If people believe the Overton window has shifted, why do they persist with old style leftist politics to try and win elections?
Westminster Politics
- Thread starter altodevil
- Start date
As opposed to just jumping on the populist bandwagon and continuing to make things even worse?
Nah, just, I dunno, winning elections to make a difference rather than, bleating from the sidelines and constantly talking about why it's all so terrible.
“Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgement; and he betrays you instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion.”
Which is what they have all done for, say, a hundred years. So what if you don't keep you manifesto pledge to use the Navy to sink the boats in the channel, you're in power.
The Overton window has shifted because the likes of starmer have allowed it to. If no tries to pull it in the other direction, then it's going to keep drifting further to the right.
You're missing the point, again.
Are you too entrenched to see the hypocrisy of certain "centrists" now forcing unquestioning support after actively working to sabotage Labour in general elections?
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...antisemitism-tories-yougov-poll-a9462456.html
Again, your views on Corbyn are irrelevant to this point. Because if you think your opinion on Corbyn justifies this behaviour, you have no right to ask others to suppress their views on Starmer.
How do Labour make a difference when they simply adopt Conservative policies?
So the right should be allowed to drag the Overton window to further to the right while the left have to operate in the window wherever it should be?
I think you overestimate the power an opposition political person has on a society wide trend.
I've never asked anyone to suppress their views on Starmer, have at it. I just think they're misguided and typical of the left who prefer to criticise internally, create divisions and infighting and generally have an aversion to power or winning power because perpetual campaigning and opposition is the easier job.
Question; do parties ever break manifesto pledges or proposed policies once they get into power?
You cannot drag the window back unless you achieve power.
Once you have a storming majority, you can do whatever you like. Case in point, The Tories. If Labour roll into Westminster with a 100 seat majority, they can do whatever they want, regardless of manifesto pledges.
So they could scrap Rwanda, they could double NHS funding, they could raise base pay for teachers, they can literally enact sensible left of centre politics and what can the opposition, or indeed the public do. I dunno about you but I feel pretty helpless watching The Tories dismantle the country with their majority, I'm able to do nothing about it. Perhaps those on the right wing will feel the same when Labour are elected.
The main issue with leftist policies is you can't run on them as the right wing media and Overton window will just destroy these ideas in front of the public, losing you votes for being "economically dangerous" or on the side of "wokeness".
Never ever in favour of the people though.
Time for that to change
They could do all that, but they could equally think there is no need to do so, as people voted for them in huge numbers when they ran on policies that appeased the right wing media.
Absolutely. It won't be Starmer who changes it, though.
I'd say if Starmer believes it to be politically advantageous to gain power with his current policies, it's more than likely he'll see it as politically advantageous to stick with them once elected to stay in power.
That seems far more likely than him getting elected and pivoting to a much more unpopular and less re-electable position.
I think you underestimate it. Just look how political discourse has changed over the past few years.
I don't fundamentally disagree with the points you make Paul, but I notice you ignored the issue of arriving with out papers etc and saying "I'm an asylum seeker just let me in", is a different situation to someone whose has (presumably) been allowed in and has overstayed their welcome...so to speak! The problem of proving who you are and whether you are allowed in becomes monumental when evidence is missing and it takes time.
There is a large number of people in the UK, illegally, and there are many different ways this has occurred, the majority as you say staying on after visa's etc have ended; however, the very visible act of people arriving illegally in full view, of press and of course public, risking their lives and the lives of others has to be stopped, any government will have to stop these boats, Tory, Labour, Greens, Lib-dems, whoever. Maybe other governments have other ways to research individual claims when evidence is missing or unobtainable that will prove faster and more efficient, we shall have to see.
Last edited:
If someone seeks asylum, as long as they make that claim upon arrival in the country, no matter how they enter this country, they are not, and never will be, illegal.
The 1951 refugee convention, which this country helped write and is still international law we are signatories off, explains this quite clearly.
Any politican telling you people arriving are 'illegal' is lying. That is not how asylum works.
But nobody knows which papers these people have, for all we know they have their ID papers. If there was a method for them to contact the authorities before they got into a boat, like the Ukranians then they wouldn't need to cross the channel and risk their lives. It wouldn't stop them all but a lot of them. It's so simple to resolve.
The problem is that the government don't want to resolve it. It's a distraction. Focus the minds of the electorate on ten thousand people rather than everything else. Sunak has made it one of the top 5 priorities. There are far more important issues that he doesn't want the electorate to focus on.
With Labour holding onto the Tories' coat-tails scared to death of upsetting anyone it is a real disappointment. Starmer has no backbone.
A chance for real change in the UK is going to be wasted because of a weak leader.
A donkey with a red rosette would walk into no.10 but Starmer could actually be more of a liability and stand less chance than the donkey.
Starmer's just carrying on in the same direction but saying he will do the same awful things better. Sad.
There is only one way to stop these boats and that's to let them onto ships and process them in the UK. I can't see either happening in a very long time.
But no they're in, might as well stay in by enacting policies that will actually benefit people.
Why? They don't work and they won't solve the issues at hand so they'll be gone after 48 months.
Exactly. But imagining that scenario is far easier than imagining Starmer enacting policies that actually do solve the issues at hand.
They say so, but are pretending. Once in government they'll be grand with asylum seekers. It is known.
Does he say long term? I mean the state of housing in the country caused by the tories means there’s basically none for them anyway. Seems like a logistical issue as opposed to a fundamental ‘this is OK’.
Starmer did say back at the start of April that any use of military bases for asylum seekers should be reversed(Nothing to do human rights and more to do with aesthetics)
but well it’s August now so camps are staying for at least 6 months into a Labour government.
In that situation surely they'll be replaced with other similar politically advantageous policies, rather than totally divergent, less popular ones?
I wish we would stop peddling this ‘legacy of the dambusters’ narrative as though the dambuster mission did anything for the the war effort beyond killing German civilians and making their lives miserable. It’s not something we should be celebrating in the slightest.
Personally as long as they are free to come and go on a military base I think that's better than on a fecking barge which doesn't have adequate fire safety measures. Though I do get that the optics make them look like internment camps. It seems to me that the only humane places to put these people up are either social housing (which the Tories haven't built) or hotels. Wherever they go it will be at the taxpayer's cost so we have to ask ourselves as a society how we want to treat other human beings in their times of need. Seems the answer currently is like they're dirt.
Why?
Surely the focus and objective is to increase the speed of processing the asylum claims? Tory smokescreens of moving asylum seekers around the country is designed to create tension and diversion, yet the real crux of the conversation of processing those claims gets put to one side whilst both sides of the political spectrum raise their pitchforks over whether certain sites are suitable to house individuals.
What's more politically advantageous than improving people's lives.
Do you feel that's what the UK populous tends to vote for? If so why isn't Starmer running his current campaign on that basis?
No, I think most electorates vote against their self interests.
But they will also vote for their self interests if, once in government, Starmer pivots to more left-wing policies? This is truly a rather delusional theory on every level.