This thread exists to discuss British politics.
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As with other OTC threads, off-topic posts may be thumped or edited by the moderators.
- There is a dedicated thread to discuss LGBTQ+ rights in the United Kingdom. That doesn't mean it's always off-topic here, but unless something's directly linked to political events, that's probably a better thread for it.
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Recent political stuff:
- The vote to see if Britain should adopt Alternative Voting has failed.
- Lib Dems lose lots of councils and councillors, whilst Labour make the majority of the gains in England.
- The Scottish National Party do really well in the elections.
A link to the BBC politics page containing relevant information.
Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 3rd 2023 at 11:15:30 AM
Field Marshal of Cracked
they probably apologised at gunpoint around the time WW 2 broke out or turned against their favourite European politician.
and they're just pedantic, it's a spin off website from Cracked's comments section so a lot of the "personalties" went over
edited 1st Dec '15 11:37:13 AM by FieldMarshalFry
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V
The Economist: Trouble in Labourland
Oldham’s by-election campaign is a microcosm of social democracy’s woes
Today, once more, Oldham is a battlefield on which an early, indicative skirmish in a larger political war is unfolding. As in 1899, the Lancashire town is holding a by-election after the death of one of its MPs, but today this erstwhile bellwether for the high-Victorian bourgeoisie is a microcosm of forces acting on Europe’s social democratic parties. With its large blue-collar workforce it has been a Labour Party bastion for 68 of the past 70 years, the party’s dominance surviving Fordism’s long twilight, the arrival of Pakistanis and Bangladeshis in the 1970s and race riots in 2001. Now, however, ahead of the vote on December 3rd, Labour’s electoral coalition is being torn apart by the anti-immigration UK Independence Party. With its purple UKIP yard signs, its rusting factories and its shops selling halal meat and salwar kameez, the Oldham West and Royton constituency stands for political fractures in old working-class areas across the continent.
For much of its 22-year history UKIP has chipped away at the right flank of the Conservative Party, first in its Home Counties heartland and then in working-class southern seats like the two it prised from David Cameron’s hold at by-elections last year. But the general election in May marked the arrival of a new phase: UKIP held only one of those seats and came second in 120 others. Of these, it looks most threatening in a string of formerly uncompetitive Labour strongholds outside big northern cities; its vote share in Oldham West and Royton, for example, rose from 3% to 21%. A party once confined to the comfortable gin-and-jag belt around London is now a serious presence in the bitter-and-bus-pass belts around Manchester, Sheffield and Newcastle.
There the election in September of Jeremy Corbyn, a hard-left London MP, as Labour’s leader has been a tremendous boost for UKIP—and its candidate in Oldham, John Bickley. The scene: a street of semi-detached houses built for workers at the now-closed Avro factory that once made the Lancaster bomber. Arriving home, a resident in a high-vis jacket confesses that he is Labour by habit and UKIP by preference. “He’s an idiot,” he adds matter-of-factly of Mr Corbyn: “his foreign policy is totally out of date.” A couple of houses down an old man in a vest declares himself a convinced socialist, a scion of a “strong army family” and utterly alienated by the unwillingness (as he sees it) of Mr Corbyn, a unilateral nuclear disarmer, to defend Britain. “I call it the political version of the Stockholm syndrome,” says Mr Bickley. “I am putting out a hand [to Labour voters] and saying: you can leave your captor and come to a safe place.”
Excessive this may be, but playing out on the streets of Oldham is a story repeated across Europe; a suspicion of political elites borne of stagnant living standards, doubts about globalisation borne of deindustrialisation and in particular hostility to immigration borne of shifting demographics and pressures (however unrelated) on housing, wages and services. Support for nativist parties, ranging from Britain’s blokeish UKIP to France’s hard-right National Front and Hungary’s overtly racist Jobbik, is squeezing traditional social democratic parties more comfortable discussing redistributive social policies than flags, nationhood and identity. UKIP plans to squeeze Labour hard on this in Oldham, concentrating its campaign on immigration, defence and Mr Corbyn’s obvious ambivalence towards patriotic symbols from the armed forces to the royals.
