REFERENDUM RESULTS AND DISCUSSION THREAD

[AndyWolves]

UK DoGE.

In other news

https://twitter.com/x/status/1918012057443594521

Minor point but I'm not surprised by 'your'

 

[Tony Towner]

Crafty is now a County Councillor

 

[Elephant Pyjamas]

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[prawnking]

Who is that student level flippancy going to work with, though? Same shit I've heard for years and it doesn't help one bit

 

[Elephant Pyjamas]

Who is that student level flippancy going to work with, though? Same shit I've heard for years and it doesn't help one bit

Oh it won't stop people who want to vote for them, vote for them. Doesn't make it any less true though.

 

[Kenny]

From reading various comments on SM yesterday amazed at how many people thought yesterday was a general election.

 

[prawnking]

Oh it won't stop people who want to vote for them, vote for them. Doesn't make it any less true though.

Ah, the moral victory. That'll be comforting once Farage is PM.

Also, Starmer isn't a war criminal so it's not really 'true', is it? It's just that same bolshy 'look at me' voice you see 1000 times online in lieu of anything actually insightful

 

[BillyDee]

From reading various comments on SM yesterday amazed at how many people thought yesterday was a general election.

And the number that were outraged that Starmer had "blocked" elections in their area.

 

[Elephant Pyjamas]

Ah, the moral victory. That'll be comforting once Farage is PM.

Also, Starmer isn't a war criminal so it's not really 'true', is it? It's just that same bolshy 'look at me' voice you see 1000 times online in lieu of anything actually insightful

I am not sure why you are trying to start an argument with me that isn't there. We basically said the same thing regarding this topic a few posts ago. (#17513)

Farage's EU appearance record, his history with the NHS, him being a totally shit MP, and his love for Putin are the things that *should* cut through (and are true), but the sort of people that vote for Reform don't care about that, and never will.

 

[Elephant Pyjamas]

Oh and Starmer isn't a war criminal, but he's backed war crimes.

 

[Elephant Pyjamas]

From reading various comments on SM yesterday amazed at how many people thought yesterday was a general election.

Surely not!?

 

[leedswolf]

Courtesey of 'Sheffield for Europe';

We have promised to run a series of posts analysing what is going on, and why the far right are making such gains.

There has never been such disillusionment with politics in the UK especially in England, and it is not hard to see why. The trend started in the 2010s in a big way and the hugely divisive referendum in 2016 on EU membership accelerated the process.

We had years of chaos, ever more unsatisfactory political leaders in the shape especially of Boris Johnson, possibly the most dishonest politician to ever to become British Prime Minister, and Liz Truss who crashed the economy in days. People thought they voted for change last year, but of that there is as yet precious little.

We have the highest levels of tax in 70 years, yet public services are falling apart, NHS waiting lists at record levels, record levels of sewage in our rivers, and roads unfixed.

Those of us who voted to remain in the EU in 2016 are disillusioned and justifiably angry at the appalling betrayal we suffered following that vote, with the hardest of Brexits forced on us despite only the narrowest of victories for leave.

Those who voted leave the EU thought jobs would be secured and industry would move back. Yet this week the Grangemouth oil refinery closed, Port Talbot steel works has closed too, and Scunthorpe hangs in by the skin of its teeth. Farmers have been betrayed, subsidies cut and markets lost. Honda has gone and Vauxhall closed their Luton factory Many leave voters were let to believe that immigration levels would fall. Instead they increased massively. There were reasons, but those reasons have never been explained. So the 'winners' who voted to leave are for the most part angry too, and feel betrayed.

The result, at the moment, is growing apathy which will turn to anger eventually. Apathy that meant that while Andrea Jenkyns enjoyed a comfortable victory in the brand new mayoral position in Greater Lincolnshire, winning 42% of the vote, she did so on a voter turn out of just 29.9 percent.

So Andrea Jenkyns won her position with 12.18 percent of the actual vote - showing that most have so little faith in the entire system that they did not even bother to go to the polls at all. That is the mark of a broken political system, and unless action is taken to arrest the decline, Brexit will merely be the first step on the road that could lead to the end of democracy itself, such is the level of disillusionment, the lack of faith in politicians and the believe that they are not interested in serving the electorate at all, but only themselves. The general feeling is that the country is failing (which outside of the EU is pretty much what we expected to happen).

Here, from Josh Halliday and Ben Quinn writing in the Guardian, and a key takeaway from a voter who summed up the feelings of many:

"Underlying Reform UK’s dismantling of the historic two-party system in Westminster is a much more troubling trend: the growing numbers of voters detaching completely from politics. “I don’t see any point in any of them. They really are all horrible. Once they’ve been voted in, they forget about us,” said Tommy Young, 59, outside Murdishaw’s Co-op."

