As long as people acknowledge the issues I think most people won’t feel forced to Farage. But saying there isn’t one or that only bigots see one… dangerous.
Sadly it will take a long time to change the hearts and minds of those whose bigotry is so deep-rooted that they refuse to be seen by a doctor with a brown face, or refuse to speak any other language than English when they are in a foreign country. I accept that not all those who voted Reform are that bad, but a good percentage of them are.
I will be interested in seeing if shares dividends are looked at by Labour, as a way of raising additional tax revenue. As I understand it the basic rate is set at just 8.75%, considerably lower than the rate paid by workers. I would also hope that they introduce some kind of law that is aimed at any company that is given a government contract, as in the company MUST pay all it’s taxes, from profit connected to the contract, in the UK (if this isn’t already happening). Equally they should be looking to stop companies like Amazon paying their taxes on money made in the UK, countries with a lower tax rate.
I think there is a broader international effort to try stop multinationals fiddling their tax into lower rate countries. But the havens and America are (unsurprisingly) not on board yet. I’m not sure it’s something quite as simple as something we can do alone. But a broader move in this direction internationally might help
France is in an interesting place. While diverse, they have never got on board with multiculturalism. To the French, if you live in France you adopt French ways, customs and fashions. That clearly isn’t working. The nature of immigration is people come over and are poor. They become ghettoised. In the UK we let them keep their ways and their cultures and hope over time they will assimilate. In France, they don’t, leading to direct clashes. I don’t know where I stand on all this, to be honest. I do think values are sacrosanct and non-negotiable. I also feel we are very lucky to live in the West. Net migration is too high across Europe. But it isn’t the immigrants to blame. It is the aging population and the declining of young workers. God knows who will fix this. But it won’t be the LePens and Farages.
Which ones? I haven’t read them so this is a genuine question Where did you find the summary of the policies ?
Read the policies across a few different sources, just found from Google. One insane policy is to decrease the retirement age to 60 - that would just be so expensive especially with people living longer and an ageing population. They also want to make assylum easier to claim to essentially increase immigration, something france does not need and will likely further divide. They also have lots of other policies which sound good on paper such as massively increasing minimum wage and other huge spending commitments. But they plan to fund that by reintroducing a wealth tax. In france that tax was proven not to raise revenues anywhere near as much as forecast as so many wealthy indivduals left the country. I consider myself fairly left wing, particularly fiscally, but their policies are like the greens over here in terms of massively over estimating the tax revenues they would generate.
Great news about the far right in France. But Melanchon is absolutely as bad and as extreme on the other side. See what he thinks about Russia/ukraine for instance
Thing is - neither the far left or far right can command a majority based on this. The left will have to water down its policies by teaming with macron. But if they are sensible they might be able to get some stepping stones No clue what happens now - I just know that none of the parties manifestos get implemented in full
The Spanish PM, Sanchez has been brilliant to include a wide spectrum of people from different parties from across the left and Catalanist Nationalists (Puigdemont), so he knows how to reach out to people and build bridges. Without him, Spain would be under the weak leadership of the Conservative Feijoo supported by the hard-right Vox party. Mallorca is suffering because Popular Partido (Conservatives) chose an alliance with Vox. One of the things Vox wants to do is end the learning of Catalan in Mallorcan public schools for parents who don't want it. I thought learning languages was rather helpful rather than a hindrance but then Vox knows better.
Turns out Macron is playing 5D chess. ‘I threw an unpinned grenade at their feet, now we will see how they get on’. Certainly true.
Someone just showed a picture of Starmer outside number 10 along with the words middle aged white man evicts Asian family.
