To feel like I'm not sure where I sit politically anymore, and to worry about it.

I agree completely with this. It's hard to see the wood from the trees if you listen to mainstream media who have an unpleasant agenda. Poverty and lack of funding are the problem really, as they always are.

'Yes we do also have white british people struggling with poverty and crime. For example drug addiction leading to shoplifting and burglary, but I can see the rise in that as directly correlating to the years of austerity and cuts to public services and help.'

I think you might need a bit of a wake up call if you think the poor british people are just struggling with their addictions and poverty while its the brown people who are all knife crime-ing and chopping up sheep. The majority of crime, petty, violent etc in this country is caused by white people, and that's not controversial given they make up the majority of the population.

You definitely don’t live in Birmingham if you feel that! We can’t trust the council one bit.

I agree with this, and blaming immigrants for this is really lazy. I'm the child of immigrants and my parents, aunts etc are all very well off having lived through different times. Poverty has increased so much over the last 15 years and the standard of living for working class and middle class people has tanked. At the same time profits and CEO wages have increased, but its immigration that's the problem apparently!

Keir Starmer took Tony Blair's government to court to give illegal immigrants the right to claim benefits and won under the human rights laws.

Really, @Glitchymn1 ? When was this, please?

Benefits for people coming from other countries is a bit of a specialist area, but I'm not aware of any significant changes in the law since I did a 2-day course on it approx 6 years ago. Then, the position was that generally that non-EU citizens were only entitled to benefits if they had leave to remain .

If you can provide a link to the relevant change in the law, I'd be very grateful, and so would my colleagues. We don't come across it very often now, as most of our referrals are from organisations that wouldn't be working with illegal immigrants, but it would be good to know.

Thing is, your cousin is making a rational choice. Honestly would you choose to work 40 hours a week in a grim chicken factory and get maybe a fraction more money (or not) than your peer who sleeps all day then stay up gaming with friends all night while people around them hand wring because they must be depressed?
Work doesn't pay and supermarket work, care work etc never will pay the sort of money people need for a decent basic life. In the past the state stepped in and filled the gaps with council housing and decent public services. That's all been stripped away and (especially housing) has long gone. Now if the state steps in to fill the gaps it's with cash, this just goes to private landlords to provide expensive insecure housing that can be wiped away at two months notice.

Only if you're actually earning income on it, no? So rental income, mostly.

Is property not taxed via income tax? The only property that isn’t taxed is your main residence 🙄

We need skilled workers not unskilled.
We need companies to be more flexible so those with disabilities that limit their ability to work full time can take a job in the first place.
And don’t bring Christianity into this or the RF because it just makes you look ‘anti Christian’. Which I’m sure you’re not but 🤷‍♀️

Well, housing costs play a massive part in it. So, you have to ask yourself who's benefiting from these huge price rises.

Answer: the boomer generation (who still dominate, demographically speaking), the mortgage lenders, the people buying up property in places like London as an investment, the private equity companies that increasingly control our rental market.

And ask yourself why, when the question of tax raises its head, the conversation always gets diverted towards taxing income rather than property. And who that might benefit.

Whilst I agree the decline in support for mental health’s and health conditions more generally is definitely a huge contributor to the rise in those reliant on benefits, I think it’s totally disingenuous not to acknowledge that not working is a totally viable and desirable carer choice for many claiming. My own cousin felt he was “working too hard” and not seeing enough of his now wife - early 20’s, degree educated, actually very intelligent. He’d done the maths and working just wasnt a priority. As a country we have indulged people just like him.

Labour are getting a hard time because they are trying to put policies in place that take from the poorest in communities! Ridiculous!

If we need immigrants to fill the jobs we can't fill ourselves (both skilled and unskilled) then why is it so hard at the moment for people to find work, especially young people? Any UK citizen should be able to walk into a job centre and come out with a full time minimum wage job, or funded training to go on and fill one of these 'skilled' jobs.
One reason people stay stuck on disability benefit (particularly for mental health or neurodiversity) is because the process of getting a job is now so difficult, especially without recent experience or the ability to come across well at interview. It's dispiriting, even frightening if you've been out of employment for a long time!
Some EU countries have a system where if you can pass a few weeks trial you are guaranteed a minimum wage job with good working conditions and adjustments for your disability - this kind of support could help a lot of benefit claimants into work and force other employers to give their workers fair pay and conditions to compete. Labour keep saying they are the party for working people - why not make it easier for people to find and keep a job, rather than rushing straight to removing their benefits?

Although Blair used it too. And pretty much sold in the narrative that we should like it or lump it.

