Where is the same "accept you lost" energy indeed. A petition to reverse Brexit actually has triple the amount of signatures as this one grabbing headlines today *_*

 

Not Elon Musk signal-boosting tweets about this general election petition though leave us alone

Apparently 2 million people are petitioning for another election already?

 

Why???

 

What crazy standard are they holding Labour to here?

 

Elon Musk has no idea how the British political system works, added this to id say half the signatures on there are bots or from other countries. They are just riding on the US election wave at the moment.

 

But this does count as a lesson for us all to combating the threat in the future. Lots of things Labour can do to stop this which I don’t think will be populate with the Left, but I think they have to, otherwise we’re going to have some form of Tory/Reform coalition now that the US know the election can be bought.

Petitions are so dumb I never understand the point especially ones like this

It's a non-story just being peddled because Labour are in government, it's an unfortunate side effect to the majority of tabloids siding with the Tories. Like many things from Farage and Musk, they are best ignored and not given the attention they crave.

This is definitely in part boosted by Musk bots (and again it makes me apoplectic to see him interfering) and part of the in-general coordinated anti-Labour media frenzy that has been set upon the government ever since they got in power.

 

However, that does mean the dissatisfaction gets to set in, I've heard it brought up at work - it'll just contribute to the levels of frustration with the government that will not set them on a good route to get anything done - so many of their media appearances are now by default reduced to defending the latest policy that has been uncharitably interpreted.

 

Elon Musk has no idea how the British political system works, added this to id say half the signatures on there are bots or from other countries. They are just riding on the US election wave at the moment.

 

But this does count as a lesson for us all to combating the threat in the future. Lots of things Labour can do to stop this which I don’t think will be populate with the Left, but I think they have to, otherwise we’re going to have some form of Tory/Reform coalition now that the US know the election can be bought.

 

What would those be? Pretty clear the playbook that the right wing is spinning up is dissatisfaction with the 'elite' Labour establishment that cares for nothing but selling out to 'globalist' businesses, meanwhile any pro-worker move is seized upon by businesses as an indication of disaster (c.f. McVities in the Telegraph today). Even though the Biden administration did incredibly capable and effective things given the time they had to do it, there was still a general feeling of malaise that the economy wasn't doing well. From the track record of the media in these first few months of Labour government during which I can only describe them as 'feral', they will not let any positive feeling naturally set in from any of Labour's standard strategies. Starmer's got some great policies out there but he and his government are awful at communicating. They need to get populist, have people feel good about what's happening rather than just telling them things are great - Sunak's government tried the same and it never worked.

It kinda really shows how not following the news and being bombarded by news media affects your opinion though.

 

I don't mean this to blow my own horn but, I don't use Twitter, I never have. I don't watch the news on tv or listen to it on the radio. I pick up big stories that are big enough to pass into the media I do consume, and read Private Eye sometimes, and pick up top headlines from here. That's it.

 

And from those paths I've totally missed Labour doing anything remotely controversial - or more controversial than what we used to expect from pre-2010 governments, maybe even pre-Brexit at all. Back then, it felt like policies would be announced that would be spun as hard as possible by tabloid journalists to try and create some tabloid drama, which 9 times out of 10 stuck around for 2 or 3 days or a week, before we moved on to the next thing as a small drama, and the people at the back end got on with implementing the previous policy. That was government and the media, and mostly, that was it for coverage, and in terms of the people that followed it ardently, that was a small proportion of the population as well, apart from when there was some really big issue like Iraq or something like a well-known foreign leader dying.

 

Night and day to today where it seems the expectation is that everyone will have a STRONG opinion on everything and everyone should at least be following the latest DRAMAs of politics, if not the grainy detail of what the policies might mean.

Its unfortunately the reality of a Labour government in 2024 with the rise of social media and right wing control of it (Musk & twitter in particular).

 

They have done a couple quite unpopular things. One was being very negative about the budget - it wasn't actually that bad and they could've not caused so much negativity around it.

