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.

"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."

And here we have it. Here is why people will never be happy. Yes the left loves to spend money. On what? Schools, hospitals, housing, public services.

How many times have I heard people complaining about mass immigration because "I can't get a doctor's appointment", "our local school is shit and oversubscribed", "there's no affordable housing, British people are on the streets". Apparently, this is nothing to do with government policies but all the fault of immigrants.

If we want to improve the NHS, schools, housing we need to pay taxes. Low taxes and underinvestment lead to yet more people living in poverty, yet more people unable to get doctor's appointments or access decent schools. Yet more very angry people living shit lives, blaming immigrants for their problems. It's a never-ending cycle. The right wing media and conservative party happily encourageds these beliefs because it distracts from the real cause of the problems. It's very much part of their agenda.

Refreshingly thoughtful and nuanced post!

Why Trump Triumphed article from UK publication The Critic:

thecritic.co.uk/why-trump-triumphed/

Look at what right wing parties are building their campaigns on and that will give you an indication of why they’re gaining ground globally.

Generally it’s immigration, gender madness, abortion and then it’s jobs, healthcare, taxes etc. there are more but those are key ones.

Societies will continue to vote right wing until the left finally listen to the people and stop trying to act like the moral high ground. They love to preach about why they’re better and kinder but most times they’re forcing weird ideologies down our throats.Interestingly, I’ve seen arguments that the left are responsible for a lot of moral decline in society (obviously this isn’t wholly true, but does have some merit). Society has had enough and we’re seeing pushback.

There are many, many articles on various news sites speaking to those who voted for Trump and a running theme seems to be inflation and cost of living. A lot felt they were better off under his last administration and did not feel the Democrats provided a solution to their concerns.

There are also interviews with some immigrants who have switched to Trump this time round who have also stated they want to stop illegal immigration - that they had to come through the proper channels and they feel others should have to as well.

Its simple. People felt their lives were better and things were cheaper during Trump's last term. As somebody on Youtube put it "Normal people are concerned about normal things".
It's just like here. Ultimately, the Tories were booted out because everything got more expensive and the NHS wasn't working. Most people don't really care about all the culture wars

People are fed up with woke. People are fed up with being poor. It had nothing to do with her being a woman.

I don't normally comment on these types of post but 100% agree with the above..

Tax payers are sick to the back teeth of working their fingers to the bone only for the government and other authorities to have first dibs on their well earned pay packet.

People know there's a housing crisis yet have no say on governments that invite thousands of people into the country on a weekly basis.

Those that use the "because they're too thick or racist" are the one's that are burying their heads in the sand.

What is the crux of your argument? That because some migrants have abhorrent attitudes to women all migrants should be treated with disdain and removed from the country?

Absolutely none of the negatives you've listed there are unique to migrants or to a particular culture. I've experienced all of the above from White British men in my home town. Some British men treat woman just as appallingly as some migrant men. It's not a cultural issue, it's a men issue.

And no, I don't think you're racist for having bad experiences. I do think it starts to become racist/bigoted if you treat one specific group differently because of the actions of a few, while ignoring, minimising or tolerating the same behaviour in other groups by virtue of their skin colour or religion.

Governments do not just spend on worthy services such as schools and hospitals! They waste an enormous amount of money on vanity projects and inefficiencies. I don't think there's a European who doesn't support taxation as a basic principle to fund societal infrastructure. That doesn't mean that there isn't growing resentment from some who feel they are being treated as a cashcow. Just look at mn and resentment evident in posts where people question "why do I bother working all my life when some get everything for free and then the state just come and take everything". Its a real issue and one of the issues the left is dealing with poorly as I feel your post exemplifies.

So why continually vote for parties that make things worse for the average person?

This is what I don't get. The left are blamed for the all manner of societies ills but it's the right that's been in power here for decades.

The Tories stood on an anti-immigration platform from 2015 onwards, and in every year they were in power, they increased migration. But rather than hold them to account and question this, people blame the "woke lefties" and then vote for right wing parties again.

The issues we are facing with housing, infrastructure, public services, tax, etc, etc are the natural consequences of decades of conservative capitalism and are being compounded now by an aging population.

If you want a more equal society, with plentiful opportunity and resources for all, you need to accept that left wing policies are what will make it happen. Conservative capitalism won't improve the lives of the majority because it is specifically designed to conserve the wealth of a few.

Sooner or later the right are going to have to stop blaming everyone else and accept that they're the architects of their own problems.

Because the left is pretty bad at storytelling - and particularly poor at crafting stories that link the macro to the personal with a strong emotional link.

The left cannot address a major issue and we may well see every comparable country go through a vote to the right as pressure mounts.

The EU, US and Aus will all have more hardline migration policy now.

The UK will be the outlier, I can't see why anyone would want to be that it's not a good thing, but I guess we'll see what happens politically and socially. We don't have a feasible policy whilst others will and do.

Because for many years the way women have been treated by certain groups has been minimised, because' it's their culture.' Arranged / forced marriage, FGM. There was a fear of saying it was wrong because it would look racist.
If its wrong, it's wrong. That's it, but if we can't call it out, then we change nothing. And, for too long that was the case.

No guesses who you voted for...