It does feel that people are asking why should I just have this high immigration

I don't vote for anyone anymore, I just write what I think of each party on the voting form. I used to be a Labour voter, but they're so messed up now I can't understand what's going on. Never voted Tory. All my inclinations and instincts are right wing these days and it's uncomfortable, but some of the things I see and hear are so damaging to the country that it's depressing to be honest. I wouldn't vote Reform because of Farage. If they had steady, educated and sensible people in the party then it might be a viable option, but at the moment it's a total joke and I fear for the country if they do win the next general election.

I'm being realistic when I say I think the country's had it and I don't think things will improve, they'll get worse and worse until we're like Philadelphia in the US. I'm desperately sad about what will happen to our countryside, wildlife and historic buildings, places of education and monuments. They'll all be consigned to the history books. All I can see is ugly concrete, drugs, rubbish, loud, blaring music, nastiness and cruelty, the people we're not allowed to talk about and cut down trees, polluted rivers etc.

Gideon Osbourne's austerity budgets.

Yes, movement of labour has always bee a concern of the left, until 5 minutes ago.

I don’t think uncontrolled immigration has ever been a left wing ( or at least not a working class) position?
Its a highly capitalist position- the more cheap labour there is the less they have to pay.
I think there is a difference between liberal and left wing. Traditionally the middle/ upper class left are socially liberal ( pro immigration for humanitarian reasons and pro diversity) and the right wing middle class and upper are fiscally liberal ( pro immigration as grist to the mill).
Thats why the Tories haven’t controlled it. The excessive levels of recent immigrants are the result of the last 14 years not the current labour government.
The increase in destitution and crime is driven by by many factors though.

Oh blimey, I was gutted with Smith died. He was such a great man.
No-one has come close to him, in any party 😕

I think it’s not just the police force, the justice system seems overwhelmed, prisons overcrowded. So if the police did come and arrest every shoplifter. They’d get at max a 12 hour community payback order and use up lots of resources.

I suspect it’s really disheartening for everyone concerned.

The fact that the homeless people you saw were British isn't the whole story though.

Whenever there is not enough housing infrastructure for the number of people, it is the most vulnerable who end up being pushed out. Often these days that means addicted people or those with mental health issues. People who aren't easy to house at the best of times.

But who is pushing them out? To some extent it is newly arrived immigrants. Even when they are coming for very legitimate reasons to fulfil a need, they are taking up housing places, and that has an effect. When you are talking about migrants being housed in hotels, those are spaces, and money, that is no longer available to house the local homeless population, (I remember reading recently that in NYC, something like 70% of shelter spaces were being taken by people who had entered the country irregularly. So where you you find the people who would otherwise be in those spaces?)

@ElizaMulvil
In contrast to the media narrative, 81% of UK millionaires agree with the statement that it is patriotic to pay a fair share of tax, according to a poll published on 5 June 2025 by Patriotic Millionaires UK. 80% of UK millionaires said they would support a wealth tax of 2% on wealth over £10 million
Yet record numbers of millionaires are already leaving the country and going to tax friendly countries like Dubai. The clue is the in the suggestion that the tax rate should be 'fair'. This is hugely subjective and quite frankly many feel that tax rates on high earners are already too high. You may disagree but ultimately they are voting with their feet and leaving the UK poorer.

Also the majority of the 80% of millionaires that support the wealth tax probably don't have £10 million. This of course is always the irony. Everyone agrees with tax rises for those wealthier than they are. The same goes with the narrative of your whole post. There is no moral or ethical divide in rich and poor people, everyone is usually out to optimise the situation for themselves. The poor may feel more justified or virtuous in behaving this way but ultimately everyone is self orientated. This is why it's been proven that as people become wealthier they become more right wing. It's easy to be all about sharing and equality when you stand to gain from redistribution but when you have worked hard and dug yourself out from the bottom then you are less keen to share the spoils with strangers.

Yes, I agree that it is hugely controversial and those that benefit from these placements are no doubt desperate to keep them but are we as a society willing to fund the placements through tax rises or cutting services elsewhere? It's an awful lot of tax to raise. Again for context, you would need all the income tax paid by two individuals in the top tax decile to fund a single placement or the entirety of the income tax paid by fifty workers in the lowest decile to fund a single placement.

I could have written your post - where I live in the Midlands there is a rising tide of pissed off people and the anger is increasingly about uncontrolled immigration and the massive changes that are happening within our society around us. As soon as dd finishes school we are out of here - it doesn’t feel safe, it’s not clean and the demographic is changing so rapidly I’m starting to feel like a stranger in the place I’ve lived all my life. And I feel SO guilty for feeling this way.