To worry about the right wing?

If you care to look more closely @Rspbc1 , you will be able to locate many former members of those 'tiny' far right groups, now sitting comfortably in the lap of the Conservative Party who once would have had nothing to do with them and their disgusting beliefs. As they have gained ground, decent Tories have left in disgust. Look in your own backyard if you're 'worried' about the right wing.

@etmoietmoietmoi , re Thatcher and housing, Labour had 13 years in which to get rid of Right to Buy, but despite their endless bewailing of it, they didn’t.

Could that possibly be because they thought it would lose them votes? Not that I’m a nasty cynic or anything…

We need adults back in the room in British politics

The (old as the hills) problem is adults are boring and don't sell newspapers, Or website clicks. Hence we progress from Julius Caesar to Nero and then 4 emperors in a year until we reached a level of stability.

You're not unreasonable at all

I'd describe myself as centre left but in recent years would say I've had more common ground with other centrists than the blue haired Momentum movement end of the Labour Party.

Moderate conservatives are probably centre right.

The Tory party leadership at the moment has lurched worryingly to the right and seems to have embraced a toxic mix of BNP, UKIP types, ERG, disaster capitalists and any other worryingly disgusting person who has three goals:

1. To enrich themselves
2. Blame minority groups and play disgusting divide and conquer politics
3. Try to centralise power, demonise academia and experts and lead average people into believing things like Human Rights legislation and decent working terms are awful.

We need adults back in the room in British politics.

Meh in return

Same applies to original post on Poland. Of course it was the NZ one that got this response.

Meh. The political pendulum always swings. NZ have had two terms of a centre-left government, so change was always very likely. Poland have had two terms of a pretty extreme right wing government, and despite the efforts of said government to manipulate the election, the pendulum has swung against them. It's just how politics goes.

The great thing about FPTP is that if they do, it will be at Tory expense.

YANBU @Swingstotheleftslidetotheright. The Tories are a complete shitshow. It will be interesting to see if parties further to the right will benefit from their demise.

I wouldn’t bother looking for Corbyn threads though even mnhq finds him too off colour these days

🙄 at these types of posts

You could stick to the Labour threads if that’s all you want to read

Btw check out NZ

Did you hear Sunak welcoming Farage into the Tory party? if he so wished.

Why we are the only country ever to leave the EU, ministers openly saying we should leave the ECHR, ignore the UN charter on refugees, our deportation policy aims, the attacks on benefit claimants, our very vocal support for countries like Saudi Arabia.

No one votes BNP EDL etc etc because so much of what they want is being done by the Tories.

The Communist party or whatever they call themselves now is not banned, unlike members of the EDL BNP etc who have very violent and racist views, even FB banned theses groups.

Interesting time for this thread to come up gasping for air. It's almost as if a coachload of right wing nutjobs have been let loose to divert attention from the decline of the right elsewhere. I was heartened that the results in Poland look to be partly due to more women voting.

What does “woke” mean?

Can we ever go back to being moderate and tolerant?

As someone from a minority group (which has been treated abhorrently by the West for hundreds of years), I’m not sure I would say Britain has ever been “moderate” or “tolerant”. But no, YANBU to note the increase in the voices of the far right. Things have been more discrete in the last few decades or so, those things now seem to be rising to the surface once again. It’s not surprise to me as these people have always been amongst and around us, they’re just emboldened enough to show their hands now.

That's for the OP, not for you @LadyWithLapdog. The far right has infiltrated and hijacked the Tory party filling it with Ukippers, other far righters, conspiracists and other swivel eyed loons. Trying to swing it the other way is just part of the programme. People would be correct to worry about the far right OP but it appears to be doing you some favours.

Truth twister.

There’s nothing hyperbolic when you have an MP murdered by a far-right individual.

I think the term far right has a very specific meaning and it is thrown around too easily. The use of it is often extremely hyperbolic tbh. There are far right people and they are a very tiny minority as are communists.

Brexit was mostly about immigration, so in a sense a central voting electorate can absolutely deliver a result that surprises those who think it’s not possible.

@Rspbc1

The Conservative Party goes from centre right to populist right and is mainly under the control of the centre right. There is no far right faction of the Tory Party as it’s beyond the pale in this country.

Bollocks. If you can't see the current Home Secretary has her head right up the backside of the far right then further discussion with you is pointless.

but I believe she left the country in a far better state than she found it and some people hated her for it.
Thatcher's social housing policies have directly led to the current housing crisis, 30 years later.

