Snap General Election called

[Puja]

Starmer could make these policy changes (or some of them) but it's the argument he makes that's all wrong. He just needs to say that we need to rebalance a bit, 728,000 is historically too high, we need to bring it down. Not that it's causing incalculable harm to society, making us all strangers . . . whatever that means. This is Farage's message and as more voters are encouraged to believe it (the PM's saying it, after all) they'll vote for the party who hate immigrants the most. Labour will lose far more votes over this than they'll gain.

Farage must be laughing his head off, wondering at his luck that Starmer is so stupid.

You can have a discussion about immigration numbers without the emotion, and I think Starmer made a mistake with some of his language. As many have said before, don’t try and ape Farage, he will just become more extreme and dare you to keep up.

Starmer can’t ignore immigration. Unfortunately he seems keen to avoid a discussion on Brexit which caused the small boat issue n the first place. It’s also clear that without immigrants, large parts of our economy will be screwed. Will the masses ranks of the UKs unemployed suddenly decide to wipe up after people in care for minimum wage? Somehow I doubt it. So care costs will go through the roof and someone will have to pay.

But in my view the damage Brexit caused just becomes more apparent by the day, and it’s time to have a proper conversation about where it’s left us and what we do next.

Brexit, exactly. Unless I'm totally misunderstanding the situation, that's the reason why the immigration figures shot up under Johnson* - EU workers went home and had to be replaced. But instead of temporary EU visitors that meant permanent migrants (mostly from India and Nigeria, just to empower the far right even more). But Starmer is terrified of Brexit so can't even renegotiate Johnson's awful deal. Brexit has turboboosted immigration - the perfect result for Farage.

*Which may have seemed like a good idea at the time, since Farage had disappeared, dispelled by Brexit success and another populist, bullshitting leader.

It's austerity more than Brexit. The slashing and burning of budgets meant that wages stagnated and training opportunities vanished, leaving whole sectors reliant on Poles/Romanians/Bulgarians who could be imported en masse to do jobs at a lower wage than British people (and, in the case of nursing, often having trained abroad so we didn't have to pay for that either). We got ourselves into a shitty economic system where our economy was entirely reliant on importing cheap overseas labour, which was a problem even before we decided the best thing to do was to abruptly cut off the source of the cheap overseas labour that we depended on, for unrelated political reasons.

Even if we rejoined the EU tomorrow, it wouldn't be fixing the actual problem - just reinstalling the better workaround.

Puja

[Banquo]

In less notable news, the Greens are having a leadership election. Apparently they have it in their constitution that they're supposed to have one every two years, which seemed weird to me when I first heard it, but on further reflection actually seems quite sensible - means there's no need for things to get to a massive crisis before you can have a chance of direction and there's regular checks to make sure that the people in charge still represent the will of the party at large. I wonder whether the Labour party would still elect Starmer in a new leadership contest.

One of the candidates is making a bit of noise and is interesting - deputy leader Zack Polanski has said that the Greens need to be less timid and that the current void in British politics is one that they should be loudly stepping into. He's got a point - Farage plc have come in proudly saying that their aim is to kill the Conservative party and take over as the main party on the right of British politics, and it's working for them. With Labour currently engaged in trying to beat Reform to looting the corpse of the Tory party, there is an opportunity for a party with left wing policies. We need someone who can offer a Change option that's not the fascists-in-waiting, who can take the votes of people appalled about the government positions on Gaza, the environment, austerity, and immigration.

The Greens should be aiming to murder Labour in the same way Reform wants to kill the Conservatives, but they're standing politely to one side, quite pleasantly pleased about having 4 MPs, when they should be talking to people like Burgon, Long-Bailey, Sultana, McDonnell, Begum, Whittome and encouraging them to defect to start building the new home of the left wing. Hells, start with the 7 suspended from the whip for voting against the 2 child benefit cap, and then work their way through the list of the 42 who just wrote a letter to Starmer saying the planned benefit cuts are "impossible to support" (I can already tell them Starmer's answer - "I get it").

