Westminster Politics

villain said:
the kidnapping of the word ‘woke’ from its origins is really one of the most bizarre things I’ve ever witnessed.
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It seems to exist in the place that 'political correctness' used to do but whereas pc culture had the feeling of institutions telling you what views to hold, now it's as if people genuinely believe that skint students and people in their 20s on zero hours contract service jobs are now the most powerful and dangerous forces in British culture. I think part of it is people are terrified of the youth holding views they can't understand.

And it's almost always the Tories and the media who manufacture the 'woke' issues (critical race theory and trans rights get publicised almost only by Tory MPs) to stir up culture war stuff.
 
DoubleDinhos said:
It seems to exist in the place that 'political correctness' used to do but whereas pc culture had the feeling of institutions telling you what views to hold, now it's as if people genuinely believe that skint students and people in their 20s on zero hours contract service jobs are now the most powerful and dangerous forces in British culture. I think part of it is people are terrified of the youth holding views they can't understand.

And it's almost always the Tories and the media who manufacture the 'woke' issues (critical race theory and trans rights get publicised almost only by Tory MPs) to stir up culture war stuff.
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This is exactly it, it's become a buzzword that people are instantly afraid of, 'woke policies' could genuinely mean something different to me, as it does to you, but it doesn't matter because once used the general public are fearful of it - even if they were to benefit from such policies in the first place, whatever they are.
They don't know what 'woke' is exactly, but they know they don't want it - and when I think about the origins of the word it just makes it all the more bizarre to me because we could really get in a rabbit hole and discuss the wider repercussions this has and what it says about the british public, but honestly what's the point?
The turkeys continue to vote for christmas and it's not going to get better any time soon.
 
Balljy said:
I think people underestimate the impact of Labour not being anti-Brexit in the medium term. I'm from a labour area and loads of ex-labour supporters round here that I have spoken to won't vote for them again. It feels like they didn't get the Brexit vote initially and now have lost the remainers due to leaving them behind.

Turnout will be interesting, if it's low those people may have ended up voting for no-one. I expected the Green's to take some of that vote, but it doesn't appear to have happened.
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I think people underestimate the impact of Brexit as a catalyst of breaking through tribalism and allowing older staunch Labour voters who have drifted to the right as their circumstances became more comfortable to vote for a party they detested with their entire being 30+ years ago.

Where a lot of these people hated the Tories because of Thatcher and the war on the Unions and the working classes, they now hate the EU and liberalism which they believe has failed them as they sit in their £300k house they bought for £18k and moan about a younger generation who have it easier than they do.
 
Zlatattack said:
This is a very English political trait. Cutting your nose to spite your face. I might not be rich yet, but i don't want higher taxes for the rich in case i day suddenly i am rich and then i'll be stung by those taxes. Also the order of priority in sympathy...

Ex armed forces > dogs > homeless > > cats > foreigners > foreigners who dare to come here
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I don't think it's just English. You can see similar in America where people will vote Republican for similar reasons.
 
Labour after the 2019 election: "we need to win back the working class vote"

Labour's next move: elect a fecking London-centric, metropolitan knight of the realm to lead the party.

The same guy who came up with the oddest/most confused Brexit policy whilst in the shadow cabinet, the one issue that negatively impacted voters in 2019 after Corbyn.

Brexit has killed Labour because it forced them into a debate they've been desperately avoiding since Blair.
 
Labour don't represent the people they're supposed to represent anymore. People are starting to realise they were the ones managing over decades of decline in the Northern councils, and they've now been hijacked by champagne socialists who resent their core voter base. I know dozens of lifelong Labour voters who hate the way the party talks down to them. They always voted Labour because they looked after the industrial towns they lived in, not because they were friendly to immigration or wanted to get rid of the nuclear fleet.

I had hoped Kier Starmer would mark a change and provide some competition to Boris Johnson and the Tories but he's been a damp squib. Corbyn was an unelectable idiot, but at least you know something about him. Starmer has been little more than a mannequin in a suit so far.
 
Zlatattack said:
This is a very English political trait. Cutting your nose to spite your face. I might not be rich yet, but i don't want higher taxes for the rich in case i day suddenly i am rich and then i'll be stung by those taxes. Also the order of priority in sympathy...

Ex armed forces > dogs > homeless > > cats > foreigners > foreigners who dare to come here
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:lol:

It's the misconception that everyone who's rich got there by working hard, along with the "if you work hard enough you can be rich too" mantra.

The English do have a very peculiar admiration for 'high society'. I dunno whether it's being force fed a diet of BBC period dramas over the years that's clockwork orange'd everyone into a sense of that being our national identity and something to be enthralled by. I've never really understood it personally.
 
