Off Topic Politics Thread

[San Tejón]

Doing a bit of googling I came across this making the point that Keir Starmer will get an easier ride from the media than Neil Kinnock did in 1992 when the UK’s top-selling newspaper claimed on its front page: “It was The Sun what won it.”
From https://pressgazette.co.uk/media-audience-and-business-data/media_metrics/uk-media-bias-2024/
"John Major’s Conservative Party achieved an unlikely and narrow 21-seat majority helped by an election day front page from The Sun intended to panic voters away from voting Labour after 13 years of Tory rule. It said: “If Kinnock wins today will the last person in Britain please turn out the lights?”

"Conservative peer Lord McAlpine said at the time that editors Sir David English (of the Daily Mail), Sir Nicholas Lloyd (of the Daily Express) and Kelvin MacKenzie of The Sun were the “heroes of this campaign” for their strong support of the Conservatives and comprehensive attacks on Labour."

"Going into the next general election Labour leader Keir Starmer will still have to contend with a largely right-wing printed press, but one that is far less influential today than it was in 1992."

The right wing press still sways the opinion of the Boomer generation, imo, as it’s the last generation to be raised with a heavy dependence on the daily newspaper for the news.
My children’s generation grew up to embrace the internet and, if my sons and their friends are any indication, newspapers weren’t/aren’t part of their daily lives.
The voting tendency of the majority of the boomers is to vote for the Tory party and if polled on whether or not they still read a newspaper, hard copy or online, my guess is that the majority would still be getting their daily fix and for most of them it would be the Mail, Express, Telegraph or Sun.
I won’t be around but it will be interesting to see how the country votes when the boomers are gone, or down to very small numbers.

 

[......loading......]

I think there are some great examples in world politics right now of liberals being lazy and presumptuous. Trudeau in Canada is perhaps the best example.

Is this not a lazy and presumptuous statement? Fairly sure being lazy and presumptuous are human qualities that are not specific to either wing.

The left has not even been in power in the UK for 14 years. We on the left got heavily battered at the last election. The left moved a lot of steps to the right afterwards to adjust. In the US there is no left. The Democrats are politically right of our Tories. Macron is not a leftist figure in France. Trudeau is not a liberal. He changes his views dependent on the situation and is probably best described as centrist.

 

[San Tejón]

Privatised food bank?

 

[Saintjoey]

Is this not a lazy and presumptuous statement? Fairly sure being lazy and presumptuous are human qualities that are not specific to either wing.

The left has not even been in power in the UK for 14 years. We on the left got heavily battered at the last election. The left moved a lot of steps to the right afterwards to adjust. In the US there is no left. The Democrats are politically right of our Tories. Macron is not a leftist figure in France. Trudeau is not a liberal. He changes his views dependent on the situation and is probably best described as centrist.

This government is just plain incompetent. Trudeau is/was not. He’s taken for granted a huge rump of voters who are utterly fed up of his complacency in assuming their support was a given.

 

[thereisonlyoneno7]

Is this not a lazy and presumptuous statement? Fairly sure being lazy and presumptuous are human qualities that are not specific to either wing.

The left has not even been in power in the UK for 14 years. We on the left got heavily battered at the last election. The left moved a lot of steps to the right afterwards to adjust. In the US there is no left. The Democrats are politically right of our Tories. Macron is not a leftist figure in France. Trudeau is not a liberal. He changes his views dependent on the situation and is probably best described as centrist.

This is the reason that I can (in my mind) and will vote Labour. Same for a lot of centralists who drift slightly right.

 

[It'sOnlyAGame]

Because at the time, the alternative was a man of Indian heritage.

After Truss, they had to vote for him.

This isn't my paranoia, but IMO fact. I said at the time of the first leadership campaign that no way would the Tory members vote an Indian man in. Even if it was clear the alternative was grossly incompetent.

I also think that if Truss had never happened, the Tories would be a lot closer to Labour (though still behind) than they are now.

