So, here in Blighty, Nige yet again skips his parliamentary duties as the UK Dishonourable Member for Clacton and another PMQs as leader of Reform in the HoC. He goes brown-nosing over in DC to Trumpy and his MAGA headbanging cohorts now in charge of the GOP to talk free speech.. lol.
At least some of the Dems across the pond still have a pulse it seems .. calling out this odious dog whistling mayfly populist for what he truly is. Apparently he’s developed a bit of a habit of arriving late for meetings and appointments too, which won’t wash much longer.
Mind you, he and Reform are leading the polls over here nowadays ffs. Tories still on their long tack out into the Sea of Political Nothingness, whilst opportunists like Farage and his Reform oddballs, megaphones in hand keep stirring the immigration melting pot that is the UK today. Tense times to be sure though.
If there was a trade week for political figures I’d slap Nige on the trade table for a U.S packet of chips in a heartbeat. Yep, you just stay right over there Farage. The UK will survive, don’t you worry. Your chum Trump always needs another doormat to carry his far too long red ties around or somethin’ anyway.
Clashes have erupted in central London during a ‘Unite the Kingdom’ rally organised by far-right activist Tommy Robinson, with multiple people arrested for “unacceptable violence” which saw riot police attacked and left bloodied.
London officials have stated 110,000 to 150,000 were in attendance, while the event’s organiser and other supporters say the number of attendees was in the “millions”.
Areial footage releases after the event shows an expansive crowd.
The huge crowds, many draped in English and British flags, gathered from late on Saturday morning in and around Westminster for what Robinson, a veteran of UK far-right organising, branded the country’s “biggest free speech festival”.
Meanwhile, around 5,000 people turned out at a Stand Up to Racism march starting around a mile to the north, with London’s Metropolitan police deploying about 1,000 police to keep the rival groups apart.
It is a real worry that there is such a disparity in the figures. The anti racism rally should have drawn many more people. The far right wing numbers are also a concern. Those sort of figures can quickly transit to political candidates willing to promote xenophobia and fear.
It can CJ .. and has begun already with the rise of Reform, and Farage and Tice’s motley crew of candidates. This right wing nationalist rising is not new though, recent history is littered by regular changes in a multicultural UK .. but now fed by the Tommy Robinsons off the back of how its coping with illegals. Not very well but its got to be said, lots of misinformation spread by socials is fanning the flames. Tusk is trying to sow massive discord by getting involved. He needs to just FRO.
PM Starmer is under pressure from everywhere .. local party issues, these marches, Gaza pro Palestine and antisemitism surges, a faltering economy. And lets not forget Ukr and Putin rattling the NATO cage as ever. I mean he’s competent alright and far better than the mess left by Boris and the rest of the Tories, but he’s not an astute enough politician. He needs help at No.10. Ironically, Trump visting the UK this week might help him. Trump likes Starmer, likes being feted by Charles and the RF with all the pomp and ceremony .. and I expect he’ll help temporarily quell this outbreak of protest with kind words etc. before it goes truly viral. The Charlie Kirk shooting though is the danger if Trump spouts off about it whilst here.
The quicker the Home Office stop the crossings, process the asylum seekers and clear these hotels the better. They’re turning the tide so to speak on it, and France finally starting to play ball on their side. The new HO minister Shabana Mahmood is already accelerating things. And although Reform will squeeze all the main parties harnessing the disquiet, a GE is near 4 years away and the HoC and democracy is going nowhere but staying firm. Farage the two faced, opportunistic “saloon bar Thatcherite” will never be this country’s PM (imho anyway).
Its tense, but its not the UK if its not dealing with some sort of social hotspot or two.
Latest polling from IPSOS shows Keir Starmer is the least popular PM in all the time IPSOS have been polling, which goes back to Thatcher.
Starmer is even less popular than a dried out lettuce leaf.
Is this the fastest fall from grace of any newly elected PM? Or was his landslide win in reality, a landslide loss by the rump of a rudderless bunch of Tories.
