The Labour Government

Don’t we always hear that Reform have the youth vote sewn up through their clever use of Tik Tok algorithms?
Urban myth I suspect, looking at the poll above. And considering 16 and 17 year olds are all broke and regard anyone with more than 50p in the bank as being loaded and therefore fair game for higher taxes.

Plus 4 years is a long time until next election. That's a lot of time to get your social media brainwashing working if you are Labour.
 
YouGov's latest voting intention poll for 18 to 24 year olds, puts Labour at 28%, followed by the Greens on 26% and the Liberal Democrats on 20%.

In contrast, the Tories on 9% and Reform UK on 8%.

We absolutely need to give 16 and 17 year olds the vote to, er, strengthen democracy. Voting intentions surely have nothing to do with it.

Of course the left know, at least historically, young people are more likely to be socialist until they hit 30 and start paying more taxes, have kids and a mortgage then they think fuck that I’m a conservative. Those who don’t transition tend to just hang around blue moon raging against the machine until their beloved Labour Party becomes tories for them. Of course there are some very notable socialists on this thread who stick to their beliefs- you know the ones, @Postman Pep , @Don Karleone , @TinFoilHat , @Rascal etc etc (although our Russ is a full on communist nutter but I do genuinely love the bloke) - the others are just good old proper leftie tossers who I actually agree with on many things, it’s only the how to get there we generally disagree on.

Anyroad I digress, I don’t know where they got the figures from but Sky news reported yesterday when the 16 year old vote story broke, that their numbers had Labour showing 28% and next was reform on 20% of the 16/17 age group. Obviously it’s not like Sky to big up Farage but still, I’d like to think their polling was real.
 
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I haven't waded through umpteen recent pages but have I got this right?

People who've been critical of Labour for breaking manifesto promises (or doing things that weren't mentioned in the manifesto "but should have been") are now up in arms because Labour is keeping a manifesto pledge to lower voting age...
 
I haven't waded through umpteen recent pages but have I got this right?

People who've been critical of Labour for breaking manifesto promises (or doing things that weren't mentioned in the manifesto "but should have been") are now up in arms because Labour is keeping a manifesto pledge to lower voting age...
Nope...

But didn't I read someone on here saying the manifesto was only a wish list?

No, fair enough if it was in the manifesto it is arguably what people voted for so no complaints from me, however personally I think it's too young. As someone has already mentioned, it's the 12 year olds plus they need to canvass about voting intentions because they are the people we are talking about. It is quite likely they will be heavily influenced by their parents, hence why, given Reforms national popularity, they seem to be coming out of this favourably. This does not bode well for the future IMO as people who genuinely detest Reform may feel the impact of this decision... could this be a big own goal by Labour?
 
I haven't waded through umpteen recent pages but have I got this right?

People who've been critical of Labour for breaking manifesto promises (or doing things that weren't mentioned in the manifesto "but should have been") are now up in arms because Labour is keeping a manifesto pledge to lower voting age...


I don't remember these objections during the Scottish Independence Referendum
 
Urban myth I suspect, looking at the poll above. And considering 16 and 17 year olds are all broke and regard anyone with more than 50p in the bank as being loaded and therefore fair game for higher taxes.

Plus 4 years is a long time until next election. That's a lot of time to get your social media brainwashing working if you are Labour.

I think there's a narrative that Andrew Tate loving 16/17 year old lads will all vote Reform and if I use my recently turned 18 year olds sixth form as anecdotal evidence then there's certainly a small percentage who comform to that stereotype but its not huge numbers.

The kids aren't really the issue when it comes to social media, my son and his mates know exactly what's goin on and are spending less and less time online . If we want to deal with the vulnerable and easily radicalised we should probably ban the 30-55 year olds from it. Enforced big state digital detox for the masses, I know you'll support that Chippy :-)
 
I suppose the question we have to ask ourselves is is her basic premise wrong? I struggle to see anything remotely wrong in what she is saying.

People use the term racism far too loosely, you only have to look at the immigration debate on here. Not wanting immigration isn’t in itself racist, not wanting immigrants of a certain ethnicity would be. After all we are blessed with an English language is rich in words and there are perfectly suitable words to describe someone who does not want immigration (or high immigration). Sadly racism (at least antidotally for me) is on the rise, social media allows this toxic messaging on its platforms and the algorithms do the rest - I posted previously how I paused on a post that I thought was about history (which I love) but ended up just being racist shit and my feed was then inundated for a few days from one post, these cunts that want to get folk worked up about something or other know exactly what they are doing and how to snare folk. @BlueHammer85 Is spot on when he rants about social media. I don’t know the answers or where to begin other than to turn it off, except BM!

To your second point, you may well be right, Abbott may well have provoked this fight so she can cuddle up with Corbyn again of course. It would make an element of sense. If so Starmer has shown again he isn’t very strategic and walked straight in to her trap.