Now you tell us. If I knew you were standing I would have voted for you.

Actually, now you've mentioned it, both Saints supporters, both of Indian heritage, both have worked in the US and are filthy rich. I always thought he posted on here.
Is that you Rishi?

 

[thereisonlyoneno7]

Now you tell us. If I knew you were standing I would have voted for you.

Actually, now you've mentioned it, both Saints supporters, both of Indian heritage, both have worked in the US and are filthy rich. I always thought he posted on here.
Is that you Rishi?

Nearly right. Just one bit wrong lol.

 

[AberdeenSaint]

She gave us the greatest speech of all time! "That. Is. A. Disgrace!"

It`s an open goal for cheese puns!

 

[- Doing The Lambert Walk]

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[Archers Road]

Because at the time, the alternative was a man of Indian heritage.

After Truss, they had to vote for him.

This isn't my paranoia, but IMO fact. I said at the time of the first leadership campaign that no way would the Tory members vote an Indian man in. Even if it was clear the alternative was grossly incompetent.

I also think that if Truss had never happened, the Tories would be a lot closer to Labour (though still behind) than they are now.

You might be right. Perhaps not though.

I have absolutely no love for the Tories, as you have probably guessed by now. But they have provided the U.K. with the first non Christian PM - Benjamin Disraeli, a century and a half ago - and in this century they’ve given us three women and an Asian man. So I have to give them some credit for that. It appears that to the Tories, so long as you hate (other) immigrants and poor people, it doesn’t matter what creed, gender or colour you are.

 

[thereisonlyoneno7]

You might be right. Perhaps not though.

I have absolutely no love for the Tories, as you have probably guessed by now. But they have provided the U.K. with the first non Christian PM - Benjamin Disraeli, a century and a half ago - and in this century they’ve given us three women and an Asian man. So I have to give them some credit for that. It appears that to the Tories, so long as you hate (other) immigrants and poor people, it doesn’t matter what creed, gender or colour you are.

True, or are they like some who say "I'm not racist, I am friends with lots of black/asian/etc people".....

 

[San Tejón]

True, or are they like some who say "I'm not racist, I am friends with lots of black/asian/etc people".....

My best friend from school used to play a joke on my wife by occasionally dropping a racist stereotype into a private conversation just to get her to react, which she always did, giving him a few slaps on the arm to reinforce her discomfort at what he would say.
I knew he was messing with her as his parents had specialised in fostering black children, which was quite brave in the late 60s, early 70s, and he bore no prejudice towards black people. His adopted brother is of mixed race.
Fast forward about 10 years and he’s at our front door to introduce his fiancée, a gorgeous black woman. I’m not sure how my wife stopped her chin from hitting the floor because I think she still wasn’t certain about his true beliefs.
He played the long game on that joke and won.

 

[Osvaldorama]

The view that the far left is as bad, or even the same, as the far right is an old old argument and gets us no nearer finding positive ways forward. Indeed if they are the same then it just makes the political graph circular rather than linear. One dimensional representation of multi layered issues producing cliche headlines and at best shallow policies and no solutions.
Maybe if we looked outside of the usual polictical paradigm... easier said than done. In our village, as in most, we have the vunerable amongs us. An elderly couple; she with quite advanced dementia, but a good front, he caring, loving and quite frail. Both have needs unmet by services. The villagers however provide in the spirit of friendship and compassion many kinds of support. I'm sure this story can be told in most communities in Britain today.
Friendship and compassion do not appear on most linear or circular political diagrams yet they are the under lying factors that make the good world go round. These, in my view, are the values, to be part of any cirriculum that aims to educate future generations.

The far-left is much, much worse than the far-right.

At least if you score it in terms of human lives & murders.

 

[Puck]

But He. Is. Going. To. Try. You know that just as well as I do, which is why you aren't arguing with it...you're just stating that he's going to fail. And he might well. But this time, they'll have four years to prepare, and a president wielding the pardon power to ensure that any illegal actions are forgiven (Trump's already flatly stating his intent to do so).

