To be completely shocked about someone I used to know

[EWAB]

When my youngest was at primary school I really liked this woman who had kids either side of mine.

She was in the PTA equivalent and was just a nice woman. There was no drama around her.

I remember having a day off and went into the local cafe, and she invited me to sit with her friends. She was funny, warm and witty.

Significantly, she had friends of all ethnicities and her best friend was Asian.

Everybody will relate to being busy but I think if it was a different time in my life or we had kids in same year we would have been mates.

I am absolutely shocked that she is a member of a right wing political party and has a presence in that party, utterly and completely shocked.

I know it’s not illegal but God.

All three of my siblings are Tories, I’m not someone who thinks everyone has to think like me but I am stunned.

Mumsnet hates this, but I have had a physical reaction to the news. I am just Gobsmacked and weirdly let down and I do know that’s a stupid, irrational thing to say.

What evidence? There wasn’t any. 🤷‍♀️

Thank you @BusyMummy001, I’ll check that out.

You’re welcome - although, of course, there is a huge chasm between ‘left wing’ and totalitarian communism… just as there is a huge leap from ‘right of centre’ to Nazism. Not sure MN is the place for nuance, though. 🤣

GIven the secrecy of the regimes exact figures are hard to come by. But here's an academic paper with a list of some. As I say you see different numbers from different sources.

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Communism-Killed-Some-100-Million-People_fig1_324755193

You can't say crazy things like that! 😂😂
Teachers and schools have a massive amount to answer for with this gender stuff.

A significant swathe of political policy is identical across parties, it's all neoliberal nonsense as you point out, But green policies are very similar as are migration. The parties are made up with similarly out of touch people.

I cant help but feel in this day and age we don't need one person to represent, we could just have an app that let the constituents have their say.

It’s out of order to point out that a persons politics can absolutely define them, eg Nazis?

Careful. JK Rowling responded 'so women then?' to a tweet about 'pregnant people' and has since been cancelled, vilified and still recieves death threats. For stating the bleeding obvious!

You're joking, right?

Blossom is not joking. Sad really isn't it?

I was actually but it’s been great fun watching you all ruffle your feathers. 😂

Unless you sit down with her to discuss her reasons for her political views the you will not know why she supports this party, which of their policies she agrees with and what has led her to this point. I'm not right wing at all but I do understand that its not black and white how people arrive at their views. It would be a chance to learn if you did speak to her. This is a democracy after all.

This left = good, right = bad is an utterly ridiculous way of thinking and only contributes to the polarisation and trivialisation of politics.

This is very true and the way of 99% of political threads on MN. Most of my friends are right leaning but one of my best friends is the other way. She has her views, I have mine and we both have qualities we admire in each other which make our different political views entirely irrelevant.

Far right is also bandied around too much, although apparently it's ok to be far left. I've always voted Conservative but I might consider voting Reform this time around. I don't think Labour (under Starmer) and the Conservatives are poles apart in all honesty (we're not talking Thatcher v Corbyn) although the Conservatives haven't covered themselves in glory in government. Either way, I'll wait to see the various manifestos.

I suspect I read a wider variety of press than a lot of left-wing people, including the Guardian on a regular basis. Pretty much every MN thread hounds off anyone that deviates from the right wing = evil scum mantra with veiled (and not so veiled) insults until it becomes a happy echo chamber of left wing righteousness.

As a result, there's no engagement or balanced debate which is a bit of a shame but many of us have long since given up trying. There was one Brexit thread that was refreshingly respectful and both sides made some interesting points which is much more likely to change opinions than a barrage of personal abuse. And with that, I'll withdraw my head from above the parapet.

Excellent post!

Don’t be ridiculous. It was a joke, it’s hardly my fault that you’re so gullible.

So true! It’s happening as you say, right now on a couple of other threads. If not more.

Quite a few, unfortunately, given my views on them. A woman in my town asked for a cleaner for her "seven Air B&Bs". this is a place where they keep trying to build on greenbelt because they haven't got enough houses.

We don't have an "open door" immigration policy. Germany does; we don't. Without immigrants, the NHS would collapse let alone the other industries we takae for granted.

Air B&Bs are not mini hotels: they are properties which are let out to holiday-makers, not even private tenants, hence rental properties are also very hard to get now.

Agreed. It's pathetic.

Reform is no different to being on the right of the Tory party and you just said you had no issue with that. It’s the Brexit party rebranded and you can’t have a visceral reaction to more than half of the UK population who voted Brexit.

I understand why you’d find it off putting - I’ve voted Labour all my life and as a student I hated Tories or anyone right of that and thought they were just horrible people! Then I got to know some pretty awful people on the left and some very nice Tories and realised that being to the right doesn’t mean you’re motivated by hate and selfishness, they just have different worries and concerns, different passions and a different understanding of the world because of different life experiences.

You’ve already said she’s a nice person so why not try to understand what motivates her instead? She might have experienced particular struggles in her life which motivate how she votes.

Came on to say this.