This thread exists to discuss British politics.
Political issues related to Northern Ireland and the Crown Dependencies (the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man) are also considered on-topic here if there's no more appropriate OTC thread for them.
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As with other OTC threads, off-topic posts may be thumped or edited by the moderators.
More specifically, read this post
for some guidance on what we don't want to see.
- 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.
- There's also a separate thread to talk about your favourite British Prime Ministers
.
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 Jun 7th 2024 at 4:50:10 PM
This has already been posted on the LGBTQ+ thread, but as it's probably of wider interest ahead of the election:
David Tennant criticises the Equalities Minister. Kemi Badenoch on LGBTQ+ rights
Labour's Dawn Butler, another Black woman, then makes a mic drop comment
on X, confirming that she's with Tennant on this one.
Starmer's said Tennant should have been more respectful in his language. Sunak's backing Badenoch.
Tennant may have started this one, but given his popularity I'm not sure getting into a war of words with him is really going to help any politician.
At which point Badenoch said “we need to get to a place where we stop chasing people around and looking everywhere for the racism”...
...
(Source
)
Double post because Reform UK's Basingstoke candidate is revealed to be ex-BNP
.
For those outside the UK, the British National Party (BNP) is unambiguously far right, and The Other Wiki directly calls them fascist. I'm not going to disagree.
Reform UK have dropped the candidate.
In related news, prominent former BNP member and UKIP advisor Tommy Robinson (real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon) has just been arrested for immigration offences
in Canada.
It should be noted that the BNP was a direct descendent of the (banned) British Union of Fascists and was so racist that it became a semi-proscribed organisation, having ever been a member places a ban on you from working in the police, military, prisons, schools, border force and similar such organisations.
It also fought a legal battle to limit membership based on skin colour, eventually loosing.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranI remember the big furore when the BBC invited Nick Griffin, their former leader, as a guest on Question Time. Think it was in 2010? Proved himself to be the exact kind of nasty little fascist you'd expect. Guess it's still up for debate whether that was a good move on the BBC's part.
Edited by TheDandyBear on Jun 27th 2024 at 12:05:35 PM
By 2010, the BNP had around 50 local councillors, 2 ME Ps and one London Assembly member. They never really challenged when it came to Parliamentary seats though I think they got a few third places which was definitely drew some attention. I also remember quite vividly being told that the BNP was the only party who cared about working people when I was out door knocking for Labour in Swansea for the 2012 local elections. The BNP were also pretty active at one point in my home town for a time and would set up a stand by the local market. Their ideas definitely held traction with some.
Though I'm yet to be convinced by the argument that giving Griffin a platform was necessary for discrediting his ideas. He came across terribly and 2010 was pretty much the height of the BNP, with Griffin soon falling to irrelevance, but far right ideas have become increasingly normalised since then.
Edited by TheDandyBear on Jun 27th 2024 at 1:08:44 AM
On a related note, Channel 4 revealed this evening that they sent an undercover reporter to look into Farage's campaign in Clacton and found canvassers and campaign staff making depressingly unsurprising remarks — using ethnic slurs to describe Rishi Sunak, asylum seekers should be shot, gay people are degenerates and paedophiles, bring back hanging, etc...
He'll probably still win the seat though. And then either try and take over the squabbling rump of the Tory Party or push them into becoming a solidly Far Right party, given how he has set himself up via the manifesto to be the second coming of Liz Truss — a red-blooded "small government conservative" who 'ates taxes, 'ates foreigners and 'ates "the woke", never mind any sense of reality. He gets paid either way.
Edited by Azorius24 on Jun 27th 2024 at 9:27:43 AM
"The only thing which is certain, is that something will happen".The story goes that when the BNP first won a couple council seats there was a bit of a freak out on the political sphere, until the leader of the Monster Raving Looney Party pointed out that he still had more councillors than the BNP so we could all calm down.
The BNP leaked at an awkward time because the far-right were still very divided. You had a section inside the Conservative Party, a section in the BNP, a section in UKIP and a section in the English Democrats. Eventually they consolidated into a UKIP faction that would vote Conservative if they got the party to move rightward, which the party did.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranReform are now on a downward trajectory and MRP polls like election calculus
are showing they're loosing predicted seats to Labour.
The right wing voters base is looking really disenfranchised right now.
Edited by Whowho on Jun 29th 2024 at 5:12:03 AM
Getting caught calling the prime minister and his daughters a racial slur is definitely disastrous for them.
The Tory Party is pivoting to talking a lot about race, but as of yet it's only had a small impact in their projected seats; they're still looking third behind the Lib Dems. However, making Reform look less legitimate is still a win for them.
I've fixed the URL, thanks.

Lib Dem opposition would be very interesting. Even that amount of support for reform is worrying though.