the poorest in society not adding to it. I have no problem in any leader who ignores their country’s responsibility to reach net zero for populist policies being called evil too as they’re knowingly adding to a problem and culture that was cause unnecessary death and suffering to tens of millions of people. Understandably we factor in physical acts of violence over social or economic acts of violence when discussing evil as to extent there’s a lot of debate as to the right and wrongs of that. But I’m not sure there should be a lot of debate on Sunak making millions off the collapse of RBS or the ignoring of the responsibility with regards to climate change being inherent evils. Regardless of how strong you want to make the language though, there’s no multiverse in which Sunak is “well meaning”.

To continue the discussion, as sdp says it’s frightening how normalised straight up openly and knowingly lying about the independence of figures you’ve made up and quote over and over is. If this happened in Russia or China we’d be going nuts. The ease at which Sunak continuously lied about fabricated numbers and more importantly lied how they were independendly produced by the civil service over and over again is indeed frightening, especially now it’s come out that MPs were well aware of this, in a normal democratic country it should be considered electoral fraud.

Hmm. Not convinced by that. He kept repeating this £2k figure that he well knows is pulled out of thin air and knowingly lying and misleading people into saying it’s independently sourced rather than based on figures Tory advisors have completely made up. He’s also happy to water down climate change targets knowing full well it’s a policy that will help lead to the deaths of tens of millions of people so he can lower taxes for the wealthy instead of sharing the wealth he’s earned already off the backs of the tax payer. The “high achieving” bit also grates given he made his money from the collapse of RBS which everyone else had to pay for by bailing RBS out while he pocketed tens of millions from it. Then he has the gall to back an economic philosophy about how working class are pulled up by upper class people creating and sharing wealth. I’m just not having “well meaning” and high achieving with Sunak. He “achieved”by gambling and winning off the backs of the tax payer’s money and then completely and knowingly lies about his opposition tax budget and the net zero and the impact of climate change. He has already profited so heavily off the pain and suffering of others and continues to completely and knowingly lie and make up figures in order to continue it.

**** me. This Reform UK guy is an absolute raving lunatic.

Watching Ed Davey’s interview and he comes across as so much better than Starmer or Sunak. Still voting Labour inspite of Starmer, he’s a Labour leader, he shouldn’t be scared to say he’s going to raise taxes ffs, it’s supposed to be a Social Democratic Party, not a neoliberal one.

*Sunak rubs fingers together* ”oh yeah, the taxes, the finger thing means the taxes.”

Jesus Christ, this chair is such a Sunak supporter

It’s becoming clearer and clearer that Starner has shifted the party to the right of Blair and is the most right wing leader Labour have ever had tbf. Happy the Tories are getting trounced but I sincerely hope Rayner et al. steer him the other way. It’s a shame because a few years ago it felt like he was on the left of the party

What? Sunak would love to abolish all taxes and let the poor fend for themselves in the streets if he could. He’s a libertarian who made his millions off the collapse of RBS while the tax payer bailed them out.

It doesn’t mean you should accept it as final and people absolutely should be now bringing it back into the discourse around how shit it’s been, more than enough time has passed now. Thats how democracy works. Brexit has been shit, the majority of people know it, the majority of people want to rejoin the uk and the demographics of the vote show that that feeling is only increasing over time. The “we should accept it” stuff in 2024 is crap, if you accepted it in 2017 then fine, but we have elections every 4 or 5 years for a reason - so people can change course when evidence has been presented to them. The time at which you can reasonably say “you should (still) accept the referendum” should’ve long expired by now. We shouldn’t be still accepting being outside the EU because of a referendum from donkeys years ago, we should be reminding people that it’s been crap and keeping the discourse of how crap it’s been in the public eye so we can reasonably change course, as is the case in a democratic country.

All this says is people of certain demographics, most notably older people, were more likely to vote leave, which is news to no one. People may have been quite fairly dissatisfied with society, but that says nothing about why multi-millionaires like Farage and Johnson then weaponised this dissatisfaction by blaming on immigrants and quoting 2 or 3 word slogans about taking back control and project fear over and over again: Hate this “I’ve accepted the result of the referendum” stuff in 2024, in the 2017 fine but the referendum was 8 bloody years ago now, why have you accepted a result that was made years ago as if it’s final. There are 25 year olds now who weren’t eligible to vote then, there are naturalised British citizens who hadn’t moved to the uk then. That’s not how democracy works, Labour aren’t in power because well we voted them in in 1997, so we have to accept that. Every poll shows now the public are in favour of rejoining the eu and regret leaving. We have had 8 years worth of evidence and a changing world since the referendum happened. I don’t know many people who think the country is a better place now than it was in 2015. I don’t see why people should have to accept a world based on a poll that was done nearly a decade ago and then ignore everything that has happened since.

David hankey’s post is a great example - still going on about WW2 as if it was him who won it.

There is one true British patriot and hero in that picture. There’s also Nigel Farage.

I would’ve agreed with you until 2016. People tried to say this during the EU referendum, people tried to make economic and social arguments about the need for immigration, people tried to argue it might actually increase immigration as you’d make it harder to get in short term workers from abroad so people would have to hire longer term instead, people tried to argue they’d be making their children or grandchildren’s life into an anxiety and beurocratic ridden hell if they fell in love with a non-British person, people tried to argue our universities would start losing highly skilled talent, people tried to argue highly skilled workers would start choosing Germany or France instead. Problem is every time they were met with “project fear” “we’re taking back control” “you don’t believe in Britain” “you’re unpatriotic” and 3 word slogans and blind calls for patriotism and “Brits vs the world” mentality won out. Then we were told we couldn’t call a bigot a bigot and remain only lost because they called people racist. I just can’t see where this “informed debate” would genuinely happen and it wouldn’t be flooded with 2 word slogans and calls of patriotism. I remember the optimistic days of the 90s and 00s where it felt like that could happen, this isn’t how politics works in 2024 sadly.

I’m still wary that Labour have been won over by the right on some of their arguments though. Seeing Starmer talk about immigration recently was quite depressing, I’m looking forward to seeing what’s in their actual manifesto. I’ll give myself a week of relief and celebration when the Tories are finally kicked to the curb and hopefully it’s the most humiliating defeat in living memory as the polls show no question. And I totally understand that Labour need to stop the bleeding before they can start the surgery, but I hope they actually offer some genuine change and not watered down versions of Tory policy. I thought Starmer had some good ideas a couple of years back but he seems to have backpedaled on a lot of it and I am worried that he’s not really even offering New Labour solutions but going to govern from a place that’s noticeably to the right of Tony Blair and quite a way right of Gordon Brown. But I’ll reserve judgement on that for now and enjoy the Tory demise.