That aside, somehow Lowe has built himself a huge audience of far right numbskulls on twitter and seeing him unleash that insanity on everyone else in Reform is very gratifying to see. They deserve it. He’s ratioing Farage 10 to 1 (in as much as twitter’s bot/nazi problem makes that mean anything)

30 minutes ago, Iz 🌟 said:

That aside, somehow Lowe has built himself a huge audience of far right numbskulls on twitter and seeing him unleash that insanity on everyone else in Reform is very gratifying to see. They deserve it. He’s ratioing Farage 10 to 1 (in as much as twitter’s bot/nazi problem makes that mean anything)

That’s the problem. Twitter is essentially an echo chamber these days either through brainwashed people, idiots and bots. The left has the same problems as well, when you invite the more extreme people in to the party, inevitably they take the bait and cause a storm. Farage at least understands how Reform might be able to win an election, or have a very strong choice of doing so. The small ilk of people who Rupert Lowe was courting are a fringe wing. They might be popular on Twitter, but they’re a joke elsewhere and if you put them in front of a camera long enough, their real views will come out of someone will expose them for the idiots they are.

This is so funny. Nobody hates Farage more than his own MPs and it's a tradition that goes back to Douglas Carswell.

On 09/03/2025 at 00:16, Rooney said:

That’s the problem. Twitter is essentially an echo chamber these days either through brainwashed people, idiots and bots. The left has the same problems as well, when you invite the more extreme people in to the party, inevitably they take the bait and cause a storm. Farage at least understands how Reform might be able to win an election, or have a very strong choice of doing so. The small ilk of people who Rupert Lowe was courting are a fringe wing. They might be popular on Twitter, but they’re a joke elsewhere and if you put them in front of a camera long enough, their real views will come out of someone will expose them for the idiots they are.

Even Tice is a complete liability, which is presumably partly why Farage was suddenly returned as party leader last summer.

I am enjoying the defections from the moribund Conservative Party, though I still would prefer it if Liz "human grenade" Truss defected..

Very interesting piece by a pollster which reflects what I’ve seen.

Channel 4 News

James Johnson: pollster’s thoughts on political swing in UK

36 minutes ago, Liam S said:

Very interesting piece by a pollster which reflects what I’ve seen.

Channel 4 News

James Johnson: pollster’s thoughts on political swing in UK

"Their outlook for the country was nothing short of apocalyptic. They spoke of hundreds of homeless Britons on the streets, while “floods” of illegal migrants are housed in hotels on the taxpayer. A carer spoke of children hobbled with mental health problems, the long hangover of the Covid pandemic still biting. The stay-at-home mum talked of criminals and junkies living above her, with politicians and local police powerless to stop them.

Not one of the Labour voters could name an achievement by the party they voted for. The most recalled action was Labour’s cutting of the winter fuel allowance, described as punishing Brits to siphon more money to immigration. The non-voting group spurned the election deliberately, feeling there was no option that represented them. The mainstream parties’ alien values had pushed them away: “there’s no democracy in the UK anymore”.

The government’s handling was “disgraceful”, “disgusting”, “managed decline”. Britain was described as “losing everything that made us great”. Some even spoke of the possibility of violence, a “civil war”, a “revolution”.

Immigration was at its core, with high numbers of legal and illegal migration seen to be “diluting” British culture and the “indigenous people” of the country. In this context, Keir Starmer’s welfare cuts were seen as an insult to Britain’s poorest while the money kept flowing to those crossing the channel on small boats.

They had made themselves heard in 2016 by voting for Brexit, excitedly backed Johnson in 2019, were now counting on Labour, and have felt nothing has gotten better since."

Aka crazy people voted to screw themselves over, over and over again, and continue to live in a false reality, and instead of pulling them out the media has chosen to indulge them.

Stop the bloody world and let me off.

Grimsby is 95% white. Most of these people do not have personal experience of immigration. It's a scapegoat that they have latched onto because they live in an area that sadly has seen no investment from businesses or the government and has left it quite poor, so 'all the money must be going somewhere else'*. Reform won't solve their problems, and ideally they would have been lead to an honest, justice-seeking politician, but a grifter has become their most familiar anti-establishment politician, so that's who they gravitate towards.

Their assessment of what has gone wrong for the country is flawed, but this is why politicians need to do their best to inform, it's why every Labour politician repeats the government lines of what they've been up to to the point where it's repetitive, they need people to hear what they have done.

