Sandydragon wrote: ↑Sun Oct 05, 2025 9:19 am
Stom wrote: ↑Sat Oct 04, 2025 9:32 am
Sandydragon wrote: ↑Sat Oct 04, 2025 8:26 am
They have 5 MPs despite significant public support over the past decade. The implosion of the Tories drove many to reform, Labour is nowhere near that bad, despite the best efforts of the media to portray them that way and fickle supporters.
The reality check is that the uk won’t vote in enough numbers for the Greens, particularly with their new direction. If anything, it will motivate voters to support the party most likely to stop them.
Corbyn came closest. Yet despite the Labour Party machinery, Momentum and a Tory PM who was both hated and a very poor campaigner, and who pissed off her core support just before the election, he failed.
As things stand the next PM will be Starmer or Farage. Time for some grown up politics to keep Reform out of power.
As usual, I think you’re completely wrong there.
“Grown up politics” is what got us in this mess in the first place.
Someone needs to be a populist, and loudly talk about the actual issues, and ignore or sidestep every single question about migrants, trans rights, wars, etc. They need to be vocal, loud, and heavily criticize the political class who have allowed this situation to happen.
Because that’s what reform do and other alt right agitators, and they’re correct. Just they also promote racist, fascist rhetoric. So don’t. Just talk policy, talk situations, talk solutions. And ensure the message is clear and easy to understand:
Doctor waiting times are insane. We need to be able to attract more doctors and cut down paperwork, here is an idea.
The tax system is working against you. We want working people to have more money in their pockets. We want families who have built themselves up to not need to face crippling tax bills, but we also need to spend. So we cut corruption by slashing Whitehall budgets for assistants, stopping the corruption by local government: just look at how much of your money reform have spent on employing family members. In this one council alone, they stole £250.000 of your money, money that could have been spent on fixing potholes, fixing the school roof, hiring an extra few staff at the clinic so you get seen quicker.
That’s what’s needed.
Call out the corruption directly. Don’t worry about stepping on feet. Burn all political bridges. The game is rigged. It doesn’t work by being a “grown up” it works by playing dirty. Without the bigoted rhetoric.
Nope.
Why are you listing a populist party along side the establishment. Reform are populists yet there they are governing badly. No surprise there and they would be a disaster at a national level. So too would the student union style politics of the greens and the left more widely. Without growth which Starmer is struggling to get his head around, there is no money for any of the projects that will improve people’s lives.
Waiting times are insane in parts of the country. So how about we look at ideas to fund the NHS better which might not be just about increasing taxation for everyone. Waiting times were coming down under the Blair government, so woe who grasped that you needed a better economy to support better services.
I fully agree that politicians need to stand up against the worst of the right wing rhetoric about immigrants. Note it’s not racist to talk about immigration in general and that’s the mistake many on the left have made previously and alienated people along the way. But opposing the worst of the anti immigrant propaganda doesn’t mean ignore the issue all together.
I can fall back on what is happening/what happened in Hungarian politics to show an example.
In Hungary, there is a party of a former PM. He was the leader, and he passed it on to his wife. I am friends with a high profile MP and leading light from one of the major left leaning parties, and I told him almost a decade ago that, in order to win an election, the opposition needed to "kill off" this former PM's party before going after the government. Because the government would just use them as bogeymen against them. First thing that Peter Magyar did when starting his movement was to rail against this former PM's party and basically wipe them out. And then, suddenly, the government has no stick to beat him with. No Soros, no migrants (he doesn't talk about it), no Pride (he didn't get involved), no former PM.
A winning party needs to distance itself from Reform, it needs to distance itself from Labour, the Tories, the Lib Dems, and the Greens. And that is the only way.
And by being populist, I mean by talking like one. Using the language of the people, not the language of politics. Not talking about difficult political decisions, but talking about making the policy work, and that's it. Having a core of policies and not getting sidetracked with other details (like NATO, for one).
As for growth...that is simply not true. Growth in and of itself does nothing. The economy has been "growing" in recent years, yet small businesses, spend at supermarkets, basically any spending on non-luxury goods and non-tech companies, have fallen. Because the real driver of a successful economy, and the real driver of public services and society as a whole, is how much disposable income the average person has to spend.
If the top 5% have more than ever, but they're spending it all on luxury goods owned by companies/individuals from outside the country...are you really growing the economy? Despite growth being high?
Or if the bottom 5% have actually got some money to spend and are going down their local high street and buying British beef again, instead of going to Lidl and getting imported meat for half the cost because they simply cannot afford to shop local?
You need the little man to spend to have a successful society. Blair was in charge of a booming economy by luck more than judgement. It was the "golden era" of the post-capitalist world, where the wealth was in the process of being redistributed to the super rich rather than actually all in their hands already. He got lucky. And so did Cameron. And their actions, and their political beliefs, and their self-serving nature led us to what we have now.
They got rich(er) off the backs of policies designed to enrich themselves and their friends, and we do not stand up and call them traitors, treasonists, and demand that they give their ill gotten gains back to the people of the United Kingdom.
Why the hell there isn't a party emblazoning billboards with what Hunt did around the 7 flats, I do not know.
THAT is what I mean by populist. Highlighting how all these parties have stood up and committed fraud against the British people. Highlighting how they have got rich off their time in office. And lumping Reform into them. Highlighting the spend of Farage.
But NOT getting involved in social issues.
So, yeah. That
The Blairites preferred to sabotage him from within - better for them to lose the election than to have a left wing PM.
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. With its usual subtlety I expect to be seeing far-right suggestions amongst my usual mix of far left, sci-fi, maths and literature.