Puja

It's clear from their 2024 manifesto that the Greens are the only left-wing party (of the 5 main parties). They need to get this message out.

Everyone knows they are big on the climate crisis; what most of them probably don't realise is that the Greens are left-wing. If ordinary people want a traditional Labour approach to the working class, the Green Party is the only place to go. I'm not sure if the Greens think they will lose middle class voters but right now their USP is being left-wing and it's a bigger vote-winner than the environment.

Whether Polanski is the answer I don't know (he has a slightly embarrassing item in his past which the right wing press will endlessly remind him of should he ever become successful), but they do need to massively raise their profile. I think they are one charismatic leader away from making a breakthrough. Ramsey is never going to do it for them.

Agreed, they should do their best to get Labour or former Labour or independents to join the party. Clive Lewis would be great, although I can understand why he'd rather stay and hope for better times in the Labour party. However, after Starmer's rule changes and an influx of new centre-right MPs I'm not sure someone from the left has a chance of winning leadership now.

If people don't know the Greens are left, they ain't been paying attenti........oh...

[Puja]

This will be measured in deaths. Probably the most cruel thing this government has done, but the harm is overseas so who cares?

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... arity-over

Jesus H Fuck. Remember when it was abhorrent that the Tories "temporarily" reduced the budget from 0.7% of GDP to 0.5% because of the pandemic, with the ambition that it would go back up again "when circumstances allow"? Now 0.3%. Jesus fuck.

Quite apart from the moral aspect of that one of the major reasons why the UK is rich and a world power is because of Empire and vice versa for the countries that we profited from at the point of a bayonet and therefore development aid could be seen as the absolute bare minimum that our moral duty requires, or the other moral aspect that swapping cash for "investment" and "the benefit of our expertise" will cost lives, there is the practical aspect that supporting the development of other nations does a fuck of a lot more for our security than diverting that 0.2% of GDP to "fund defence".

You want to "STOP THE BOATS"? Maybe create opportunities and safety in countries like Sudan so that people aren't desperate enough to try and find anywhere else that will take them in? Or we want to have the ability to defend ourselves in case of future war - how about the soft power of positive international relations with countries who have populations that are many times the size of us and have very good reasons to hate us already given we not only rinsed their economy for centuries, but also stole a chunk of their cultural artefacts and display them proudly at the British Museum as our property. Russia's not cutting back their funding, nor is China - how safe do we feel with a paltry extra 0.2% spent on military assets and Russian propaganda flooding Nigeria, DR Congo, Tanzania? Hells, Wagner's already recruiting in Africa.

How about the incredible soft power that English is the second language of the world and the advantages that that gives us and that, by withdrawing and becoming insular, at the same time the United States is doing the same, we're leaving ourselves open to a challenge from Mandarin.

How about the fact that we cut the aid budget to Yemen from £260m to £101m from 2019-2023 (while cheerfully selling arms to Saudi Arabia to bomb them with) and shockingly, the extremists who hate us have grown in both power, membership, and animosity because the education and opportunities provided by our aid have vanished and they're offering easy answers. Now those extremists are attacking Red Sea shipping - how's that money-saving endeavour going?

How about the fact that the world is currently dying and there is a very real chance of biosphere collapse within my lifetime and the only chance to stave it off will involve the countries that we impoverished being willing and able to develop in a sustainable and ecological manner, but instead of funding that, we're ducking out and leaving China, the world's largest coal producer and exporter (who is currently in the process of decoaling their own power generation, but will still be producing a bunch of coal that they want a market for) as the unchallenged actor in the area? How about the fact that, as climate change accelerates, it will be poorer countries that will suffer most and the populations of those countries who will become desperate, angry, and displaced? If we think we're struggling with migration and terrorism now, let's just wait until the dustbowlification of East Africa starts to bite and see how well our 0.2% extra defence spending helps us then!