*for this part of the internet at least, I have an idea to combat such misinformation.

95.7% white so even higher. The fishing industry has been destroyed there hence the brexity voter base!

I too think Britain has disappeared from what it once was.

Once upon a time people like that would be given a short sharp shock and told frankly that they were stupid and wrong. Nowadays instead they get coddled, ego massaged by bad faith players in the media including the news, reporters that once upon a time used to at least set a baseline of truth like the BBC, documentary makers and so on. Nowadays ideology is in everything and nobody seems to want to offend anybody.

That is the greatest irony of people the like that are quoted in this article. It is they who want to create a bubble where only people like themselves can live, and enforce their will and their ignorance on others. They don't want to engage with anything outside of their existing beliefs. They don't want to educate themselves a jot. They don't want to support social services, if it might benefit someone that believes something different. They don't want to actually understand issues and give themselves the tools to combat their own oppression or achieve something or to be able to actually avoid being taken in again.

They just want someone to validate them, and to point the finger at someone further down the chain, and to be allowed to be angry and punch down, to make themselves feel better.

Personally, I find it absolutely pathetic and embarrassing. One of the things this country used to value was working-class people's fierce independence and self-sufficiency. All of this falling in line behind an obvious con artist, a rich ex-banker with a foreign wife and bilingual children who went to private school like Farage, and a criminal hooligan with a fake name to hide his true double-barrelled one like Tommy Robinson aka Stephen Yaxley-Lennon is bullshit to suggest that's natural to working-class people. My miner ancestors would spin in their graves to see any of their descendants sucking up to lying lord of the manor types who live by different rules and scurry away at every first sign of a real fight or any real chance to actually stand up for the people they claim to.

Not really a fan of dismissing people as crazy and not worthy of being ‘indulged’ by a pollster. Lowkey dehumanising mindset. These WERE NOT people who voted reform less than a year ago. They didn’t vote or voted labour. So that’s a very interesting part. It shows there is widespread sentiment the status quo is just not working for hardly anybody and maybe reform isn’t even a desired option but it’s just a least worst option for a lot of people. So the idea reform can be cast to irrelevancy is missing the point as this feeling will still be there either way.

Sure, you shouldn't dismiss anyone's political opinions as being invalid, I wouldn't say the anger towards low-information voters is unjustified though either. If you're going to take part in the democratic process, it's good form to be educated on what has happened, what your various political options stand for and have done in the past, and what they're likely to do should one's vote help them into government.

We've seen the damage that's happened from votes being treated as 'any change from the status quo because the status quo sucks'. Anyone who knows any voters like these, please, do your best to get them following reputable political sources and actually understanding what happens with one's vote. It does them no good to throw it away to, as Jupiter says, an 'obvious con artist'.

33 minutes ago, Liam S said:

Not really a fan of dismissing people as crazy and not worthy of being ‘indulged’ by a pollster. Lowkey dehumanising mindset. These WERE NOT people who voted reform less than a year ago. They didn’t vote or voted labour. So that’s a very interesting part. It shows there is widespread sentiment the status quo is just not working for hardly anybody and maybe reform isn’t even a desired option but it’s just a least worst option for a lot of people. So the idea reform can be cast to irrelevancy is missing the point as this feeling will still be there either way.

The last bolded sentence doesn't follow from the previous ones. This is a localised focus group in one of the most fertile breeding grounds for Reform/anti-system votes in the country and a relatively deprived area, of which 50% of interviewed voters were non-voters. There's no real indication this is out of line with national polls, which show an electorally untested Reform jockeying for position with other parties, not a widespread supported one.

It's an interesting and indeed quite worrying focus group, and eastern seaboard towns like Grimsby stand a good chance of being Reform gains in the future, but overegging the conclusions beyond that I wouldn't say is valid right now.

1 hour ago, Iz 🌟 said:

Sure, you shouldn't dismiss anyone's political opinions as being invalid, I wouldn't say the anger towards low-information voters is unjustified though either. If you're going to take part in the democratic process, it's good form to be educated on what has happened, what your various political options stand for and have done in the past, and what they're likely to do should one's vote help them into government.