Arguments about race are certainly complex, but I don't think her initial letter was. She was responding to this article https://www.theguardian.com/comment...ck-and-white-issue-it-is-far-more-complicated, and her reply, which very clearly stated she didn't think white people faced racism, and then added the comment about people with red hair also facing prejudice, was condemned across the board. Given the context of the article, about abuse/assaults faced by various ethnic groups, and the scrutiny Labour was under, it made pretty grim reading.

Her apology was made very quickly, and, despite the curious comments about it being a draft, was very clear, and appeared genuine. Certainly not the non-apology that many politicians make.

As I said, I completely agree that what she said yesterday was much more reasonable, and she could have made that argument many times without anyone batting an eyelid. In the context of it being a response to that article, it was always a very loaded response, and it appeared at the time that she regretted what she said. What disappointed me, is that by suggesting she had no regrets about the incident, setting up the straw man, and then claiming her critics were silly, she's clearly rowing back on the apology.
 
100% something I have been saying for quite a while now. Both main parties have proven themselves to be incapable of running the country.

As for Reforms current popularity, say what you like, call me all the names under the sun but it is 100% a reflection of Labours abysmal performance in government.
Reform has failed every single scrutiny test so far. They're only doing well because they dominate the immigration argument but their solutions are still extremely weak and limited to populist soundbites.

These solutions will not pass the test when it comes to proper scrutiny in the courts, treasury, civil service and so on. Naturally they'll then blame those people for simply doing their job properly and refusing to for example break the law. It's straight out of the Trumpian playbook.

If you think Labour are abysmal then you haven't seen anything yet but we'll see what Reform does in the councils. My bet is they'll do absolutely nothing and then those who voted for Reform will suddenly catch the strange disease that is selective amnesia.

I still maintain that the country is screwed in many respects regardless of who gets in and that's just the reality facing any government. There is a perception that a change of government can resolve everything but it just isn't true. As one of my bosses used to always say you can't polish a turd but you can roll it in glitter.
 
Having listened to the interview, I don't think it was. I do believe she's misrepresenting what she said in the first place. If she'd not gone further in her initial letter, she wouldn't have had a problem in the first place.

I've just said in my reply to DK that it sounds to me like she's setting up a straw man in the R4 interview, by making a different, more reasonable argument, and then suggesting her critics were silly to disagree.
Her latest statement is in line with much of what she's said before, for her racism is white on black racism, all other forms of so called "racism" are either gradations of prejudice or white fear of replacement, bastardisation or corruption of bloodline like the Nuremberg Laws of 1935: the Reich Citizenship Law and the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour, which outlined the fascist rationale for the persecution of Jews and underpinned the Holocaust.

Put simply, for Abbott the only form of racism is white on black racism, all "other" racisms are nothing more than an internal white feud for racial purity coupled with a fetish for eugenics. Powerful white folk drawing a circle round the white racial ideal and persecuting the untermenschen (subhuman) who threaten the pure bloodline of the white master race, hence the animosity between the Teuton and the Slav that underpinned both world wars.

In other words a white in-house problem. Not racism at all.

That's why Abbott sees racism exclusively as a white problem with blacks, but more than that, and this is the issue, for her it's a problem that stems from whiteness itself and it has always been thus. Hence white folk have historically persecuted black folk and continue to do so to this day because black folk not only pose an existential threat to whiteness through inter breeding, like "lesser" white races do for the white supremacists, but, and this is the crux for Abbott, black folk are not even untermenschen like the Jews and Slavs were for the Nazis, they're not inferior versions of whiteness, they're something else, they're not white at all and as whiteness defines what it is to be human then black folk are not just lesser humans they're lesser beings entirely, hence the slave ships where black folk were treated like cattle, hence the inhumanity shown to George Floyd, hence BLM.
 
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For a lot of people I think it comes down to not Labour and not Conservative.

Those considering it more thoughtfully I suspect are interested in reducing immigration, and also critically, getting the state off our backs, getting rid of woke shite, DEI and other such bollocks, and giving people personal freedoms back. People want less meddling with their lives, I think.

Sounds suspiciously like an election leaflet that!! What I mostly hear people talking about is being fed up with the cost of living and access to services etc. I do hear some people talk about immigration too but personally I'm struggling to think of anyone talking about getting 'the state off their backs' other than a business owner I know who wants to be able to swerve the h&s rules in his business (which given that they all work at height strikes me as a bit mad personally). If anything I think the polls show a majority want more public spending and though there's the obvious question of how to raise the money it doesn't suggest an innate desire to shrink the state.

I assume the reason the Reform leadership focuses on immigration rather than their broader neoliberal ideological stance is because they know it won't get the same level of traction in the UK compared to say the US?
 
