Quelle surprise...

[Heathblue]

Re: Quelle surprise...

I hope you are right about the public seeing through Reform. They will probably get a bit more scrutiny and get fewer easy (and free and frequent) rides if the polls don’t change - even if they have sections if the Tory press backing them.

But I am not convinced there will be a return to ‘normal’ at the next election or at any time before that. The UK is not so different from the rest of Europe, and the comfortable post-war duopoly in France, Germany and elsewhere has been exploded. There are new parties and alliances of the left, right and centre (usually centre right). Social media has undermined the influence of the MSM. Populism has morphed into new forms. The international map has changed with major impacts on jobs, migration and cost of living.

All things are possible over the next few years - for bad if we sit back and let it happen; for good if we act together for positive change. Granted my positive may not be yours (although we seem to be agreed on Reform) but it does feel as if the old rules and certainties have gone!

I'd be tempted to break my no voting policy if I thought these grifters were looking nailed on, my disgust for Farage is probably on a level as yours is for 🍊.

[Dorcus]

Re: Quelle surprise...

I'd be tempted to break my no voting policy if I thought these grifters were looking nailed on, my disgust for Farage is probably on a level as yours is for 🍊.

Kudos to you HB: credit where credit's due 👍

[the other bob wilson]

Re: Quelle surprise...

I'd be tempted to break my no voting policy if I thought these grifters were looking nailed on, my disgust for Farage is probably on a level as yours is for ��.

It’s only eight years ago that the combined Tory/Labour vote in a General Election was over 80 per cent - current polling indicates that they’d struggle to get half of that now. People’s lives have been shit for more than fifteen years with fourteen of them taken up by a discredited Conservative Government and the rest by a Labour Government which just offers more of the same with a penchant for cruel and stupid decisions that, I suspect, has already defined them in the eyes of the public. An awful lot of old Tory and Labour voters won’t be returning to their former parties any time soon.

[JamesWales]

Re: Quelle surprise...

It’s only eight years ago that the combined Tory/Labour vote in a General Election was over 80 per cent - current polling indicates that they’d struggle to get half of that now. People’s lives have been shit for more than fifteen years with fourteen of them taken up by a discredited Conservative Government and the rest by a Labour Government which just offers more of the same with a penchant for cruel and stupid decisions that, I suspect, has already defined them in the eyes of the public. An awful lot of old Tory and Labour voters won’t be returning to their former parties any time soon.

You miss out a couple of key years there Bob, and that's 2008 and 2009 which is when this country (and others) problems truly began, and nothing has been the same since. On nearly every metric, 2009 was the worst of the past 17 years, even if the following 15 have dragged, they are all tied back to that year ultimately. We had soaring unemployment, bank bailouts, severe uncertainty for millions.

Those first two years of the shitty times were under Labour (who were then kicked out) and followed by Tories/Libs and now Labour and not much changes really. On the big issues there isn't much between them IMO. And that's probably why people are looking for alternatives.

But yeah, when Labour talked of the last 14 years at the last election, I think we all knew they were being pretty selective with their dates.

[the other bob wilson]

Re: Quelle surprise...

You miss out a couple of key years there Bob, and that's 2008 and 2009 which is when this country (and others) problems truly began, and nothing has been the same since. On nearly every metric, 2009 was the worst of the past 17 years, even if the following 15 have dragged, they are all tied back to that year ultimately. We had soaring unemployment, bank bailouts, severe uncertainty for millions.

Those first two years of the shitty times were under Labour (who were then kicked out) and followed by Tories/Libs and now Labour and not much changes really. On the big issues there isn't much between them IMO. And that's probably why people are looking for alternatives.

But yeah, when Labour talked of the last 14 years at the last election, I think we all knew they were being pretty selective with their dates.

Well, itÂ’s arguable to say that 2008 was the year when it started going wrong, IÂ’d say thatÂ’s proof that it was the year when things came to a head more than twenty years after Thatcher started deregulating the financial sector who then went on to prove exactly why they had been regulated in the first place. Blair and Brown sometimes came over as being even more enthusiastic about encouraging dodgy bankers than the Tories were and we suffered more than most when 2008 hit because we had gone further with the deregulation.

Once 2008 hit, you got the usual knockabout political stuff about it all being LabourÂ’s fault because they were the ones in power, but I donÂ’t remember there being opposition claims that we were heading for a crash in the years leading up to the 2008 crash. In fact, I donÂ’t remember much dispute from any of the other parties regarding how Labour went about dealing with the situation and so I think the approach in 2008 and 2009 broadly had cross party support.

Come the 2010 election, IÂ’ve always believed Labour lost not because of 2008, but because theyÂ’d got to the stage any long serving Governments gets to when their ideas seem old hat and people start to want a change. My recollection was that although Labour got political mileage out of the worst cases of Tory austerity, they had little different to offer until Corbyn got in and you start to hear talk of a loosening of the public purse. Interestingly, by offering A clear alternative to Tory austerity in 2017, Corbyn got Labour support up to levels comparable with Blairism at its most popular. It wasnÂ’t sustained in 2019, but IÂ’d say that was an election decided more by Brexit and immigration than public finances.

Since 2019, Labour has been subject to the greyness of StarmerÂ’s leadership and despite building their 2024 election win on the need for change, they are a curious mixture of coming across as being too scared to do anything bold which may see a difference emerge between Tory Austerity and Labour Austerity and policies, which did not always appear in their 2024 Manifesto, which penalise the most vulnerable in society. I donÂ’t think people will forget the scrapping of the winter fuel allowance, the cruel welfare cuts and the capping of of allowances to two children and Labour donÂ’t deserve to be forgiven for that.

Put that with some very, very dubious attitudes towards the right to protest, the proscribing of Palestine Action, the ludicrous attempts to try and chase the Reform vote over immigration and their continuing support for Israel despite some long overdue sighs of them realising how out of step they are with public feeling on Gaza and Labour have done a great job in persuading large portions of their traditional support to desert them and I certainly do not see them coming back under this leadership.

Amazingly, the Tories are, if anything, in a worse mess than Labour. TheyÂ’re led by someone who admits to reporting schoolmates for cheating at an exam. Sorry, but Badenoch, and Starmer, tend to confirm that politics is a career for people who are odd. So, in 2029 (surely even Starmer, or his successor, is not odd enough to call an election before then?) youÂ’ll have a choice between weirdos in charge of the main parties and a classic populist grifter type that has been a part of politics the world over for hundreds, or even thousands, of years - I think weÂ’re going to see lots of people seriously considering voting for the so called smaller parties for the first time in their lives.

[Heathblue]

Re: Quelle surprise...

It’s only eight years ago that the combined Tory/Labour vote in a General Election was over 80 per cent - current polling indicates that they’d struggle to get half of that now. People’s lives have been shit for more than fifteen years with fourteen of them taken up by a discredited Conservative Government and the rest by a Labour Government which just offers more of the same with a penchant for cruel and stupid decisions that, I suspect, has already defined them in the eyes of the public. An awful lot of old Tory and Labour voters won’t be returning to their former parties any time soon.

I think you are probably correct and that i wasn't acknowledging/appreciating how politics has become so polarised in the past couple of decaades