Don't Kill Bill said:
All the years the North voted Labour. What did it ever get them? Managed decline, no future and and being talked down to by people from London. Pretty much the same as the Tory's.

Well done all, it looks like the party is truly broken beyond repair.
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Spot on, Labour has had years to sort out places like Hartlepool and others in the 'red wall', it wasn't interested!

11101 said:
Labour don't represent the people they're supposed to represent anymore.
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They don't even understand them let alone represent them, they never honed in on the reasons behind Brexit in these areas and for that they will be condemned for generations. Corbyn/Starmer take your pick neither has a clue, probably neither knows where Hartlepool is, even after consulting a map and using google!!
 
Maticmaker said:
Spot on, Labour has had years to sort out places like Hartlepool and others in the 'red wall', it wasn't interested!



They don't even understand them let alone represent them, they never honed in on the reasons behind Brexit in these areas and for that they will be condemned for generations. Corbyn/Starmer take your pick neither has a clue, probably neither knows where Hartlepool is, even after consulting a map and using google!!
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Throw in Brown's campaign trail "bigot" comments 10 years ago and you've got the evidence of how the party really saw their red-wall supporters.
 
Pexbo said:
I think people underestimate the impact of Brexit as a catalyst of breaking through tribalism and allowing older staunch Labour voters who have drifted to the right as their circumstances became more comfortable to vote for a party they detested with their entire being 30+ years ago.

Where a lot of these people hated the Tories because of Thatcher and the war on the Unions and the working classes, they now hate the EU and liberalism which they believe has failed them as they sit in their £300k house they bought for £18k and moan about a younger generation who have it easier than they do.
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Whilst I agree that a proportion of people will have used Brexit as a means to move to the right and potentially stay there I don't think it explains everyone. As you know, there wasn't a party to actually really get behind during Brexit and that is approximately 49% of the population who were not represented by a political party.

There's bound to be a big labour supporter percentage of that who won't just forgive and forget something that will now dominate the next 30 years of their lives. I know it's completely ruled labour out for some people I know which is a pity as the more you split the central / left the more likely the Tories dominate. I definitely can't support a party who didn't completely oppose Brexit as it smacked of xenophobia and nationalism to me and not just for the tories.
 
Maticmaker said:
They don't even understand them let alone represent them, they never honed in on the reasons behind Brexit in these areas and for that they will be condemned for generations. Corbyn/Starmer take your pick neither has a clue, probably neither knows where Hartlepool is, even after consulting a map and using google!!
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Who are Labour supposed to represent?

The working class, many of whom live in towns and cities around the country that have suffered massive declines over the years. They care about what jobs are available to them and what their local town centre looks like. They're not bothered about renewable energy, gender equality, what our aid budget is, or how diverse our society is. They definitely don't like being told they're idiots because they don't care about those things, and especially not when it's coming from some Oxbridge graduate pretending to be like them. I don't think Blair and Brown were ever any different but at least they said what their voters wanted to hear.

I also hear a lot more friends and family commenting that they've had Labour councils for decades and nothing ever improves. Nobody ever noticed that before.
 
groovyalbert said:
Throw in Brown's campaign trail "bigot" comments 10 years ago and you've got the evidence of how the party really saw their red-wall supporters.
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I agree, those unguarded comments from Brown 'let the cat out' so to speak, but they didn't even learn from that, the 'snowball' continued to roll down the hill and Labour politician after politician continually dodged out of the way.
 
Maticmaker said:
I agree, those unguarded comments from Brown 'let the cat out' so to speak, but they didn't even learn from that, the 'snowball' continued to roll down the hill and Labour politician after politician continually dodged out of the way.
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Which is why Brexit was such a home-run for the Tories.

It forced Labour to confront issues/debates they'd been desperate to avoid for decades - namely around immigration.
 
11101 said:
Who are Labour supposed to represent?

The working class, many of whom live in towns and cities around the country that have suffered massive declines over the years. They care about what jobs are available to them and what their local town centre looks like. They're not bothered about renewable energy, gender equality, what our aid budget is, or how diverse our society is. They definitely don't like being told they're idiots because they don't care about those things, and especially not when it's coming from some Oxbridge graduate pretending to be like them. I don't think Blair and Brown were ever any different but at least they said what their voters wanted to hear.

I also hear a lot more friends and family commenting that they've had Labour councils for decades and nothing ever improves. Nobody ever noticed that before.
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To be fair nobody likes being told the truth. :lol:

The sad truth is though, these people don't see what relevance these things have to them. They don't see that renewable energy will create jobs for them that have been missing since the mines shut. Why would they if we buy all our solar panels from abroad? They don't see the gender equality will mean their wives, girlfriends, mothers, sisters, will get paid the same as men who do the same job. Many of them don't have access to those jobs anyway.

