We need to start asking why.

[NotOneOfTheInCrowd]

So trump has won. In the UK elections reform gained good ground. In the rest of Europe the far right are gaining ground.

It’s clear that the world as a whole is leaning further towards this stance, and instead of expressing horror and insulting those who are voting that way, we need to start asking why that is. Because clearly it is.

it’s easy to say that people voted for Farage because they didn’t want to vote Tory.

Or that they voted for Trump because they didn’t want a woman.

But it has to go further than that. There are too many of these votes for it to be that simplistic. so it’s time we looked at what the realities and the reasons are, and how they can be resolved without putting it in the hands of people like Farage or Trump to resolve them.

Don't forget Cameron, he instigated Brexit then ran away.

I think that’s a little harsh.

Cameron held a referendum, probably because the brexit dogs in his party forced him to - probably they’d have threatened to topple him/it was the price of their support. I remember Cameron standing up and asking us all to vote to remain. It was Bojo telling us to leave, after a big song and dance keeping his views under wraps theatrically. Corbyn didn’t suggest anything.

So although he held the referendum, Cameron was clear that he wanted to remain. And when th British people didn’t do as he suggested, he resigned. Fair enough. He should not have had to mess around sorting brexit out when he didn’t believe it was right.

Harsh but true.

When will politicians see sense over immigration? Particularly illegal immigration. They just won't listen.

@Shakeoffyourchains that's fine, if you only have positive experiences, I'm happy for you. However I lived and worked in an area where there were significant numbers of people from cultures where it was clear that women were 3rd class citizens. I actually worked in the public sector and dealt with many who made it plain that being a woman was problematic for them. I've seen young men harass young wo3for sex, make it plain that my professional opinion was useless because I am a woman. I wasn't the only one who found that out. Many of my colleagues became totally exhausted by the constant comment that we knew nothing. Bring a man out and, lo, the man was believed. And the number of times I was told offensive comdents by men from certain communities. Examples, ' we marry our ladies off early', ' we don't normally educate our ladies, there's no point', 'our ladies don't leave the house without a man, unlike you'. All said to explain why they needed something to be provided in their approved way. All true but I'm sure you will dismiss it.
And this, again , is the whole crux of the argument. Not actually listening to the very genuine experiences and concerns, telling people who have had bad experiences that they are racists, not even thinking that some people who come to the UK are just plain bad. Not believing that community cohesion should be striven for. And then the left wonders why some will vote for more right wing parties.

With Trump I'm honestly not sure why so many people, including women, would vote for that man🤦🏻‍♀️

With the Reform party in the UK I was genuinely shocked and disgusted with how many people voted for them and their clearly racist policies. Never have I read such a vile manifesto :|

We do not teach critical thinking in schools any more in the US. The breakdown looked like the demographic who voted for him were largely uneducated, sadly.
i am not being elitist, though it sounds that way- education is a privilege, but it shouldn’t be!
I’ve spoken to some of his cult followers, and they can’t answer the question: why are you voting for him/ why did you vote.
They can’t answer. They go off on wild tangents and get very emotional and fired up, when faced with a simple and courteously worded question.

These are people who were brought up to also recite by rote chapter and verse of Bible school teachings. They are somewhat naive, and they are wired for getting caught up in a cult.

I voted for Kamala. I am sorry … for what might happen now, I’m deeply sorry. 😞

The problem is the way so many consume media now. No one picks up a newspaper or listens to the radio or watches the news and gets a broad cross section of opinions and ideas that keeps them balanced.

Instead you live in a left or right echo chamber. You listen to the same podcasts, follow the same influencers, are led by an algorithm on social media (read mumsnet!) and assume everyone is like minded and sensible like you. You might still access traditional media but it is a drop in the ocean compared to the pressure you have in your phone all day long. Bad actors push an algorithm that is very right wing and it works - especially on the less educated.

But there has to be an atmosphere of dissatisfaction already for this to work.

No that I’m comparing the UK to Nazi Germany pre-war, but Hitler was seen as the saviour to Germany, he listened to what people were saying. Farage and Trump are right there, spotting the dissatisfaction and discussing all these things in a way that Labour/Democrats just aren’t (and if they are it’s to shut it down as racist, ignorance, inferior - which I struggle with as deep down I agree, but using these tactics is failing spectacularly).

Sorry I disagree - Trump got 2m fewer votes in 2024 than 2020 (ie his support is waning); 16m few people turned out and the Dems lost 14m votes. Ie they didn’t vote for Trump but chose NOT to vote for the Dems.

In the UK we had one of the lowest turnouts with Labour wining seats with the fewest number of votes than ever before. I am inclined to think that Reform will do less well next time around in the UK if the Tories get their act together (as if, I know) because the labour party was elected by default/protest. It is not in power because the UK ran to the polls and voted for them enthusiastically - they were the least worst option of a selection of shite alternatives.