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Her latest statement is in line with much of what she's said before, for her racism is white on black racism, all other forms of racism are either gradations of prejudice or white fear of replacement, bastardisation or corruption of bloodline like the Nuremberg Laws of 1935: the Reich Citizenship Law and the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour, which outlined the fascist rationale for the persecution of Jews and underpinned the Holocaust.

Put simply for Abbott racism is white on black racism, all other racisms are a fetish for eugenics. Powerful white folk drawing a circle round the white racial ideal and persecuting the untermenschen (subhuman) who threaten the pure bloodline of the white master race, hence the animosity between the Teuton and the Slav that underpinned both world wars

That's why Abbott sees racism as a white problem, but more than that, and this is the issue, for her it's a problem that stems from whiteness and it has always been thus. Hence white folk have historically persecuted black folk and continue to do so to this day because black folk not only pose an existential threat to whiteness through inter breeding, like "lesser" white races did for the Nazis, but, and this is the crux, black folk are not even untermenschen like the slavs were for the Nazis, they're not inferior versions of whiteness, they're something else, they're not white at all and as whiteness defines what it is to be human then blacks are not just lesser humans they're lesser beings entirely, hence the slave ships where black folk were treated like cattle, hence the inhumanity shown to George Floyd, hence BLM.

I appreciate that. I used to work in Hackney, alongside plenty of political activists, including people who knew Diane, and that view is not unusual in the slightest. I also wouldn't presume to dismiss, or even discuss, her own experiences, when clearly she's faced abuse, and challenges way beyond anything in my life.

The initial article she replied to, however, was about day to day abuse faced by people from a variety of ethnic groups, and a couple of dismissive paragraphs, was not a nuanced or thoughtful response. Have a look at the hundreds of articles and responses written at the time - even people defending her tended to argue that what she said went too far, and that it was reasonable for her to apologise. The issue yesterday is that she wasn't making a totally separate argument, she clearly linked this to the arguments she made at that time and that's what I found disappointing.
 
YouGov's latest voting intention poll for 18 to 24 year olds, puts Labour at 28%, followed by the Greens on 26% and the Liberal Democrats on 20%.

In contrast, the Tories on 9% and Reform UK on 8%.

We absolutely need to give 16 and 17 year olds the vote to, er, strengthen democracy. Voting intentions surely have nothing to do with it.
So what you're effectively saying is that you don't want to give 16 and 17 year olds the vote because it's likely they'll vote for a party you don't like. Why don't you just go the whole hog and say that everyone who isn't going to vote Tory or Reform should be excluded from voting? ;)
 
So what you're effectively saying is that you don't want to give 16 and 17 year olds the vote because it's likely they'll vote for a party you don't like. Why don't you just go the whole hog and say that everyone who isn't going to vote Tory or Reform should be excluded from voting? ;)
Apparently, you can’t join the army (I.e. fight for ‘your country’) after your 43rd birthday which, going off the logic of many on here, means you shouldn’t be able to vote if you’re 44 or older…
 
It's funny to watch the Reform lovers on here moan and flap about the youth having a vote, guess their main hope is filtering social media with racist spam and try and influence them that way.
 
Arguments about race are certainly complex, but I don't think her initial letter was. She was responding to this article https://www.theguardian.com/comment...ck-and-white-issue-it-is-far-more-complicated, and her reply, which very clearly stated she didn't think white people faced racism, and then added the comment about people with red hair also facing prejudice, was condemned across the board. Given the context of the article, about abuse/assaults faced by various ethnic groups, and the scrutiny Labour was under, it made pretty grim reading.

Her apology was made very quickly, and, despite the curious comments about it being a draft, was very clear, and appeared genuine. Certainly not the non-apology that many politicians make.

As I said, I completely agree that what she said yesterday was much more reasonable, and she could have made that argument many times without anyone batting an eyelid. In the context of it being a response to that article, it was always a very loaded response, and it appeared at the time that she regretted what she said. What disappointed me, is that by suggesting she had no regrets about the incident, setting up the straw man, and then claiming her critics were silly, she's clearly rowing back on the apology.

I largely agree with you. She originally said what she believes in, some outrage followed - some genuine some faux.

Her apology was [likely] for her perceived clumsy language not her message which, for me, was and is an important topic. She didn’t suddenly change her mind on things, these are deeply held views based on her own experiences, I am absolutely not a fan of hers but it is a shame a lady of her standing is being silenced on this.
 
It's funny to watch the Reform lovers on here moan and flap about the youth having a vote, guess their main hope is filtering social media with racist spam and try and influence them that way.
And I happen to think they might have some success with that.

But yep, the flappers are out in force about this. Still, I think what's even funnier about Reform voters is that they all suddenly seem to be in favour of Proportional Representation these days but when they voted Labour and Tory they weren't!
 

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