This is actually giving me a migraine. The world is dying, I am terrified that my children's futures are doomed, and this useless fuckwit is actively making things worse because he's got no morals or ethics other than, "Get power, keep power," and not enough brains to see that Reform voters are never gonna fuck him, no matter how much he tries to burnish his credentials.

I think this government might actually be the worst in the last 15 years. Not hyperbole - we said "Anything but the Tories" and yet I genuinely think this lot may actually be worse.

Puja

[Puja]

In less notable news, the Greens are having a leadership election. Apparently they have it in their constitution that they're supposed to have one every two years, which seemed weird to me when I first heard it, but on further reflection actually seems quite sensible - means there's no need for things to get to a massive crisis before you can have a chance of direction and there's regular checks to make sure that the people in charge still represent the will of the party at large. I wonder whether the Labour party would still elect Starmer in a new leadership contest.

One of the candidates is making a bit of noise and is interesting - deputy leader Zack Polanski has said that the Greens need to be less timid and that the current void in British politics is one that they should be loudly stepping into. He's got a point - Farage plc have come in proudly saying that their aim is to kill the Conservative party and take over as the main party on the right of British politics, and it's working for them. With Labour currently engaged in trying to beat Reform to looting the corpse of the Tory party, there is an opportunity for a party with left wing policies. We need someone who can offer a Change option that's not the fascists-in-waiting, who can take the votes of people appalled about the government positions on Gaza, the environment, austerity, and immigration.

The Greens should be aiming to murder Labour in the same way Reform wants to kill the Conservatives, but they're standing politely to one side, quite pleasantly pleased about having 4 MPs, when they should be talking to people like Burgon, Long-Bailey, Sultana, McDonnell, Begum, Whittome and encouraging them to defect to start building the new home of the left wing. Hells, start with the 7 suspended from the whip for voting against the 2 child benefit cap, and then work their way through the list of the 42 who just wrote a letter to Starmer saying the planned benefit cuts are "impossible to support" (I can already tell them Starmer's answer - "I get it").

Puja

It's clear from their 2024 manifesto that the Greens are the only left-wing party (of the 5 main parties). They need to get this message out.

Everyone knows they are big on the climate crisis; what most of them probably don't realise is that the Greens are left-wing. If ordinary people want a traditional Labour approach to the working class, the Green Party is the only place to go. I'm not sure if the Greens think they will lose middle class voters but right now their USP is being left-wing and it's a bigger vote-winner than the environment.

Whether Polanski is the answer I don't know (he has a slightly embarrassing item in his past which the right wing press will endlessly remind him of should he ever become successful), but they do need to massively raise their profile. I think they are one charismatic leader away from making a breakthrough. Ramsey is never going to do it for them.

Agreed, they should do their best to get Labour or former Labour or independents to join the party. Clive Lewis would be great, although I can understand why he'd rather stay and hope for better times in the Labour party. However, after Starmer's rule changes and an influx of new centre-right MPs I'm not sure someone from the left has a chance of winning leadership now.

If people don't know the Greens are left, they ain't been paying attenti........oh...

I think even when people know the Greens are left, they're known as a polite, quiet, small left. They're the protest vote of a Guardian reader, a quiet respectful group that fits into the "Other" category with Plaid Cymru and indepenent MPs - not someone to actually be taken seriously. Them winning 4 MPs wasn't treated by the media as any kind of a breakthrough, but more, "How weird is the situation at the moment where even the Greens are winning seats in parliament?!"

In public perception, they're not a left wing party, they're the irrelevant student treehuggers who coincidentally also have left wing policies.

Puja

[Banquo]

It's clear from their 2024 manifesto that the Greens are the only left-wing party (of the 5 main parties). They need to get this message out.

Everyone knows they are big on the climate crisis; what most of them probably don't realise is that the Greens are left-wing. If ordinary people want a traditional Labour approach to the working class, the Green Party is the only place to go. I'm not sure if the Greens think they will lose middle class voters but right now their USP is being left-wing and it's a bigger vote-winner than the environment.

