General British politics discussion thread

Would this be the same hawkish stance that resulted in the Iraq war whose virtues you're extolling here?

The Americans are ruthless because they can be. The UK is a middling power that's just cut itself off from its most important allies. They don't even have an independent nuclear deterrent. The subs have to be outfitted and maintained in Georgia. As regards capability, the Tories have been gutting the army and the Royal Navy is now a measly three dozen or so ships. Even if this were not so, how does this benefit the average Brit? I find it hard to see how people struggling with heating benefit from military exercises in the South China Sea.

Oh, a strong and stable (forgive me) government would never do such a thing for the simple fact that it doesn't need to. It's a huge amount of political cost for no gain. When you have a party this corrupt, this incompetent and with no cohesion, the public see it. I don't think Starmer is winning votes because he's an amazing campaigner, I think it's because people want better governance than wailing about woke and asylum seekers.

Bear in mind that we're also getting boundary changes which favour the Tories as well. It makes sense as they have no ideas. When was the last time one of them say something sensible about climate change, housing or the NHS?

I've just seen a clip from a right wing outlet of a Brexit campaigner, Julie Slater decrying Rishi Sunak as a Socialist. I'd link it but I don't want to give them the traffic.

Just another normal day on normal island.

I don't know how good a metric local elections are. The only elections that people treat with due importance here are general elections. It's how Farage and his band were able to grift for years at the taxpayer's expense. I doubt anyone could name anyone they voted for in the local elections. I know I can't.

It is of course entirely possible that anyone progressive could stay at home. His pandering to xenophobes is particularly disgusting. He could push a positive image of Britishness but he apparently supports tagging refugees like dogs. I just don't get who this is for. Xenophobes already have a party. Progressives have a few which is a problem in a FPTP system.

Stuff like abolishing the House of Lords and banning second jobs are great ideas. I don't know if they'll go anywhere but they have merit. I understand why someone of his mindset is trying to stay away from the Brexit issue. It's ground on which progressives are spectacularly weak.

Ultimately, though I'm stuck here and I just want someone competent at the top. FPTP gives me the choice of two evils and I have to choose the lesser. I live in a red seat anyway so how I vote is actually irrelevant, assuming that an Irish passport is legitimate ID.

As an aside, is this a pan-European thing or just a Tories screwing over the working class Brits thing?

Thirty million people in the UK will be unable to afford what the public considers to be a decent standard of living by the time the current parliament ends in 2024, according to a study.

The New Economics Foundation, a left-leaning thinktank, said rising prices, below-inflation increases in earnings and projected increases in unemployment would result in 43% of households lacking the resources to put food on the table, buy new clothes or treat themselves and their families – a 12 percentage point rise compared with 2019.

The NEF said its calculation that by 2024 almost 90% of single parents and 50% of workers with children would fall below a minimum income standard showed the need for a radical overhaul of the welfare system.

It's just a constant barrage of bad news in this country and yet nobody seems to be demanding a GE. I'm at the age where I could return to Ireland but things seem a bit grim there as well.

Margaret Thatcher famously said that there's no such thing as society, just individuals. This is a very individualistic nation. The more I think about it, the more absurd the existence of the NHS seems, never mind the constant performative virtue-signalling that politicians and others engage in.

This can be good in that Brits tend to be fairly forward thinking in most regards. It also means that cohesiveness completely disintegrates when things go awry and there's much less in the way of a safety net. It also engenders a sense of disingenuousness I don't recall seeing in Ireland. For instance, you'd have southern Tories go on about how unfair EU quotas are on fishermen and the care not one whit for any impact Brexit had on said fishermen which was such that they were dumping their catches at one point.

I think we need serious constitutional change, not least a PR voting system, more devolution and ideally a written constitution. I can't see it happen but some of this is less distant than ever.