 

The biggest thing was the winter fuel payment cut. I agree with cutting it for those that don't need it, but the biggest issue was there are a lot that do need it. And you can argue they can apply for a pension credit which will more than make up for it and that the Triple lock means the state pension has increased quite a bit the last couple years. The issue with the pension credit is the application process isn't very easy/straight forward and some people just miss out.

 

Overall I don't think they've done that badly though and it's often social media/the media trying to frame things in a way. There's also the fact that a large chunk of the population didn't vote labour and you could argue their current majority is the most "unfair" in history? But most of those moaning will be the same ones telling others to be quiet when they won the brexit vote. Labour won fair and square - it's not like the conservatives didn't have 14 years to create a fairer election system. :rolleyes:

Edited November 25, 2024Nov 25 by Envoirment

This is definitely in part boosted by Musk bots (and again it makes me apoplectic to see him interfering) and part of the in-general coordinated anti-Labour media frenzy that has been set upon the government ever since they got in power.

 

However, that does mean the dissatisfaction gets to set in, I've heard it brought up at work - it'll just contribute to the levels of frustration with the government that will not set them on a good route to get anything done - so many of their media appearances are now by default reduced to defending the latest policy that has been uncharitably interpreted.

What would those be? Pretty clear the playbook that the right wing is spinning up is dissatisfaction with the 'elite' Labour establishment that cares for nothing but selling out to 'globalist' businesses, meanwhile any pro-worker move is seized upon by businesses as an indication of disaster (c.f. McVities in the Telegraph today). Even though the Biden administration did incredibly capable and effective things given the time they had to do it, there was still a general feeling of malaise that the economy wasn't doing well. From the track record of the media in these first few months of Labour government during which I can only describe them as 'feral', they will not let any positive feeling naturally set in from any of Labour's standard strategies. Starmer's got some great policies out there but he and his government are awful at communicating. They need to get populist, have people feel good about what's happening rather than just telling them things are great - Sunak's government tried the same and it never worked.

 

Exactly that we need to get populist, the Government know things will get worse before they get better and that’s how voters will vote. Unfortunately even though I’m sure Labour will tell people that Reform will ban violent video games, make healthcare less accessible and give us all less rights, people will continue to vote for it. We’re lucky we have 4.5 years before an election and a lot can happen before that time, but totally agree Starmer’s team need to get populist and fight back. Reform will start using the local elections as a mandate for an election.

Apparently 2 million people are petitioning for another election already?

 

Why???

 

What crazy standard are they holding Labour to here?

 

It’s right wing Twitter and the telegraph, not serious voters who actually understand how democracy works.

A lot of the signatures on the election petition are Keir Starmer of 10 Downing Street. Well done to those right-wing numpties for totally discrediting the government petition principle.

Reform will win next election

never going to happen. inner city demographics will never sway to Reform - my constituency had Reform in 6th place

 

EDIT - also worth bearing in mind the next election will represent a different population, more and more people with right wing views are dying off and the very vast majority of young people hold left-leaning views, the younger voterbase are going to increasingly consider social inclusivity in choosing a party to get behind.

Edited November 26, 2024Nov 26 by hinterland

never going to happen. inner city demographics will never sway to Reform - my constituency had Reform in 6th place

 

EDIT - also worth bearing in mind the next election will represent a different population, more and more people with right wing views are dying off and the very vast majority of young people hold left-leaning views, the younger voterbase are going to increasingly consider social inclusivity in choosing a party to get behind.

 

Oh please. That’s just not how politics works. They said the same in the US shifting demographics mean it’s game over for Republicans then the demographics they thought were in the bank switched the other way. In the UK you could say there is a similar thing with large Muslim populations being heavily Labour yet they’re more Conservative than anybody most of the time. When you have two real choices politicians become salesman for a particular popular opinion and that will always give everybody a choice. That’s why brexit won with I’m sure various demographics supporting it. The more certain strong left policies are enforced the bigger the backlash that’s just natural. If it’s some trans issue maybe the conservatives Muslims will suddenly switch over if it’s about open borders or something various others will switch over. This pie in the sky everybody is more inconclusive the right wing is finished it’s pie in the sky. I don’t think reform can ever win an election with their baggage but they probably could make sure Labour lose.