HTH
https://tribunemag.co.uk/2020/12/no-thatcher-didnt-save-the-economy

Your obsession with paedophilia as being a left wing practice is bizarre and akin to that of far right conspiracy theorists. They are consumed by the idea of a global paedophile ring, and it feeds directly into the discourse of Islamophobes this country. PIE was much more complex than you're making out. And did you miss the bit when Thatcher was covering up paedophilia in her own ranks?

I don't get the angst actually - whilst left and right have their extreme aspects and those have certainly become quite loud in political life, the evidence is that British people do not vote for such extremes sufficiently to form governments. That is very consistent with our history.

The tone from some groups on the left and right has become shrill and extreme but this does not mean they have got much traction. The more extreme the Conservatives are becoming the lower they go in the polls (though economics plays it's part) and the same was true when the Labour Party had Corbyn in charge.

Neither party can win when it lets it's headbangers set the agenda. That's been true for a century and I don't think it has changed now. We just have a lot of extreme media.

@ElizaMulvil ”The Left did not support Paedophiles.”

Yes they did, or at least some sections of them did. Many of the intellectual founders of the ideas of post-modern progressive left in the 1960’s and onwards were advocates of that. And some sections of the left support this evil today. PIE wasn’t unique to the U.K. and similar things happen in left wing parties and movements across Europe, the German Green Party in the 1980’s are a particularly disgusting example. And it’s not an accident that these sort of evil groups always show up on the left either.

Far right & far left: Far right is a socialism built around notions of ethnic or national solidarity and the far left is a socialism built around class solidarity. Examples of the far right might be the national socialists or the fascists of the 20th century. The far left are the communists and the communist international. They’re both 20th century ideas and both have had horrific consequences. The difference is being on the far right would get you sacked from any position that mattered whilst the far left are generally tolerated. You get terrible consequences whenever these groups get into power.

Populist right & populist left: That’s just when they offer overly simplistic solutions to difficult problems and sometimes talk like they’re on the far left or right fringes. It’s about getting elected. But once elected you get either left wing or right wing policies not extremism. Often you get a mess too when these get into power and their popular but overly simplistic solutions often don’t work.

Mainstream right and left wing. When they are ideological committed to one of those positions. For example Thatcher, she only ever offered right wing solutions to the problems facing the U.K. at the time. She wouldn’t take anything from the other side. You often get effective government from these if they are what’s needed and they are often very divisive. That’s how I see Mrs Thatcher, her right wing ideas were what was needed at the time but she was very divisive and made life very difficult for millions of people but I believe she left the country in a far better state than she found it and some people hated her for it. You could look at a left wing labour government creating the NHS and welfare state in the same way.

Centre left or centre right. That’s like Cameron and Blair, they come from one of those two points of view and generally think the one they come from is correct. But they believe that sometimes their opponents can be right and will adopt solutions from the other side when the think it’s better.

The Conservative Party goes from centre right to populist right and is mainly under the control of the centre right. There is no far right faction of the Tory Party as it’s beyond the pale in this country.

The Labour Party are centre left to far left as being far left doesn’t automatically get you kicked out of everything. The Labour Party is generally under the control of the Left Wing, Stammer is a left winger pretending to be Blair. Corbyn was far left.

Agreed.

The Left did not support Paedophiles.

Neither are the left wing anti semitic. Heavens many of them are Jewish (cf Jewish Voice for Labour), or of Jewish origin ie non practising. The extreme right wing (Nazis) have traditionally accused the Left as being either Jewish or overly supportive of Jews cf the Nazi attacks on Communists/ Bolsheviks as Jew supporters.

The Left in the UK (whether jewish or not) do not generally however support the current Israeli Government - many Jews of the Diaspora eg in the US and many in Israel don't either. There is a difference between being anti semitic and being anti the Israeli Government.

The left, Trade Unionists, Communists, Socialists etc., have a very honourable history of supporting Jews in the UK from the battle of Cable Street in 1936 (when they tried to prevent a fascist march planned to intimidate Jews in the East End) to Jeremy Corbyn.

There is a wide range of views amongst Jews re Israel and its Government. Some very traditional Jews eg are not Zionists ie do not believe there should be a return to ancestral land ( Israel) before the coming of the Messiah.

As for the extreme left not knowing what a woman is, the Communist Party definitely do. Are they not left wing?