Whether Polanski is the answer I don't know (he has a slightly embarrassing item in his past which the right wing press will endlessly remind him of should he ever become successful), but they do need to massively raise their profile. I think they are one charismatic leader away from making a breakthrough. Ramsey is never going to do it for them.

Agreed, they should do their best to get Labour or former Labour or independents to join the party. Clive Lewis would be great, although I can understand why he'd rather stay and hope for better times in the Labour party. However, after Starmer's rule changes and an influx of new centre-right MPs I'm not sure someone from the left has a chance of winning leadership now.

If people don't know the Greens are left, they ain't been paying attenti........oh...

I think even when people know the Greens are left, they're known as a polite, quiet, small left. They're the protest vote of a Guardian reader, a quiet respectful group that fits into the "Other" category with Plaid Cymru and indepenent MPs - not someone to actually be taken seriously. Them winning 4 MPs wasn't treated by the media as any kind of a breakthrough, but more, "How weird is the situation at the moment where even the Greens are winning seats in parliament?!"

In public perception, they're not a left wing party, they're the irrelevant student treehuggers who coincidentally also have left wing policies.

Puja

That may be a perception, but definitely not my experience in my dealings with the (local) Greens. Polite, respectful and quiet not, student tree huggers not. Strident, petty, vocal, entitled over 60 year old nimbys more like , who colonise local councils through the apathy of others (and fair play, the 'others' can't complain if not engaging). Its really hard work trying to work with these sorts of folks frankly- but obviously that's the up close and personal view.

My point though is the 'danger' of stereotyping or homogenising. Which maybe points back to your point on 'identity'.

[Puja]

https://anotherangryvoice.substack.com/ ... t-the-only

The video that's in the middle of this is really something. Prime Minister Starmer with his slow, deliberate calculated speaking style, peppered with dramatic pauses as he says, "If we do need to do more to reduce the pressures on public services, on benefits, on housing [by reducing migration], then mark my works - we will." And then the other half of the screen starts playing, showing Labour leader candidate Starmer from 2020, open collar and no tie, animation in his voice, talking with his hands and moving about as he says, "Low wages, poor housing, poor social services are not the fault of migrants; they're political failure. Political. Failure."

Utterly horrifying that the leader of our country is someone with so few convictions and so little character that he can leap from one persona to another without even the slightest sign that he realises it's a bad thing. Frankly, it's verging on sociopathic.

Puja

[Son of Mathonwy]

This will be measured in deaths. Probably the most cruel thing this government has done, but the harm is overseas so who cares?

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... arity-over

Jesus H Fuck. Remember when it was abhorrent that the Tories "temporarily" reduced the budget from 0.7% of GDP to 0.5% because of the pandemic, with the ambition that it would go back up again "when circumstances allow"? Now 0.3%. Jesus fuck.

Quite apart from the moral aspect of that one of the major reasons why the UK is rich and a world power is because of Empire and vice versa for the countries that we profited from at the point of a bayonet and therefore development aid could be seen as the absolute bare minimum that our moral duty requires, or the other moral aspect that swapping cash for "investment" and "the benefit of our expertise" will cost lives, there is the practical aspect that supporting the development of other nations does a fuck of a lot more for our security than diverting that 0.2% of GDP to "fund defence".

You want to "STOP THE BOATS"? Maybe create opportunities and safety in countries like Sudan so that people aren't desperate enough to try and find anywhere else that will take them in? Or we want to have the ability to defend ourselves in case of future war - how about the soft power of positive international relations with countries who have populations that are many times the size of us and have very good reasons to hate us already given we not only rinsed their economy for centuries, but also stole a chunk of their cultural artefacts and display them proudly at the British Museum as our property. Russia's not cutting back their funding, nor is China - how safe do we feel with a paltry extra 0.2% spent on military assets and Russian propaganda flooding Nigeria, DR Congo, Tanzania? Hells, Wagner's already recruiting in Africa.