Oh please. That’s just not how politics works. They said the same in the US shifting demographics mean it’s game over for Republicans then the demographics they thought were in the bank switched the other way. In the UK you could say there is a similar thing with large Muslim populations being heavily Labour yet they’re more Conservative than anybody most of the time. When you have two real choices politicians become salesman for a particular popular opinion and that will always give everybody a choice. That’s why brexit won with I’m sure various demographics supporting it. The more certain strong left policies are enforced the bigger the backlash that’s just natural. If it’s some trans issue maybe the conservatives Muslims will suddenly switch over if it’s about open borders or something various others will switch over. This pie in the sky everybody is more inconclusive the right wing is finished it’s pie in the sky. I don’t think reform can ever win an election with their baggage but they probably could make sure Labour lose.

 

It can indeed be how politics works. The generation coming of age in the 80s (early Gen X) has always had a conservative bent - and the generation coming of age in the late 00s (central millennials) has so far been pretty reliably progressive. Obviously you can't extrapolate that to younger generations and future occurrences, but broadly, demographic prediction is just as valid as predicting racial depolarisation. Something that may occur in the UK, but to an extent has already happened, Muslims went to greens and independents, Hindus to Conservatives, neither really went over to Reform. Of course, no reason to suspect direction of travel stays in that direction either, I don't know what you mean by 'strong left' policies but a) people don't think in those terms, they think in how it affects them, b) this Labour ain't doing 'strong left' stuff. Basically learning lessons from the US election should be limited to 'make people feel good about the economy' and don't worry about demographic this, age bracket that, because that'll come with the general good feeling.

 

Also broadly, it's a bit more difficult to predict what will happen in a multi-party system than the strict two-party duopoly of America, because here we don't have two distinct choices, and especially so early in the term. The lack of a party infrastructure will work against Reform, the lack of direction and will to rebuild will work against the Tories. Far too early to say who will win the next election but our right don't have a consistent challenger, I think even if you were being optimistic with them and looking at it from their point of view, they have a tough route to power in one cycle and they're really not sending their best in Badenoch and Farage (the latter of whom has stronger potential but is in a far weaker position).

Louise Haigh has resigned as Transport Secretary. Depending on how the vote on assisted dying goes, Wes Streeting might be the logical replacement.

Not happy about that, she was one of the bright spots of the new government and was doing great work over at transport - rails into public ownership, addressing Euston's issues, the bad stuff about transport so far in this government has come from higher up.

 

Also apparently one of the few in cabinet not in the McSweeney faction, which tracks, and might be a more pertinent reason than a spent (and hardly disqualifying, in the eyes of most reasonable people) conviction from over a decade ago suddenly becoming a problem.

Elon Musk has no idea

Your sentence could have stopped there tbh. That man is dumb as f***

Not happy about that, she was one of the bright spots of the new government and was doing great work over at transport - rails into public ownership, addressing Euston's issues, the bad stuff about transport so far in this government has come from higher up.

 

Also apparently one of the few in cabinet not in the McSweeney faction, which tracks, and might be a more pertinent reason than a spent (and hardly disqualifying, in the eyes of most reasonable people) conviction from over a decade ago suddenly becoming a problem.

 

Where’d this story come from the right wing press?

Veery hostile press and bbtory. Either this is the new normal, taking irs lead from social media, or they really wanted a Tory one psrty state forever.

Well she is from the left of the cabinet so wouldn’t surprise me!

Well she is from the left of the cabinet so wouldn’t surprise me!

 

I don't think it's anything to do with that. By all accounts she was doing a good job. Issue is stories like this can run and run, especially if there was more to come out, look what happened to the Tories. The offence was pretty minor and hyes, it does seem absolutely stupid in the grand scheme of things.. but I also guess this means she can quietly come back to the Cabinet in the future too.