You're saying that they cannot do it because there is no legal grounding for an attempt to overturn democracy, but the legal process was never something they were particularly fussy about (not surprising given, y'know, the overturning-democracy thing). John Eastman, the soon-to-be-disbarred White House lawyer who dreamed up the fake electors scheme, openly admitted to Pence that their scheme was illegal, and they proceeded with it anyway:

https://yahoo.com/news/even-coup-memo-author-told-173116680.html

Others within the White House have stated that Eastman welcomed the likelihood that this move would result in disorder in the streets, because it would allow Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act and institute martial law.

There doesn't need to be an enabling act or a constitutional amendment: plenty of democracies have falling back into autocracy via what amounted to auto-coups, because once one holds enough of the levers of power, it becomes much easier to get the other levers of power to fall into line.

He wants to do it. He'll have four years to prepare to do it, to put the right people in place to do it. And he's going to try to do it. And yeah, he might be so spectacularly incompetent that he fails, and his all-McDonald's diet might cause him to drop dead before that point. But he is absolutely a threat to democracy. He has proven that before, through word and deed, and if elected he will prove it again.

I'm late again but there's really no point in this discussion. The only thing I'll say is I don't know he'll try to do that. Or anything of the sort. I don't pretend to know the minds of people I've never met, especially not someone like Trump whose public statements are so rambling and erratic, but actually I very much doubt he'd try. There's a huge difference between trying to manipulate the result of a pretty close election and trying to stage some sort of military coup. I have no doubt most politicians are capable of the former, very few would consider the latter.

 

[Puck]

You might be right. Perhaps not though.

I have absolutely no love for the Tories, as you have probably guessed by now. But they have provided the U.K. with the first non Christian PM - Benjamin Disraeli, a century and a half ago - and in this century they’ve given us three women and an Asian man. So I have to give them some credit for that. It appears that to the Tories, so long as you hate (other) immigrants and poor people, it doesn’t matter what creed, gender or colour you are.

Why has a party that (according to you) hates immigrants decided to allow the highest levels of immigration in the history of our country?

 

[Schad]

I'm late again but there's really no point in this discussion. The only thing I'll say is I don't know he'll try to do that. Or anything of the sort. I don't pretend to know the minds of people I've never met, especially not someone like Trump whose public statements are so rambling and erratic, but actually I very much doubt he'd try. There's a huge difference between trying to manipulate the result of a pretty close election and trying to stage some sort of military coup. I have no doubt most politicians are capable of the former, very few would consider the latter.

He didn't try to manipulate the results of a close election. He tried to overturn the results, first via fraud, and when that failed, by violence.

And I can't say that I know the mind of Trump, either. But I can say that it's really telling that so many people who worked closely with him have been sounding the alarm that, yes, he really wants to do these things, and will try to do these things.

Mark Esper is a Republican. Trump picked him to be Secretary of Defense, he served in that capacity until after the election, when Trump fired him because Esper pushed back on Trump's suggestion that they invoke the Insurrection Act. Here is his opinion of Trump:

https://thehill.com/homenews/campai...reat-to-democracy-on-capitol-riot-anniversary

“And yes, I do regard him as a threat to democracy, democracy as we know it, our institutions, our political culture, all those things that make America great and have defined us as, you know, the oldest democracy on this planet,” Esper told CNN’s Jim Acosta on Saturday.

Esper, who served as the secretary of the Army and later as defense secretary under the Trump administration, said Jan. 6 is a “tragic day in our nation’s history.”

Esper had concerns that Trump may use the military to remain in power after the 2020 presidential election and said that he thinks it’s a possibility that if Trump were reelected, he could use the military against potential protestors at a 2025 inauguration.

Here is Esper's predecessor as Secretary of Defense, James Mattis, also Republican, also picked by Trump:

"Today's violent assault on our Capitol, an effort to subjugate American democracy by mob rule, was fomented by Mr. Trump," said Mattis, who served as Trump's first secretary of defense, in a statement provided to ABC News.