If they continue to go back on election promises, continue to alienate the elderly, tax the middle classes, fail to get on top of immigration and turn the NHS around, potentially alienate the youth vote over filing to deliver the free/cheaper uni education that Angie promised then they have no hope in hell of getting in next time.

I truly do not think we are seeing a rise of the right; we are seeing the decline of the left. They need to wake up and smell the coffee and recalibrate their ideology and policies to the social issues and the values of the demographics of the 2020s, rather than cling on the distant past.

Agree

I could have written your post, word for word. I grew up in a very deprived and very white town. The people there now blame all their problems on immigrants and small boats, despite the fact they barely have any immigrants. This is what they're told to believe.
I now live in a very diverse place. High numbers of Muslims, Jewish people, Hindus, Sikhs, people of African descent, West Indians, eastern Europeans etc. I love it! This is the sort of community that is supposed to be so awful, apparently. I have never had a problem with any immigrant. They enrich my local community. The thought of them all suddenly disappearing is horrific to me. I love it so much here that I never want to live in a place that isn't diverse again.
There are huge problems of inequality and poverty in these country. None of the problems are solved by punching down to minorities.

Oh, I understand it. And being raised in Muslim culture myself, I also know too well that being an atheist is a very dangerous and difficult anti-Muslim stance to take. So your husband has moved to another culture and rejected the tenets of his own.

He is pretty unique.

One of the reasons the misogyny (and yes, Trump embodies some grim attitudes to women, but he does so in a society that legally prohibits them and protects women) thrives in immigrant communities is that we allow it to.

We seem to think it’s exotic or something to let many woman remain locked away. Linguistically, educationally, physically. Look at Rayner pleading to a room of old men.

The comments above about lack of education as a reason for the swing to the right would be ironic if not so sad.

This country has not benefited from critical thinking on the curriculum for a long long time. The majority of people consume biased media. The teaching of listening and and debate, especially in the state sector, is almost dead. There is no diversity of thinking despite the ubiquity of DEI.

”Cracking down” on people who have perfectly valid concerns about the mass importation, legal and otherwise, of incompatible cultures will not end well. This thread is a master study in sneering dismissal.

It is sending middle of the road people into the seductive arms of the right. You think Trump is bad? And Farage?

Women are being silenced and made invisible TODAY in the very same cultures the left forbid us objecting to. Try thinking beyond these benign shores and asking if that’s what you want for our granddaughters.

"People are generally thick and will believe any old shit that gets fed to them"

Then the left need to feed them better shit!

But there was a huge proportion of young people voting for trump.

Not all working class people are bigoted.
Hating bigotry is not the same as hating the working class.

If someone is bigoted then it's fair enough to mention that (although perhaps do it out if their earshot if you want them to vote for you)

Well there’s one answer. You say he’s the most unpopular in history but he’s been there 5 minutes. How can something be assessed after a couple of months? We demand instant answers, get our news and outrage from social media and have unrealistic expectations of new governments. We think short term. Look at the council house sell off-short term profit over long term planning. So when someone comes along promising easy solutions-immigrants and Brexit, for example, people listen.A world with instant access to sound bites on social media doesn’t fit in with deeper thinking, nuance and reflection.

On a slight tangent, and provoked by the idea that people may be harking back to the past and hoping for a return to a time when things may have seemed superficially at least, and only for some of course, "better", I have one personal observation.

When I was young (I'm 55 now) politicians weren't celebrities. They were grey, "boring", and while I agree that many were probably out of touch with the average person, in the UK, there were some who had come from working class backgrounds and appeared to have principles. When scandals broke, like the Profumo affair, it was genuinely shocking. The old boys network would have of course quietly mitigated things in the background no doubt, t'was ever thus, but there was a sense of some sort if justice being done. Many scandals probably never saw the light of day for political expediency.

These days so much about politics seems like a carefully managed performance. Hitlers PR and propaganda machine was underpinned by his acolytes enthusiasm for Edward Bernays and his new ideas regarding psychological marketing techniques. This is now the standard and totally accepted as "how we play the game".

When Theresa May shimmied on stage to Dancing Queen at whichever conference it was, I reached a new peak of WTF. I chastised myself for being out of touch, seeing my reactionary old age writ large and not wanting to be "like that". But I couldn't shake the feeling entirely that it heralded something dangerous.

I think, personally, that the move towards career politicians, those clearly not prompted by a sense of any genuine public service but largely by self interest has been engineered and enabled via the tools we now have media wise.

Back in the 90s I watched "Wag the Dog". That seemed slightly far fetched at the time, but now I think it's an object lesson in how people will see what they want to see. And our diminished attention spans need constant shiny stimulation and soundbites. Those who try to resist are scoffed at and it's made clear that if we don't adapt, survive and get with the programme, whatever that may be, we're out on an uncomfortable limb.