I'm right with them on the aid budget. Most aid is just bribes to foreign governments. As for diversity - there's no cure for engrained bigotry. If i was to walk through some of those towns, those people would probably think i'm stealing their jobs, not the billionaires who outsourced them.
 
DoubleDinhos said:
There's an underlying assumption in a lot of these posts that the working-class is only white.
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I think in the red-wall areas, the vast majority are. According to the 2011 census, 98% of the Borough of Hartlepool identified as white.

But you're right to point out the assumption, it would be interesting to see the voting patterns of non-white voters in these areas, and whether they follow the trends of non-white communities in major cities/the overall level of engagement.
 
11101 said:
Who are Labour supposed to represent?

The working class, many of whom live in towns and cities around the country that have suffered massive declines over the years. They care about what jobs are available to them and what their local town centre looks like. They're not bothered about renewable energy, gender equality, what our aid budget is, or how diverse our society is. They definitely don't like being told they're idiots because they don't care about those things, and especially not when it's coming from some Oxbridge graduate pretending to be like them. I don't think Blair and Brown were ever any different but at least they said what their voters wanted to hear.

I also hear a lot more friends and family commenting that they've had Labour councils for decades and nothing ever improves. Nobody ever noticed that before.
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Spot on again!
WC in 'red wall' areas for years had been loyal to Labour, quite often when in truth they didn't always like/or much understand what they were hearing but they held on believing in Labour. However the dam broke with Brown's comments the 'Emperors new clothes' revealed and they realised they had be taken for granted; talked down to; had their aspirations dismissed, for yonks!
People started to look around at what had happened to their areas, nothing really all through years of Labour rule, yet even when Labour was in power Tory areas still seemed to flourish... the penny dropped, a mass flight to UKIP, then to Brexit, finally in desperation, throw in with the Tories.
If Boris does managed to do something, anything almost, on his 'leveling up' promise's then Labour is dead in the water in these areas.
 
11101 said:
Who are Labour supposed to represent?

The working class, many of whom live in towns and cities around the country that have suffered massive declines over the years. They care about what jobs are available to them and what their local town centre looks like. They're not bothered about renewable energy, gender equality, what our aid budget is, or how diverse our society is. They definitely don't like being told they're idiots because they don't care about those things, and especially not when it's coming from some Oxbridge graduate pretending to be like them. I don't think Blair and Brown were ever any different but at least they said what their voters wanted to hear.

I also hear a lot more friends and family commenting that they've had Labour councils for decades and nothing ever improves. Nobody ever noticed that before.
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This is the best summary of the situation.
 
DoubleDinhos said:
There's an underlying assumption in a lot of these posts that the working-class is only white.
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It mostly is. At the last census the UK was 87% white. When you consider the three biggest cities, London, Birmingham and Manchester, are all under 60% white, it gives you an idea of how high the percentage must be in the rest of the country.
 
Adisa said:
She probably hand a wank.
I can't see where Labour go from here. Any direction it takes, it will bleed votes and there's no guarantee it will gain them elsewhere.
Basically I think a sizeable % of the brexit former Labour voters will never vote Labour (at least not for a generation), no matter Labour's message.
Identity is now the driving force in British politics and economic arguments are by the by.
Any attempt to move towards a nationalist message from Labour and they will be slaughtered down south. They are fecked.
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This is exactly it. I've said this word for word today already.

I keep hearing people talk about economic policy like it has absolutely any sway with the public these days at all. It really doesn't. We will not see a socially conservative Labour leader, nor do I want one, thus, Labour are over for a generation. The best they can hope for is not fading in to complete obscurity in the mean time. Being politically incorrect is at odds with the kind of policies the majority of Labour voters might want.

I saw a clip recently of a reporter asking people in the street if they knew about the Boris/Tory Donor flat 'scandal' and nobody had a clue what he was talking about. Interestingly, they were able to say they don't know what Starmer stands for, but painful because they looked unlikely to be able to describe what any politician anywhere stands for!
 
11101 said:
Labour don't represent the people they're supposed to represent anymore. People are starting to realise they were the ones managing over decades of decline in the Northern councils, and they've now been hijacked by champagne socialists who resent their core voter base. I know dozens of lifelong Labour voters who hate the way the party talks down to them. They always voted Labour because they looked after the industrial towns they lived in, not because they were friendly to immigration or wanted to get rid of the nuclear fleet.
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So instead they're now voting for the Tories who are famous for their down to heart, compassionate approach to the north, and speaking to working class people as peers.
 