Clearly it’s the latter, because the preferred party in the UK right now is far right of the Tories
Political parties need to be grounded in what voters want, (because thats how democracies work) not what the rich influencers want, and find a way to modify their ideology enough to meet the people’s concerns, at least, to be seen to meet their concerns, and maintain stability. It is truly becoming difficult for democratic governments to find a pathway to this end.
Firstly. ■■■■ Karl Starmer. This is a guy who ran in a host of leftist positions and promises to win the labour leadership and has then been ditching them ever since to be centre right.
Secondly. Any serious government was always going to struggle. The Tories (and Lib Dems) were disastrous for the UK and left a complete mess for the next government. Who, if capable, would by necessity have to make some very hard decisions. It was a poison pill.
Thirdly, even given those circumstances, Stamer’s government has been a rabble.
Corbyn, for all his many faults, performed better in his losing election than Starmer will perform at the next election. And he did it with Starmer and allies white anting him all the way, as has been fairly extensively documented.
Starmer has executed a classic Kim Beasley Manuever, becoming leader of a centre-left major party, running to the right in the hopes of luring right-wing voters, failing to appeal to them and alienating his core constituency at the same time by abandoning basically every principle and cause they care about. Except unlike Beasley, Starmer managed to do this on the heels of a landslide election WIN in which voters decisively rejected Brexit, austerity, and the long-running (literal) shitshow that is Britain’s privatised water supply, and then saw Starmer turn around and embrace all these things.
Labour is going to get utterly crushed at the next election. Theresa May sort of extinction-level smashed. They have no constituency any more. Reform will Bradbury it in, though I doubt any party will have a majority in their own right. And the lesson Starmer and his soulless corporate drones will take from that is they should have been harder on immigrants and trans people.
I agree with all of this, I was just trying to make the point that Corbyn is a total crackpot, and he remained leader for a long time and this caused a fair bit of damage to Labor..
Corbyn lost an election. Starmer actively embraced policies that his base hated, and which he was specifically elected to overturn.
You can come back from an election loss. You can’t come back from not having a base any more. Corbyn’s mistakes aren’t even in the same league as the destruction Starmer has caused.
Corbyn did not make “mistakes”. He never governed the UK. Corbyn was true to his extreme left ideology. You have to admire him for his integrity
But you have to criticise the Labour Party for voting in a leader like Corbyn trying to return to more left policies when Blair already showed that Britain wanted a more centrist “ New Labour”. Starmers Labour won because the Tories had become an unelectable rudderless rabble.
Corbyn was a weird unit. I had a lot of sympathy for some of his positions, but for others it seems like his mindset was stuck in 1982, or even 1962 in some cases. He absolutely refused to accept that Putin was possibly a bad guy, for example, or that Putin’s Russia could possibly be a bad actor. He struck me as someone who formed a mental ‘good guys/bad guys’ list when he was about 19 and didn’t bother updating it as times changed.
But he wasn’t elected leader of the Labour party by accident. I disagree that Blair had shown the way to success - by the time that Corbyn was running for the leadership, there was a lot of anti-Blairite sentiment out there. Bit like Clinton, he was loved at the time he was leader, but by being a nominally left-wing party leader who fully embraced the corporatisation and privatisation of everything, not to mention his role in the Iraq War, the gloss came off him a lot in hindsight once the downsides of all these things became increasingly apparent. Starmer is definitely a Blair guy judging by his policy suite, and he was absolutely in the front of the Labour party pack who were white-anting and leaking against Corbyn when he was trying to win an election. Starmer’s got his butt in the big chair now after a truly historic implosion of the Tories, and now he too is learning hold ■■■■, maybe this Blair stuff isn’t electoral magic beans any more.
Yeh. Sure within the Labour Party membership there was anti Blair sentiment, mainly because of his promotion of the Iraq/WMD fiasco and British involvement, but also New Labour non socialist policies that caused a majority of members to vote for Corbyn
But it’s the wider electorate who chooses the occupant of No. 10.
My son lives in the UK and reckons Starmer is bland and immigration issues are dominating the discourse at the moment. He believes Starmer will not win at the next election. There’s a lot to transpire before that.