#brexitdamage #democracy

 

[Kenny]

Surely not!?

Yep.

Few people asking if they had a Reform MP now.
Another in Shropshire couldn't understand why a lot were saying the Tories had been heavily beaten in Shropshire. Surely Labour had...and to prove his point kept posting the results from the GE for Shrewsbury.

 

[Tony Towner]

Ah, the moral victory. That'll be comforting once Farage is PM.

It's been going on since before Brexit both on here and in the wider mainstream.

The traditionally politically interested for want of a better phrase were/are detached from the type of people who aren't traditionally engaged in poilitics, but will
vote UKIP/Reform/Brexit when motivated to do so and are generally dismissive. They'll say (self included) that their views were/are a combination of being ill informed, badly educated, racist and easily manipulated and are to be condemned and scoffed at - and in a large percentage of instances they are correct.

That fails to recognise what's happening though or addressing those concerns. We are lucky there's not a GE in the next 12 months because Farage would win it, or at least be part of a coalition, although not sure how a Lab/Reform coalition would work.

Starmer is lucky in that sense, but in the next couple of years he has to take a firm, visual stance on immigration via the Channel, he has to address people's concerns, he has to find a way to make British citizens feel that they are their governments priority and that 'hard working families' are seeing more money in their pockets.

This is like no other age in politics, the extremes at either side, but particularly the right have harnessed the power of social media in a way the centrists don't seem to be able to do - I guess when your message is radical/inaccurate that's going to be the case, but in Farage you have a mouthpiece that people will follow. Nigel 'tells it as it is' and the time to just dismiss him as a right wing grifter was over a decade ago. Carry on doing that and he'll be our next PM.

 

[Elephant Pyjamas]

I mean we could ask all Reform voters to read this PK

The Fiscal Impact of Immigration in the UK - Migration Observatory

This briefing gives an overview of research on the impact of immigration on government finances in the UK and explains the main issues related to estimating the fiscal impact of immigration in the UK.

migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk

But I'm not sure that would change their minds either....

So what do you suggest?

 

[sycophantia]

I mean we could ask all Reform voters to read this PK

The Fiscal Impact of Immigration in the UK - Migration Observatory

This briefing gives an overview of research on the impact of immigration on government finances in the UK and explains the main issues related to estimating the fiscal impact of immigration in the UK.

migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk

But I'm not sure that would change their minds either....

So what do you suggest?

They wouldn't read it, they're just not that interested in politics, as TT pointed out this forum is an outlier when it comes to politics debate, we might not agree with various posters on their political views but most on here take a keen interest and search out 'facts', the rest of the electorate not so much.
We're in the shit, we could easily end up with a Trump style govt at some stage.
I've got no answers though.

 

[Elephant Pyjamas]

They wouldn't read it, they're just not that interested in politics, as TT pointed out this forum is an outlier when it comes to politics debate, we might not agree with various posters on their political views but most on here take a keen interest and search out 'facts', the rest of the electorate not so much.
We're in the shit, we could easily end up with a Trump style govt at some stage.
I've got no answers though.

The time for coherent arguments to the right wing rhetoric has long gone.

MPs were too frightened to address it head on, so have let it gather speed and momentum.

Now any argument fact based or not against racism or immigration is "lefty" or "woke". So it won't cut through even in the slightest.

MPs from 2010 onwards have a hell of a lot to answer for, not just this but waving through austerity too.

 

[leedswolf]

MPs from 2010 onwards have a hell of a lot to answer for, not just this but waving through austerity too.

 

[Dire Wolf]

The way to change the dynamic is to actually deliver on policies that can actually be seen to make people better off. Instead of cuts, austerity, and attacking people at the bottom, which is what government after government has done, raise taxes on the very wealthy, invest in local infrastructure, invest in the NHS, and create jobs that actually pay well enough that people don't have to rely on benefits and food banks.

It has always been the case that the right surge when the economy means the poorest feel poorer. Immigration is used as an excuse for people's lives being shit, when in reality it is the huge disparity in wealth that is the problem. It's the old saying, "Tuppence ha'penny looking down on tuppence": people with very little end blaming people with even less, not looking up at the people who are actually causing the problem, the capitalist vultures.

 

[Tyrannosaurus Dan]

From reading various comments on SM yesterday amazed at how many people thought yesterday was a general election.

Sadly, this is the level of political understanding we are dealing with when it comes to a section of Reform voters.

The same sort of people who start #usepens hashtags as they think their vote will be changed if they use the pencil.