And here's the letter that ten former SecDefs, most of them Republican (including Dick Cheney!), wrote after the 2020 election, when it became evident that Trump wanted to use the military to overturn the results:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...23d52e-4c4d-11eb-a9f4-0e668b9772ba_story.html

“Efforts to involve the U.S. armed forces in resolving election disputes would take us into dangerous, unlawful and unconstitutional territory,” wrote the former Defense secretaries.

“Civilian and military officials who direct or carry out such measures would be accountable, including potentially facing criminal penalties, for the grave consequences of their actions on our republic,” they added.

So, yes. I am inclined to believe them. Whether he will succeed is unknown. Whether he will try his damnest seems really evident.

 

[Puck]

He didn't try to manipulate the results of a close election. He tried to overturn the results, first via fraud, and when that failed, by violence.

Tedious semantics. Again, trying to manipulate/change/overturn/[whatever word you choose] the result of the 2020 election is a totally different thing to trying to remain in power beyond a second term, and if you're arguing he poses a threat to democracy now that's what you have to argue he would do. None of the quotes I've left out suggest he has any intent to do that. I very much doubt he plans to try.

I'm not replying to anything else on this.

 

[Schad]

This government is just plain incompetent. Trudeau is/was not. He’s taken for granted a huge rump of voters who are utterly fed up of his complacency in assuming their support was a given.

As a Canadian, I don't find this a particularly plausible explanation. Trudeau has a minority government currently, and has since 2019...not exactly an environment that breeds complacency. I'd say that the biggest drivers are:

1. Longevity. Trudeau has won the past three elections. The last Canadian PM to win four consecutive elections was Wilfrid Laurier...from 1896-1911. He really ought to retire before the election, and I still suspect it's better than even odds that he does.

2. The housing/cost of living crisis. This is the biggest political issue, and the Liberal government hasn't really had a solution for it. Granted, a large part of the reason that the federal government doesn't have a solution for it is that it isn't primarily a federal issue...the feds control the purse strings in Canada, but most housing policy (most policy in general, really) is determined at the provincial or town/municipal levels. The feds can exert pressure on the lower levels through their control of the purse strings, and belatedly have, but the results of that won't be seen for a few years, long after the election.

3. Vote-splitting. The Conservatives are likely to take a significant plurality of the vote in the next election, but the three left-of-center parties in the Liberals/NDP/Greens will (as per usual) likely take more of the vote than the parties on the right. I say this as an NDP voter: there really isn't any reason for the party to exist anymore. The Liberals used to be further to the right, and the NDP used to be further to the left (and exerted considerable influence over the agenda despite never coming close to power), but now they occupy most of the same territory and compete for most of the same votes. If the two parties merged, as the parties on the right did in the 2000s, this would be a far different election.

 

[Schad]

Tedious semantics. Again, trying to manipulate/change/overturn/[whatever word you choose] the result of the 2020 election is a totally different thing to trying to remain in power beyond a second term, and if you're arguing he poses a threat to democracy now that's what you have to argue he would do. None of the quotes I've left out suggest he has any intent to do that. I very much doubt he plans to try.

I'm not replying to anything else on this.

He wanted to call the military out in order to retain power. That is according to the cabinet official Trump selected in order to oversee the military, the one that Trump fired when it became apparent that he would not utilize the military to help Trump retain power. I'm not the one engaging in semantics here...that is a direct threat to democracy, which is why so many Trump officials keep coming out and saying that he is a threat to democracy.

 

[Puck]

The far-left is much, much worse than the far-right.

At least if you score it in terms of human lives & murders.

There's a point here. There are very obvious differences in the way the far left and far right are viewed. I used to work in London with a young Polish woman who was deeply shocked by how often she saw people wearing or carrying the hammer and sickle symbol. She used to say things like "Don't they know what those people were like? Don't they know what they did?" and "They wouldn't wear a swastika so how can they wear that?"