Pexbo said:
I think people underestimate the impact of Brexit as a catalyst of breaking through tribalism and allowing older staunch Labour voters who have drifted to the right as their circumstances became more comfortable to vote for a party they detested with their entire being 30+ years ago.

Where a lot of these people hated the Tories because of Thatcher and the war on the Unions and the working classes, they now hate the EU and liberalism which they believe has failed them as they sit in their £300k house they bought for £18k and moan about a younger generation who have it easier than they do.
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I agree its broken the party. I think that it is as much to do with the Labour Party's reaction to those Brexit voters as it is to do with the party's positions on Brexit. The Labour party has spent the four/five years between the referendum and this election calling them ignorant racists. The funny thing is they then expected Brexit voters to ignore that and vote Labour. You really have to be other level stupid to not understand that your messaging has to be better than that but there are segments within the party who just can't help themselves.

Deal with the poverty of opportunity in these towns which drove the Brexit vote in the first place or Labour is doomed.

I wonder if the Labour party is now so southern/metropolitan centric that it can not touch the truth about the iniquity between the North and South directly because it is too afraid of losing southern or city dwelling labour voters by developing effective policies to remove their institutional/structural advantage.
 
There is also the effect of LBC, talkradio, Daily Mail, the Sun, Daily Express and their popularity in increasing polarisation.
Which has led to the threats of woke/cancel culture being exacerbated into culture wars. I think a lot of that has gone more mainstream that people like to admit.
But people are still I believe malleable in terms of political allegiances. I still maintain that labour needs to move away from trying to shift their ideology according to polls and trying to create an identity, effectively communicating it, explaining what they'll do for people in tangible terms (jobs, social mobility, infrastructure, healthcare). Things that are universal.

Focus grouping shows that progressive policies are popular but opinions vary when people discover who's offering them so there is an image/credibility problem with no easy solution. Infighting isn't helping either.
 
Don't Kill Bill said:
I agree its broken the party. I think that it is as much to do with the Labour Party's reaction to those Brexit voters as it is to do with the party's positions on Brexit. The Labour party has spent the four/five years between the referendum and this election calling them ignorant racists. The funny thing is they then expected Brexit voters to ignore that and vote Labour. You really have to be other level stupid to not understand that your messaging has to be better than that but there are segments within the party who just can't help themselves.

Deal with the poverty of opportunity in these towns which drove the Brexit vote in the first place or Labour is doomed.

I wonder if the Labour party is now so southern/metropolitan centric that it can not touch the truth about the iniquity between the North and South directly because it is too afraid of losing southern or city dwelling labour voters by developing effective policies to remove their institutional/structural advantage.
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The labour party are pretty thick in my opinion. Loads of their policies would resonate will all sorts of people. For example, they want more social housing, most people agree thats a good idea. They just need to pander to the idiots a bit. Word the policy as "local houses for local people" and pledge to give council houses to local people as priority. That's probably already how the system works, and even if it it's a complete lie - who's going to know!?

Or take the borders for example. Declare "zero tolerance on illegal immigrants" - hello, they're already illegal. They're not voting for you, and your just as likely to do FA about them as anyone else us. What does a bit of rhetoric hurt. Steal the "points based immigration system" line, it's effectively what it's always been, apart from the EU.

Job prioritisation for local people - companies already have to prove that they can't find a suitable candidate in the UK before they can advertise abroad, nothing would change, but the perception would. You could tag it on with the return of technical colleges to get Britain making things again, or doing things (which is a genuinely good idea).

This is what the tories do - say what people want to hear.
 
Zlatattack said:
The labour party are pretty thick in my opinion. Loads of their policies would resonate will all sorts of people. For example, they want more social housing, most people agree thats a good idea. They just need to pander to the idiots a bit. Word the policy as "local houses for local people" and pledge to give council houses to local people as priority. That's probably already how the system works, and even if it it's a complete lie - who's going to know!?
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That would be a great solution, but I'm worried that people have been spoon fed the narrative of "things won't get better than they are now" for so long that they forget things used to be better. People have forgotten that we used to have public libraries, parks, reasonably sized classrooms and other council services that haven't been slowly stripped away under the guise of austerity. They'd probably shy away from this sort of spending and call it negligent, and how we can't afford it because we're a nation that must live within its means (which they'll say is due to the last labour government, benefit cheats and immigrants and nothing to do with Tory policies over the last decade and rampant media misinformation/profiteering from wealthy elites).
 
Does anyone know where I can get a current list of the full results without having to share my postcode?
 