We've seen the damage that's happened from votes being treated as 'any change from the status quo because the status quo sucks'. Anyone who knows any voters like these, please, do your best to get them following reputable political sources and actually understanding what happens with one's vote. It does them no good to throw it away to, as Jupiter says, an 'obvious con artist'.

The last bolded sentence doesn't follow from the previous ones. This is a localised focus group in one of the most fertile breeding grounds for Reform/anti-system votes in the country and a relatively deprived area, of which 50% of interviewed voters were non-voters. There's no real indication this is out of line with national polls, which show an electorally untested Reform jockeying for position with other parties, not a widespread supported one.

It's an interesting and indeed quite worrying focus group, and eastern seaboard towns like Grimsby stand a good chance of being Reform gains in the future, but overegging the conclusions beyond that I wouldn't say is valid right now.

Hmmm I don’t know, personally think people going off the deep end with regards to certain demographics. That kind of vitriol seems unnaturally vicious. Every group ranges from low to high information voters. It’s just a disagreement over what is considered in their best interests and tbh they seem open minded they’ve tried multiple things and diff ways of voting so people voting the same way all the time berating them seems pretentious.

As for the con artist rhetoric look at Starmer 6 months in and gone against everything he’s ever said or stood for is that not a con artist?

But yeah on the bigger point it might well be more profound in somewhere like Grimsby but even the article mentions hearing the same kind of vibe once back in London on the tube. When voting doesn’t change anything people naturally become disillusioned and radical so that voter base with those feelings are huge and whoever captures that the best is probably the person or party that will do the best in the near future.

Edited March 22Mar 22 by Liam S

32 minutes ago, Liam S said:

Hmmm I don’t know, personally think people going off the deep end with regards to certain demographics. That kind of vitriol seems unnaturally vicious. Every group ranges from low to high information voters. It’s just a disagreement over what is considered in their best interests and tbh they seem open minded they’ve tried multiple things and diff ways of voting so people voting the same way all the time berating them seems pretentious.

As for the con artist rhetoric look at Starmer 6 months in and gone against everything he’s ever said or stood for is that not a con artist?

But yeah on the bigger point it might well be more profound in somewhere like Grimsby but even the article mentions hearing the same kind of vibe once back in London on the tube. When voting doesn’t change anything people naturally become disillusioned and radical so that voter base with those feelings are huge and whoever captures that the best is probably the person or party that will do the best in the near future.

Starmer... hasn't really gone against everything he's ever said. Take a look at the government tracker for pledges they made prior to this election. Most of what the government pledged to do is on track to be met.

Full Fact

Government Tracker - Full Fact

Full Fact is monitoring the government’s delivery on its promises

I'll grant you he's drifted a lot from his initial pledge to the Labour membership, and as a left-winger, I'm still mad about that, that this government won't be as transformative or bold as it needs to be. But as far as the promises he made for getting him and his party into government, they're mostly on track, haven't gone against what they said they'll do in their latest electoral manifesto, and anything that they have to change plans on mostly comes with a caveat of needing to adjust due to circumstances. Underpromise - possibly with underdelivery, but in as far as delivering what people in 2024 voted for, his government is on track 6 months in.

The flipside is that I don't see how Farage or Reform's team at this point have a hope in hell of creating a comprehensive plan like Labour have and actually following it through, they're getting most of their support through feelings and negative polarisation, and there isn't a Reform team beyond Farage really.

I don't respect stupid people. Sue me.

On 22/03/2025 at 11:51, Iz 🌟 said:

Starmer... hasn't really gone against everything he's ever said. Take a look at the government tracker for pledges they made prior to this election. Most of what the government pledged to do is on track to be met.

Full Fact

Government Tracker - Full Fact

Full Fact is monitoring the government’s delivery on its promises

I'll grant you he's drifted a lot from his initial pledge to the Labour membership, and as a left-winger, I'm still mad about that, that this government won't be as transformative or bold as it needs to be. But as far as the promises he made for getting him and his party into government, they're mostly on track, haven't gone against what they said they'll do in their latest electoral manifesto, and anything that they have to change plans on mostly comes with a caveat of needing to adjust due to circumstances. Underpromise - possibly with underdelivery, but in as far as delivering what people in 2024 voted for, his government is on track 6 months in.

The flipside is that I don't see how Farage or Reform's team at this point have a hope in hell of creating a comprehensive plan like Labour have and actually following it through, they're getting most of their support through feelings and negative polarisation, and there isn't a Reform team beyond Farage really.

