to thank Emily Thornberry profusely

[longfingernails]

She has just shown how much Labour detest the aspirational working class, the swingiest of swing voters. Labour will be hit with this again and again and again; ever denial and denunciation will just bring Labour's true views to a wider audience. Fundamentally, it will only reinforce the undeniable fact that Miliband's centre of gravity is firmly ensconced in Islington.

She has made a Tory/UKIP coalition, perhaps the best possible electoral outcome, much more likely. Thank you Emily!

OTheHugeManatee, it was the greatest country in the world comment that really got my back up. I watched the cringeworthy IDS say it at the Tory conference and I thought it was ridiculous then. Yes, the country is rich but, in too many cases, DC's "hard-working people" aren't.

Axs for the rest of the world, well maybe shake up the trade laws that disproportionately benefit ex-colony-holding countries (like the UK) and perhaps that'll get better too.

Things have reached a point where the only sensible answer is UKIP.

Never.

Interesting article about how the mainstream parties would be better off not pandering (and do not need to pander) to Ukip "ideas".

Following Mark Reckless's hints that repatriation may be on Ukip's agenda, Dennis Skinner had this to say in parliament yesterday. It was great to hear.

video

UKIP is an extremist party who, luckily, will never govern alone. I suspect there could be a nasty racist interior to many UKIP candidates. OTOH, UKIP has brought issues up where people have felt totally disenfranchised by the mainstream parties. The idea that we want to stay in Europe come what may is irrational and deeply undemocratic to many of us. My parents voted in the ONLY referendum that the British people have every been given on Europe: the common market. Since then, Europe has widened and deepened beyond compare and yet, despite the obvious constitutional changes that this has implied, the population have been deceived by the mainstream parties.

Uncontrolled immigration and population growth may play well in Islington, that wonderful racial melting pot. Is it any surprise that immigration is not an issue when the vast majority Asian, African and East European immigrants have advanced degrees and speak English better than many of those brought up here? Is it any wonder that it may be more of an issue when the immigrants speak little or no English and are greatly intolerant of the local population?

Personally, I think a Tory/UKIP government could work well, assuming it was dominated by the Conservatives. The most positive thing is that Labour is being squeezed and forced to state their position on subjects they would prefer to remain vague about. There is nothing worse that hypocritical 'champagne' socialists who send their own children to private schools, segue effortlessly from positions in government to positions in consultants to government (on 00s of k/annum) and eat in the best restaurants, whilst lecturing to the rest of the population about fairness.

Is it any wonder that it may be more of an issue when the immigrants speak little or no English and are greatly intolerant of the local population? I live in an area of high immigration. Some of these immigrants do not speak English. I have not noticed any intolerance on their part. Please could you give us more information about this intolerance.

Disingenuous of posters to claim she is anti-working class by tweeting that image. As a rule of thumb, people who hang England flags from their home are racist morons. I assert this as a fact even though I don't personally know every person who does this.

Yes, everyone understands that most people in the UK enjoy food and other services that aren't available in other countries. However for those of us who work in the community with the most vulnerable in our society, lack of food, shelter or adequate shelter is a part of life here too!

The cuts to services going on at the minute are huge. Millions and millions of pounds of cuts in local government, yet at the same time 28 million pounds of foreign aid is given away every day by the current government!

Yes one good thing about a UKIP government is that they will not stand for Cameron's liberal guilt on foreign aid. Poor people in Britain should not pay for the places and supercars of tinpot dictators in the third world.

The best thing we can do for the third world is to promote free trade and capitalism, which is the best poverty-destroying idea in history.

Of course we arent the grestest country in the world. No country is. iDS is a twat and always was.

However if like me, you had nursed in Africa you would see this country as paradise despite the good banks etcetera.

My point is that people who vote UKIP are doing so purely because for years and years they have not been listened to by the party who should be bloody representing them and that's labour.

Labour had let the working classes down because it fuddbt represent them and they was completely and utterly captured In a nutshell by Emily's stupid patronising piss taking.

Ed isn't up up the job. And I can't think of anyone who is quite frankly. Labour needs new blood.

BringMeTea

Those racist morons as you call them are English people with votes.

My mother is welsh and has the welsh flag outside her house. Is she a racist moron?

There were plenty of Scottish flags flying recently! Wrong?

Your attitudes are the gift to UKIP that keep on giving.

Just like poor stupid emily.

You have to win people over not patronise and vilify them.

I have the same view of anyone in the UK hanging flags from their homes.

That's your view. People are entitled to wave flags if they so wish but I think a politician using social media to try stigmatise a group of voters is wrong.

If that 'group of voters' is racist, I have no objection to anyone alerting 'us' to that fact. I am fairly certain I understand her intention.

The guy was supporting the English football team, he wasn't even voting in the election.

Labour just want to vilify the working class so they can carry on with policies that don't benefit the working classes!

Oh ffs it's nothing to do with being working class but a little englander.

All it said was "Image from Rochester" with a photo of a house with a van and England flags. No commentary, no sneery words, no judgemental tweet just a photo and the location it was taken. Whilst I am vehemently anti UKIP I'm neither pro nor anti Labour. I think she's been screwed over unfairly because people viewing the photo filled in the blanks themselves and decided the point she was trying to make. She may have been trying to make that point but looking at the exact facts, she didn't actually explicitly say what people think she was insinuating. I think she could have claimed innocence (although she's resigned a lot quicker than some less honourable public figures recently - Sheffield's PCC's lingering departure springs to mind) and she's been hung out to dry. Yes there's been lots of back justifying after the event but really she just tweeted an image and people jumped on her. Rather unfair I'd say.

Labour's abandoning of the working class has been one of the great political cons ever. Since 1997 Labour have abandoned the idea of financial equality while maintaining the illusion of being committed to equality, particularly by singling out relatively small groups such as certain immigrants and people in receipt of benefits and presenting them as more deserving than the working class in general. Ignoring the fact that often these people are part of the working class and would benefit just as much from policies which benefitted the working class in general.

The problem is that financial inequality is the most corrosive and it affects people regardless of race, ethnicity, gender etc, etc, etc. Labour have worn the equality badge whilst at the same time destroying some of the greatest assets to financial equality such as the grant, free University education and affordable housing.

And it's been such a brilliant con as so many people who consider themselves left wing have become so consumed in the PC agenda to the point of becoming swivel eyed mobs that they have completely and utterly abandoned any form of commitment to financial equality.

Looking at the Labour front benches - these people are millionaires or at the very least extremely comfortably off. Even Rachel Reeves who bangs on about coming from 'South London' like she was dragged up in Deptford grew up in an extremely comfortable middle class back ground in the suburbs. I know I went to school with her, she calls her parents 'teachers' but her father, who she lived with, was actually a very senior figure in Ofsted.

These people have no idea what life is like for the working classes. They don't want to know either, they have no interest in changing the status quo because they benefit from it so much.

She has demonstrated the contempt of today's Labour party for the working classes

Well, true in her case and probably true for many/most of her colleagues.

I'm just glad that those Tories have such a high regard for the working class. Down to earth people the lot of them. You won't catch them thinking being poor makes you inferior.

Oh wait....

A prize to anyone who can tell the difference between a tory or labour politician if they are not labelled.

I think aermingers puts it beautifully. Labour's entire stance has been a huge con for the best part of 20 years now.

They can't tell the difference when they live in Islington. I expect they could tell the difference in a lot of places in the UK.

"Patriotism or nationalism? Seems to I'm working class and I know what I think of people that hang flags out of their window (bar celebrations) and it's not 'aspirational working class'.
^^ this completely

I find it more patronising to believe everyone who hangs a flag out of their window is a working class labour voters. Not all working class people love parading the flag, there would a good few of his neighbours rolling their eyes and muttering FGS to themselves, it's just that they aren't MP's and won't get unterviewed by the Sun."

Yes. Exactly so.

It's a total joke to see the media and all the political parties suddenly deciding that white van man with St George's Cross flags hanging out of his window is the salt of the earth- none of the journos OR politicians think so. All of them think this bloke is a total peasant.
And any fool knows that someone who drapes their house in England flags when it's not even the World Cup is a racist dick.
And the very idea that this man somehow represents the entire working class!
It's all a bloody joke.
Labour are a joke, the media is a joke. But the prospect of UKIP holding the balance of power is no laughing matter at all.