How about the incredible soft power that English is the second language of the world and the advantages that that gives us and that, by withdrawing and becoming insular, at the same time the United States is doing the same, we're leaving ourselves open to a challenge from Mandarin.

How about the fact that we cut the aid budget to Yemen from £260m to £101m from 2019-2023 (while cheerfully selling arms to Saudi Arabia to bomb them with) and shockingly, the extremists who hate us have grown in both power, membership, and animosity because the education and opportunities provided by our aid have vanished and they're offering easy answers. Now those extremists are attacking Red Sea shipping - how's that money-saving endeavour going?

How about the fact that the world is currently dying and there is a very real chance of biosphere collapse within my lifetime and the only chance to stave it off will involve the countries that we impoverished being willing and able to develop in a sustainable and ecological manner, but instead of funding that, we're ducking out and leaving China, the world's largest coal producer and exporter (who is currently in the process of decoaling their own power generation, but will still be producing a bunch of coal that they want a market for) as the unchallenged actor in the area? How about the fact that, as climate change accelerates, it will be poorer countries that will suffer most and the populations of those countries who will become desperate, angry, and displaced? If we think we're struggling with migration and terrorism now, let's just wait until the dustbowlification of East Africa starts to bite and see how well our 0.2% extra defence spending helps us then!


This is actually giving me a migraine. The world is dying, I am terrified that my children's futures are doomed, and this useless fuckwit is actively making things worse because he's got no morals or ethics other than, "Get power, keep power," and not enough brains to see that Reform voters are never gonna fuck him, no matter how much he tries to burnish his credentials.

I think this government might actually be the worst in the last 15 years. Not hyperbole - we said "Anything but the Tories" and yet I genuinely think this lot may actually be worse.

Puja

Starmer and Reeves have no vision*. The can only think inside the box . . . and it's a neoliberal box.

Not sure they're the worst (but there's a case for it, true). We're only here because of the awful governments we've had in previous years. I expect Kemi Badenoch's (completely hypothetical) government would be worse. And I don't think Cameron and Osborne would be any better in 2025 UK. But the fact that Starmer's Labour is not obviously better than Sunak's Tories is shocking (it's better in some ways but has, incredibly, found ways to cut even more spending that the Tories).

* or empathy, obviously.

[Son of Mathonwy]

https://anotherangryvoice.substack.com/ ... t-the-only

The video that's in the middle of this is really something. Prime Minister Starmer with his slow, deliberate calculated speaking style, peppered with dramatic pauses as he says, "If we do need to do more to reduce the pressures on public services, on benefits, on housing [by reducing migration], then mark my works - we will." And then the other half of the screen starts playing, showing Labour leader candidate Starmer from 2020, open collar and no tie, animation in his voice, talking with his hands and moving about as he says, "Low wages, poor housing, poor social services are not the fault of migrants; they're political failure. Political. Failure."

Utterly horrifying that the leader of our country is someone with so few convictions and so little character that he can leap from one persona to another without even the slightest sign that he realises it's a bad thing. Frankly, it's verging on sociopathic.

Puja

Good link.

Everyone should see this although it comes as no surprise to the Labour party members he duped in 2020 that he's a conscience-deficient drone, seeking power for its own sake. Sociopath, psychopath, who knows, he has that characteristic void where his empathy should be.

I wonder which it is he believes about immigration, the 2020 or 2025 version? Or maybe he doesn't even have an opinion, merely speaking the words he thinks will most advantage himself from minute to minute, like chatgpt trained on the collected utterances of Tony Blair. Tony Blair without the charm.

A dangerous man who should never have risen to the top. He won't get another term but will most likely be replaced by an even more dangerous man.

(NB my god, has he aged in 5 years. Looks like 10, 15 years.)

[Son of Mathonwy]

More soft power being torched for negligible budget savings:

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2025/ ... et-slashed