I don’t think you can measure Starmer’s lifelong betrayal’s with a fact check in this way of Labour’s commitments.

For example if you’ve been against a Heathrow 3rd runway your whole life and suddenly you’re supporting it then this is more reflective of character than something innocuous from page 8 of a manifesto nobody was even aware of being ‘in progress’

From austerity to not raising council tax to WASPI women to disability cuts to Heathrow runway etc etc he has completely changed position and this stuff will always have a bigger impact or cut through than some spin about restoring public faith in the judiciary which is probably at an all-time low atm

On 22/03/2025 at 12:46, J00prstar said:

I don't respect stupid people. Sue me.

They’re not stupid. They’re using what little power they have in the only way it becomes relevant. Stupid would be voting the same way and being tribal no matter what happens and hoping something will change. That’s both insane and stupid. It’s up to Labour(whom many of them voted for) to improve their status and life and failure to do should lose them their support

In fairness the WASPI woman pledge wasn’t in the manifesto, was it?

Nobody really votes depending on the entire manifesto though do they? It's good to have a form of a strategic plan, but it's also why I think Reeves' red lines are a bit of a trap too. We're in a proper economic rut - now this is not Labour's fault. You can argue some of the decisions they're making aren't helping, but as usual, everyone agrees we need to build more houses, but nobody wants the houses anywhere near them.

Starmer's ultimately trying to do the best for the country. The private sector is already faltering and you're not going to see good growth in pay this year, then we've just had all bills go up (which is to be expected). And as usual, people get used to having 4-6% increases like they have been post covid, but our economy definitely cannot afford that at the moment.

1 hour ago, Steve201 said:

In fairness the WASPI woman pledge wasn’t in the manifesto, was it?

Nope. But it doesn’t matter. When he won I think they were still ruling on whether they deserved compensation.

So the direction of travel was

Starmer says it’s an injustice and they deserve compensation

The Ombudsman setup to decide if they should get compensation decides they should

Then Starmer says nah

It’s quite clearly saying one thing then doing another. Couldn’t be any clearer in my opinion.

And yet it still wasn’t on the manifesto so there was no official commitment. I really think they’ve looked at the books and decided there’s no manoeuvre to pay it which is fine.

I’m from Ireland and with regard to house building wonder where on earth new houses can be built in England - 70m people is a mental population for the land mass.

okay for fucks sake everyone don't get led down irrelevant rabbit holes (particularly ones involving fatuous pensioner claims but I digress) back up, back up - try and remember what thread you're in too, so any discussion about Starmer is relevant only in the context of Reform.

The claim was that Reform are con artists (true) in that they will abuse people voting for them to implement their own agenda, and then the counter-claim, provided by Liam S is that 'Starmer (and by extension Labour, and so I'll talk about them together) are effectively con artists by going back on their word'. Paraphrased but close enough. In terms of how this matters to the wider electorate, what the government should be judged on in reference to honesty is their promise to the country made when elected.

I provided a government tracker that shows that for the most part, they are meeting their pledges. Obviously, you can go years back and find things where Starmer has expressed a difference stance. For one thing, it is a mark of strength, not weakness, in politicians, that they adjust to circumstances and sometimes change tacks. But he hasn't lied to the electorate. Like I said in my post before, I am mad at him for lying to the Labour membership and changing his persona from his first years as leader over the course of the last parliament. But that is a different question as to whether he has lied to the wider electorate, which he broadly has not, the Labour government is not misleading the electorate and is following the same strategy that got them elected last summer. With the flexibility to do what they perceive as the right thing to do, we don't want to straitjacket governments unnecessarily.

Now, would Reform lie? I'm in two minds about that. You have the Trump 2024/Project 2025 route, where their plans are out in the open, they are obviously bad for everyone involved, and they deny doing them, then in office, do them anyway. They might say everything they are going to do and frame it in nationalist/"common sense" rhetoric. But the instinct that everyone should have about them, and this is more important than who has said a different thing way back when, is that they are not in the business of fulfilling promises to make working people's lives better. For all the talk of them being the party of lowering immigration, they're probably even less likely to do that than the Tories.

They are so captured by oil and gas interests anyway (notably Labour are not, we've got a nice ban on new licenses going), that I do not have any reason to trust them.