To think Starmer has shot himself in the foot.

The Guardian today is saying the same as this thread:

Keir Starmer is caught in yet another trap of his own making | Rafael Behr | The Guardian

What gets me is that if the Tories had done what Labour are doing - winter fuel, disability, immigration - you wouldn't have been able to hear yourself think for the noise of Labour screaming 'nasty party' from the rooftops.

Labour isn’t blaming the media. I am. Farage has always had a completely disproportionate amount of media coverage.

Tbf if Labour are blaming the media and everyone else they won’t fix the issues that are driving the poll shift. Ok fine.

This

Farage has very successfully managed to pin the blame for everything on immigration.

100%

How anyone can think that this is the Labour government which was promised prior to the general election, is totally beyond me.

About what?

So you’ve changed your mind?

You really need to stop blaming the media for Labour's failings.

I think what Eastern means here (and I agree with) is that Labour policies (wfa, welfare reforms etc) have exacerbated the feeling of abandonment amongst the least well off. The red wall is turning to Reform.

The disproportionate amount of air time Farage gets for his abhorrent views has increased Reform’s support. Let’s see how much support they’ve got when they’ve been in charge of several councils for a few months, shall we?

Your two comments show the lack of insight. Channel crossing numbers are up with Labour which increases Reform’s support.

I don’t mind if Labour ignore that as they’ll feel it in the polls.

No they haven’t. @TheNuthatch is entirely right, this is Farage’s doing.

There’s nothing they can do about it because we are such nice law abiding people the illegal imigrants can take the p.
There are warehouses full of inflatables in Germany - manufactured in Turkey. We could send in an SAS type raid and destroy the lot.

Somehow other countries are bending the rules and controlling stuff but our judges are on the side of the immigrants.

There's more to the UK than London.

Oh definitely - that’s why I recommend to our friends and acquaintances from East Asia to go to the countryside and cities like Bath and Cambridge - though maybe crime is rising in those cities.
We’ve got a friend who is a guide and apparently some people think UK is smaller than it is.
“We’d like to go to Edinburgh and maybe Islay or Skye, then York which I think is near Chatsworth so we want to go there too, and then Cambridge and Oxford colleges, and of course the Cotswolds are a must, including Blenheim Palace, and to end up with Salisbury Cathedral and the Eden Project. Oh yes, and my grandmother was born in Brighton so I’d love to have a quick look round there.
Can we fit that in a long weekend?”

Sorry, that’s completely off topic.

Just like “Stop the boats”, that went well too.

Nail on the head. Brown really did set the scene with his bigoted woman comment all those years ago. It's a line in the sand, date wise, which proves that the immigration problem isn't even a recent thing, it goes right back 15-20 years or more. Yet the London centric elite politicians just won't accept it's a problem, because they're the ones benefitting from top end ethnic restaurants and cheap quality labour (private nannies etc). They don't see the reality of Just Eat drivers in uninsured cars, money laundering barber shops, modern slavery, gangs of young adults abusing women in the street, etc out in the more disadvantaged regions which they've ignored for decades. It's taken a long time, but now the problems are so widespread across the country, that the politicians can't get away with pretending the problems don't exist and that anyone who says anything is a rabid extreme right racist. Finally they've woken up, but it's taken Farage to galvanise enough voters to make an impact.

"IABU - I thought he was a prat now I think he’s on my team

IANBU - EITHER I thought he was a prat, still think he’s a prat OR I liked him now think he’s a prat."

What if you didn't think he was a prat, and your opinion of him hasn't changed?

I think he comes across as rather ineffectual at times, but is certainly a big improvement on the various cartoon characters the Tories have installed in recent years.

I also think there's been unjustified over-reaction to his "island of strangers" speech, which was a lot more balanced than some are claiming.

There's more to the UK than London!

Labour deserted the working class decades ago. In fact I'd go so far as to say Labour despise the working class.

It started with Gordon Brown calling Gillian Duffy a bigot in 2010. Thornberry hating and mocking white van man / St George's Cross in 2014. Starmer blocking and mocking the working class for voting Brexit and being anti immigration due to the wage suppression the working class suffers etc. And so it goes on.

Labour have hated the working class for decades hence why they voted Tory in 2019 and Reform now.

But your setting up this narrative of the “good” and “bad” migrant, that perpetuates racist ideas that harm everyone in society.

London was better when it wasn't just for visitors, when people lived in the properties sitting empty. This totally has changed the character of the place. It is happening in the city by the sea where I live, it is totally changing the vibe of the place, endless period properties that were once homes to people, sitting empty - the buy to leave or the endless Air BNBs.

I agree with you on this and the amount of properties in London and elsewhere bought as investments and left empty is shocking.
However, I suppose if tourists stop coming because of crime then the Air BNB owners will go out of business and the properties will go on the market.

and @TheQuickRobini think we all do recognise that it is difficult to convey. The reality is that a set of bad choices have been made and quite a lot of people are feeling negatively about that. That doesn’t and should not imply disliking those people individually or specifically. But it does imply recognising the issues that have arisen and designing the system so that fewer people with identical profiles to those people settle and become citizens in future.

@TheQuickRobin

But it’s not just the immigration, it’s the lack of expectations on integration on shared values and ongoing contribution too, which is I think that the “island of strangers” is intended to convey. I’m not saying I liked the wording - I don’t and would write it differently. But I think it’s not racist and xenophobic to say that there should be some expectations around shared culture, behavioural expectations and contribution to society. That shouldn’t be about villainising migrants, I totally agree, but about designing a system and a society that sets out its expectations better and in a compassionate way. It’s not compassionate to pretend that we don’t care at all about specific things and then be quietly or gradually more loudly resentful (or, in the case of wealthy liberals, privately grateful that they don’t suffer the consequences).