A wilting rose
The by-election is especially representative of the bigger picture because each of the main candidates epitomises his own side’s best hopes. Mr Bickley, the son of a trade unionist, entered politics only two years ago (aged 60) and deals in pub aphorisms—on everything from climate change to the Middle East—that resonate with locals. It is hard to imagine a figure better able to connect with the disillusioned, older voters who may decide the by-election. Meanwhile Jim McMahon, his dynamic Labour rival, is about as optimistic an embodiment of his party’s prospects as it could wish for. The son of a truck driver who left school at 16, he runs Oldham’s innovative, well regarded council at just 35 and has close links to the armed forces. (Two months ago Bagehot committed to this page the hope that Mr Mc Mahon’s professed indifference to the national stage was merely false modesty.)
The result is something like the ultimate contest between social democracy and the populist forces threatening it across Europe. If Mr Bickley can defeat as forward-looking an example of the mainstream centre-left as Mr McMahon (or even limit him to a narrow win), Labour should be terrified for its strongholds across the English north, and thus its prospects of winning a majority any time soon. Its counterparts from Malmo to Marseille should be similarly worried. But if Mr McMahon scores a clear victory, Europe’s social democrats should promptly seek to learn from his achievement. What happens in a rainy town in Lancashire next month will give the continent’s embattled left-wing moderates—not to mention its surging populist parties—a glimpse of their future.
It's notable what the voters quoted above say: Corbyn's views, especially on Defence, don't resonate well with nationalistic, working-class voters.
edited 1st Dec '15 2:24:51 PM by Greenmantle
Keep Rolling On
UKIP makes inroads on immigration, national security and employment. It always has done. And if you listen to some of the hard-core working class people from the areas ravaged by Thatcherite policies, there's an absolute contradiction. These people consider themselves die-hard Labour, and die-hard Tory-haters... but many of the views they hold are so right-wing even the Tories are too soft on these issues. This is where UKIP wins.
I've spent a lot of time in the South Wales valleys, north-west Wales, the Midlands, lowlands of Scotland and north-east England, and it's the one thing in common I've found in all these areas.
My boss, a highly educated person who has voted Labour their entire life (and whose parents voted Labour their entire life), doesn't spout anything that resonates with Labour policies or manifesto. Their beliefs are completely UKIP. They have no tolerance for refugees, immigrants of any kind, they want out of the EU, they want us to be more interventionist around the world in wars, and they're a big of sacrificing freedoms in the name of having a safer society - but if you point that the party doing the most to support this line of thinking is actually UKIP and not the Labour Party, they'll dismiss it and just rant about Labour's ineffectual leadership over the past few years.
Before the election, I sent them the link to the Vote for Policies website - sure enough, they came out UKIP, and did some very serious thinking about whether or not to vote for UKIP in the election as a result. I don't know if they did. I didn't ask. But these are the people UKIP wins over from Labour... people who have always had these views, but have always voted Labour. It's no wonder they feel UKIP is finally speaking for them - it's not that someone new has come along, it's that they were voting for the wrong party in the first place, and just needed someone they were willing to listen to actually point this out.
Really, all I'm saying is what I've said before; some people become so entrenched regarding the party they vote for that they don't realise just how completely out of sync their desires are from that party. Every so often, someone comes along who shakes this up - and that's when people switch to a party more in line with what they think.
edited 1st Dec '15 3:23:55 PM by Wyldchyld
If my post doesn't mention a giant flying sperm whale with oversized teeth and lionfish fins for flippers, it just isn't worth reading.
Field Marshal of Cracked
I do find it depressing that when a man who does support things that, in theory, they should be all for, increased workers rights, stronger unions, clamping down on high level tax cheats, increased welfare, comes along, they are so very much against him it's unreal, if I were to hazard a guess as to why, I would blame the right wing controlled press, Murdoch in particular, you see die hard Labour voters in poor areas and Labour strongholds buy copies of the Daily Mail and Sun (except in Liverpool) every day, and be... indoctrinated, into those views of hatred and closed mindedness
edited 1st Dec '15 3:25:59 PM by FieldMarshalFry
advancing the front into TV Tropes
Looks like Cameron feels compelled to fill the niche left when his Canadian and Australian counterparts got turfed. If he actually said that, that's crossing a line I thought he wouldn't (in public).
Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.
I mean we're basically back to "you're either with us or with the terrorists" again.
"Yup. That tasted purple."
Tief girl with eartude
I hope this isn't true, if only because it would mean I'm living in a country ruled by a caricature.
TV Tropes's No. 1 bread themed lesbian. she/her, fae/faer
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Yup. And sadly, it's a simplistic strategy that is fairly effective - especially in the wake of a major terrorist attack - by using basic scaremongering and setting a false dichotomy.
Field Marshal of Cracked
back in the 80's if you disagreed with Thatcher you were a communist, today if you disagree with the pig fucker then you're a terrorist, glad to see we haven't progressed in 30 years
advancing the front into TV Tropes
Field Marshal of Cracked
ummm... have you guys seen this?
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/young-people-who-question-government-policy-or-the-media-may-be-extremists-officials-tell-parents-a6756086.html
Pronounced YAK-you-luss
Cameron's repeatedly refusing to apologise for calling Corbyn and company terrorist sympathisers... and getting very evasive about where those 70,000 moderate rebels are coming from.
What's precedent ever done for us?
The more he entrenches on that, the dumber he looks. Well, as far as I'm concerned.
Field Marshal of Cracked
ah, but he's "doing something" and that's all that seems to matter after an attack like Paris
advancing the front into TV Tropes
Did you know this section has a character limit?
I was watching Sky News this morning, and saw Corbyn struggling to get into his car while a shrill voice screamed "ARE YOU A TERRORIST SYMPATHISER, MR CORBYN? ARE YOU A TERRORIST SYMPATHISER?"
And I thought "Jesus Christ the media's getting really fucking awful."
Kinda changes your perspective when you find out where she got the line from.
Shameful Display
@Field Marshal You know Cameron didn't actually fuck a pig right. He did almost certainly burn money in front of homeless people though.
Edit: And Coybrun has admitted sympathy for Hamas and Hezbollah has he not, and the IRA(along with several reprehensible and treasonous US Congressmen). I know Cameron is using it to mean ISIS, but technically, yes, Coyburn is sympathetic to terrorists, though sympathetic doesn't mean agreeing with.
edited 2nd Dec '15 7:16:50 AM by JackOLantern1337
I Bring Doom,and a bit of gloom, but mostly gloom.
We know about the whole pig-thing. It's still funny to bring up, though. Hence the joke-insult. For more on how to do British political black humour, may I point you at The Thick of It? 
And, what's wrong with supporting outreach to try solving long-standing problems? We talked to the IRA. It seems to have worked...
edited 2nd Dec '15 7:24:02 AM by Euodiachloris
Personally, I'm still a bit worried that the reaction to Cameron allegedly doing that was basically: "Yeah, sounds like good ol' David Cameron".
Welcome to Estalia, gentlemen.
Tief girl with eartude
If he has a reputation as a fun loving scamp, it's news to me.
TV Tropes's No. 1 bread themed lesbian. she/her, fae/faer
I don't know why we're surprised by that "signs your child might have been radicalized" thing. It wasn't that long ago that day care workers were being ordered to look out for it in toddlers.
"Yup. That tasted purple."
Did you know this section has a character limit?
...radicalization in toddlers?!
They do have medals for almost, and they're called silver!
Tief girl with eartude
I guess it has everybody rattled.
TV Tropes's No. 1 bread themed lesbian. she/her, fae/faer
...
edited 2nd Dec '15 7:57:34 AM by Deadbeatloser22
"Yup. That tasted purple."
Did the Mail ever apologise for the blackshrits thing? Because I'd say that for any organisation literally supporting Hitler is something you have to directly apologise for, not just stop doing, but actually say sorry for doing.
Though really if someone is starting an argument over you calling it the Heil then I'd suggest that you're not in a particularly intelligent debating space.
Edit: Honestly if you want actual Fascism look to the Sun, Kate Hopkins sounds a lot like Hitler at times.
edited 1st Dec '15 11:20:00 AM by Silasw
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran