To think May has brought this up on us

[Babycham1979]

Teresa May claims there's a divisive, hateful culture in politics. AIBU to think that she's directly contributed to this, both as Home Secretary and as PM. Race, sex, nationality, class, Brexit; she's almost single-handedly driven this agenda of hate...

www.theguardian.com/society/2018/feb/05/theresa-may-calls-abuse-in-public-life-a-threat-to-democracy-online-social-media

I blame David Cameron 100% for this. From the moment he put the referendum on the agenda he divided the country.

This is all Tony Blair’s doing. If he’d been more careful in his approach, we wouldn’t have needed a referendum in the first place.

Odious man

Thatchers fault....all of it!

YABU. Plenty before May started it.

Pitt the Younger 100% to blame!!

We didn’t need a referendum. The only people who needed a referendum were the people who were trying to stop the Tory party from fracturing. And it doesn’t seem to be working that well for them.

YABU to blame May alone. She doesn’t act in a vacuum and never has.

YWNBU to blame successive generations of crap government policies from labour and the conservatives alike.

It's been going on for many years so YABU.

It's all the fault of Pitt the Elder, imo.

I'll throw Corbyn and his weird cult into the frame too.

There are a lot of odious, inadequate shits in politics nowadays. There always are of course, but they're usually kept in check by the good guys.

I blame the Edmund Blackadder of the Adder Party. When he got voted into the rotten borough of Dunny in the Wold it all went downhill.

...so the type pf people who fling this abuse at politicians , public figures play no responsibility in this?

Its at all levels, on our local village facebook page there is a lot of angst over traffic lights, roadworks and potholes. According to those who have a 2 minute inconvenience the local Councillors are idiots and imbeciles and the workers are thick, lazy and stupid...and so it goes on.

Its on this site.,.. people who have a different opinion are called thick, stupid and much worse.

I blame that Cicero and his rhetoric.

Lazily assuming that those supporting Brexit were thick and utterly failing to address their concerns and fears is a good example of that phenomenon, Eve.

I still maintain that odious, inadequate shits have taken over Parliament though

It was going on in the 70s with Scargill, in the 70s and 80s with Militant Tendency......and those were well before she was in the HoC.

I think social media has had far more to do with it than the PM.

Haha some excellent and very funny responses on here. Maybe I'm the only one thinking this is extremely rich, coming from the High Priestess of social division (anyone remember the Immigrants Go Home vans)?

What if its true, and we only get the politicians we deserve? We've got a Parliament full of venal, self-interested mediocrities. Other than a revolution, how do we get past this?!

Definitely Thatcher.

scary I remember the 80s; I think it's the situation today is even worse.

I say this as a leftie, and my observation applies to both major parties.

I blame Gordon and Tony!

Although, now I think about it, it was Thatcher who really started the 'them and us' rhetoric with her 'enemy within' speeches and allusions to the absence of 'society'. Prior to that, the postwar consensus held us together in a far more cohesive sense.

indeed iBiscuit - and assuming all the remainers are rich and stuck up....

I often think that the baying mob that would go to hangings and witch burnigs and such like now has social media and the daily mail to inflame them.

I agree, especially when you think back to the Citizens of Nowhere Tory Party conference after the referendum which sounded as if it came straight out of 1930s Germany.

Of course, what she really means when she calls for unity is do everything we say without questioning it.

There is no way for the aftermath of Brexit not to be divisive as it evokes strong opinions on both sides. IMO safest to go for the softest of Brexits, which won't make any one side particularly happy but will be palatable to all but the biggest frothers.

To attract strong politicians, I think the salary actually needs to be higher. Being a politician doesn't have the kudos it once had. Talented people are more likely to be drawn into business where there is more financial gain.

I'm inclined to agree Minnie about politicians' salaries. It wouldn't go down at all well though; nobody these days seems to want their tax to support anyone other than themselves, because it's "not fair".

We seem incapable of thinking in pragmatic, longer term ways.

She has helped perpetuate it, but it has always been there. Think Enoch Powell for instance.

This particular uprising of nastiness? I think it has come from the press giving a disproportionately loud voice to Farage, allowing him to over represent himself, normalising hate speech once again.

It comes against a background of similar voices from other countries spouting the same hate filled rhetoric and when ias it becomes more normalised in one country, it strengthens it in another.