So I think what I'm trying to say is that one of the reasons "why" is marketing and the cult of celebrity. There's alot about the past that should go the way of the dinosaurs, no doubt, but sometimes I feel wistful for the old guard politicians with whom I may have disagreed with on policy, but whose wardrobes and private lives were an enigma for the most part.

And to add a further point, many politicians have exactly the same careers. They attend Oxbrdge. Probably take PPE, go to work as a researcher for a politician and then get elected. They are career politicians. Many seem to have no background in doing other work, and are IMHO, way too young to have the necessary experience. Being enthusiastic, being keen, being idealistic does not actually make a good politician. They are in a bubble, where they don't engage with people who have different opinions, and so it goes.

Looking at Germany's news I have thought for a while there's head in the sand about the general direction and we're seeing the dominoes fall as the pressure increases.

Usually any post about the causes gets quite vicious and personal backlash on mn and has done for last few years. It will get worse if people can't realistically address the reasons

I pretty much said the same thing to a MH worker about why I won’t do talk therapy with a 25 year old recent psychology graduate… with no life experience how the hell can they straddle the line between comprehending the struggles of a 55yr old (marriage, SEN kids, menopause, bereavements of lifelong friends, stress of looking after 80+ parents/IL after falls or parkinson’s diagnoses, the fear of late life redundancy when you still have dependents etc). Doesn’t matter how lovely, enthusiastic and compassionate they are or what grades they got in their degrees… some societal roles require significant lived experience. It helps to have walked a mile in the shoes of the people you serve.

I’d love to see education ministers come from teaching backgrounds, health ministers come from families with several NHS workers etc. Not exclusively, of course, as we miss out on significant talent, but anything else seems counter-intuitive.

As others have said the left has simply not been listening. Europe have engaged in a huge social experiment with immigration. Across Europe in particular the large inflow of refugees and migrants from cultures that are very different to western values. These groups of people have integrated poorly or not at all. Crime rates have risen and overwhelmingly those engaging in that crime are first, second or third immigrants/refugees. Peaceful Scandinavia has seen significant change. Just stating that fact has had the left frothing at the mouth accusing everyone of being racist. So for many years only the political right have dared raise concerns whilst the silent majority has been afraid to speak. Left leaning governments have ignored the rising crime and the social problems instead of tackling these. Take Sweden - it has gone from a low-crime country to a country with the highest rate of explosions in the world. There has been a huge number of bombings of apartments in working class neighborhoods for years now and its getting worse. We now have the phrase "Swedish conditions" which is used to summarize the state of that country and it is used in debate as a warning. Denmark has imposed border controls with Sweden because Swedish criminals were setting off bombs in Copenhagen too.

I remember Gordon Browns dismissal of the "bigoted" woman and recall I was horrified that he didn't listen. Her concerns that the influx of Eastern Europeans overloading local services were valid. Her grandkids couldn't get into their local school.

The economy is also a massive concern to people and was likely the deciding factor in the US election. The left "loves to spend other peoples money" and people now want low taxes. I am not surprised by the changes we see in the political landscape across Europe and the US.

This. As a person I think he's emotionally unstable at best, but his policies are to put America first. I wish some politician had the balls to do that for the UK.

This. My son lives in America. Americans feel they got poorer under Biden, and they are angry about non documented people pouring over the border.🤷‍♀️

They want cheap fuel - not eco policies.

They think Trump sort these things out.

There are quite a few posts on this thread that exemplify what I think one of the big underlying problems is.

Long term, lots of people feel less secure, poorer, and less important. I think that last one is really key to be honest - particularly for white men who (rightly in my view but still psychologically challenging for many of them.)

They have legitimate problems and they will tend to blame those problems on the changes that have correlated with their problems increasing.

And too often, instead of people saying "you're right, that's a legitimate problem, let's tackle it, here are my ideas for that" they're told "no, you're wrong about what's causing that problem, and here are the reasons you're wrong."

If you're given a choice between someone who makes you feel important and says they're going to focus on your problems, or someone who says you don't understand your own problems and anyway, you're not really their priority, it's not surprising that you might take the one that is more emotionally appealing to you and offers you something.

A very specific example is how the economy was treated in the US election and I think this is quite a massive factor in how the votes went. The economy is always going to be key but people's experiences of the economy are massively different. The way most people experience the economy is through prices and jobs, and for many Americans the impact of inflation was making them poorer. The Deomcrats ran more on macroeconomic factors - so those people who are having to buy less stuff and are feeling under much more pressure hear "actually, you're wrong, everything is great!" So they're left feeling the Democrats either don't understand or don't care about their problems.

(some of that is the problem for all incumbents after the post-Covid inflationary spike, but there is still the underlying problem of spending too much time explaining why the problem exists, or why it isn't a problem, and not enough time doing something about the problem.)