Classical Mechanic said:
Can't listen to the what hes saying but many of the Tory candidates where I am (Oldham) are Muslims.
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Stop the video at 1.31 and see this...mildly nsfw screenshot
tigerpatel.jpg
 
Kentonio said:
So instead they're now voting for the Tories who are famous for their down to heart, compassionate approach to the north, and speaking to working class people as peers.
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They're spreading their votes around. Doesn't matter who they vote for though, it's not Labour anymore.

I don't like them after the road Blair and Brown sent the country down but a government needs effective opposition.
 
Zlatattack said:
The labour party are pretty thick in my opinion. Loads of their policies would resonate will all sorts of people. For example, they want more social housing, most people agree thats a good idea. They just need to pander to the idiots a bit. Word the policy as "local houses for local people" and pledge to give council houses to local people as priority. That's probably already how the system works, and even if it it's a complete lie - who's going to know!?

Or take the borders for example. Declare "zero tolerance on illegal immigrants" - hello, they're already illegal. They're not voting for you, and your just as likely to do FA about them as anyone else us. What does a bit of rhetoric hurt. Steal the "points based immigration system" line, it's effectively what it's always been, apart from the EU.

Job prioritisation for local people - companies already have to prove that they can't find a suitable candidate in the UK before they can advertise abroad, nothing would change, but the perception would. You could tag it on with the return of technical colleges to get Britain making things again, or doing things (which is a genuinely good idea).

This is what the tories do - say what people want to hear.
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The virtue-signalling liberal side of the left would decry this though.
 
Zlatattack said:
The labour party are pretty thick in my opinion. Loads of their policies would resonate will all sorts of people. For example, they want more social housing, most people agree thats a good idea. They just need to pander to the idiots a bit. Word the policy as "local houses for local people" and pledge to give council houses to local people as priority. That's probably already how the system works, and even if it it's a complete lie - who's going to know!?

Or take the borders for example. Declare "zero tolerance on illegal immigrants" - hello, they're already illegal. They're not voting for you, and your just as likely to do FA about them as anyone else us. What does a bit of rhetoric hurt. Steal the "points based immigration system" line, it's effectively what it's always been, apart from the EU.

Job prioritisation for local people - companies already have to prove that they can't find a suitable candidate in the UK before they can advertise abroad, nothing would change, but the perception would. You could tag it on with the return of technical colleges to get Britain making things again, or doing things (which is a genuinely good idea).

This is what the tories do - say what people want to hear.
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This would probably have worked somewhat if this was a May-lead/pre-Covid and Brexit Tory government, but it's not.

An issue now is that, in a lot of ways, you're seeing the Tories take-up Labour policies, and the public spending since the pandemic has (rightfully) been unparalleled. It's hard to know what more a Labour party could promise without venturing into the areas that bewilder and put middle-of-the-road voters off.
 
groovyalbert said:
This would probably have worked somewhat if this was a May-lead/pre-Covid and Brexit Tory government, but it's not.

An issue now is that, in a lot of ways, you're seeing the Tories take-up Labour policies, and the public spending since the pandemic has (rightfully) been unparalleled. It's hard to know what more a Labour party could promise without venturing into the areas that bewilder and put middle-of-the-road voters off.
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This is why I'm saying that on the whole, policies aren't as important these days especially in this post-Brexit world. Some of Labour's policies were popular and the Tories have encroached on them either through necessity or strategically but I think if many Tory voters are honest, this won't be why they're winning more new votes. There is nothing from an economic policy perspective that Labour can do to win back any voters of any type from the Tories, IMO. If Labour adopt and pivot to a bit of social conservatism, or at least pretend to too quickly, it won't hold any weight either.

We basically all need to go to the Winchester, have a pint and wait for this all to blow over.
 
Ady87 said:
This is why I'm saying that on the whole, policies aren't as important these days especially in this post-Brexit world. Some of Labour's policies were popular and the Tories have encroached on them either through necessity or strategically but I think if many Tory voters are honest, this won't be why they're winning more new votes. There is nothing from an economic policy perspective that Labour can do to win back any voters of any type from the Tories, IMO. If Labour adopt and pivot to a bit of social conservatism, or at least pretend to too quickly, it won't hold any weight either.

We basically all need to go to the Winchester, have a pint and wait for this all to blow over.
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The fact that you're arguing for this whilst people are still voting for the party that SHUT DOWN OUR PUBS is the real problem.
 
Maticmaker said:
Spot on, Labour has had years to sort out places like Hartlepool and others in the 'red wall', it wasn't interested!
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So the Westminster Tory government cutting Labour Council budgets by 50% since 2010 until they struggle to function, now means the Tories get voted in locally. Crazy.
 
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