"Sooner or later the right are going to have to stop blaming everyone else and accept that they're the architects of their own problems"

Ooh look...

Propaganda from a certain group of people.

I think the difference for me is how you’re treated if you complain about white men vs immigrants.

A friend lived in a city with a very high immigrant population and issues similar to the Rotherham scandal. The area she lived in was mainly immigrants from a particular culture that doesn’t appear to value their women very much, and my friend and her two daughters were terrified to leave the house. Groups of men would hang out around her house. She was a single mother (ex turned into a feckless scumbag after their DD’s were born) which basically meant she was treated like a prostitute, as were her teen daughters, who weren’t allowed out alone because of it. This was all reported regularly to the police who did nothing and accused my friend of being racist and harassing these men, even though she eventually succumbed to filming it happening for evidence. She had zero support.

At the same time one of her daughter’s was stalked by a white man, it was less dramatic and terrifying than the daily harassment they faced but police couldn’t be more helpful. Double standards. And like the Rotherham scandal no one in a position of authority would do anything.

I don’t think I need to tell you who she voted for, but the horrific daily trauma she went through, plus being accused by police of racism and bigotry and warned about hate crimes, pushed her into it. Had the police and the Labour local authority actually listened and done something to help she would have voted Labour as she had all her life previously.

Plenty of people have dreadful experiences and are scared to speak about it because it’s twisted onto them. That’s not ok. If we’re going to have high levels of immigration it’s not unreasonable to expect the government to have an integration plan rather than there being known areas that turn into ghettos and leaving it to fester.

Shoot me down if you like, but unlimited immigration doesn't work. People don't integrate, many living in their own communities. The city were I was born (Peterborough) has been run down by houses of multiple occupation, violence and sexual crimes are rife. Anyone earning a decent living has left to live in the suburbs. There are eastern Europeans living in the bushes and shitting everywhere, rubbish everywhere. Yes, there are good and bad in all societies, but opening the doors for everyone was the wrong thing to do. I recall labour (Blair) saying that the immigrants were needed to pay the future pensions. Why is it that this country is worse off now? Perhaps it is poor management by the councils and government, but that's not the bit people see, we just see our city ruined. I can fully understand why people are voting right wing.

https://time.com/7172052/how-donald-trump-won-2024/

Matt Goodwin sums it up well (he's worth a follow):

"Politics, in short, has become ‘two dimensional’, where people’s worries about mass uncontrolled immigration, broken borders, crime, woke ideology, the erosion of their identity and history, and even the survival of Western nations …
… now matter just as much to them as their more traditional worries about jobs, wages, and prices."

It's appalling that, out of their huge population, the only 2 people standing for POTUS was a misogynistic incoherent man and a woman who as far as I could tell, was a penny short of a pound.
'they voted for Trump because they didn’t want a woman'. No. It wasn't that they didn't want a woman. They didn't want THAT woman.
And America, like most of Europe, is facing an influx of illegal immigration - which no sane person wants. Trump and Farage have highlighted this and have promised to deal with it. Perhaps that's why people voted for them and why Meloni is in power.

I think that the actual issue is that many young people, minorities and the uneducated are disengaged with voting. Voting turnouts are extremely poor and not representative of the nations they are supposed to represent. US election turnout was 64%, the UK’s was 59%.

This is so true, the majority voted for Trump, who says they are wrong, just because it’s not your opinion, I notice that the left voters, always assume they are right. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion without others trying to belittle them

This. A willful disregard of any factual information that doesn't fit with what they want to believe. Every leading economist in the US stating that Harris' plans were better for the economy and Trump's plans would be very bad for the US economy & would probably send it into a recession and trade war, but many many voters interviewed said they voted for him because of the economy. Vance complaining that eggs cost $5 a dozen whilst standing in front of a display showing eggs as $2.99/dozen.

I think people underestimate how incredibly ill-informed so many voters are. Part of it is the dumbing-down or abject failure of the educational system. The US is an enormous country and educational standards and practices vary wildly between states and areas. I once had a colleague from a southern state argue with me that there were more slaves in the northern states than in the south prior to the Civil War - keep in mind there are loads of records that show this is not true, but it's what she was taught in school.

Add to that, people equating "feelings" with facts. You can see examples of this in interviews when voters are confronted with actual facts - for example, when they claim they love Trump because he gave them healthcare coverage, which was actually done under Obama's administration, or people getting upset because Obama allowed the US to be attacked on 9/11 even though Bush was president. When faced with a fact check, they have said "well that's just how I feel" as if facts=feelings.

Low information voters - Muslims who didn't vote for Harris because they don't like the Biden/Harris response to Gaza and didn't want to vote for a woman, but voted for the guy who moved the US Embassy to Jerusalem and literally tried to install a Muslim ban. Trump has stated multiple times that South Americans are from s&$+hole countries, and are criminals, rapists, murderers, and he intends to round them up into camps and deport them - but Latinos voted overwhelmingly for him. He has discussed stripping naturalized citizens of their citizenship and deporting them. He said if he didn't win, it would partly be the fault of the Jews, but embraces people who proudly fly Nazi flags.

Many conservatives get their news from highly partisan sources like Newsmax and Fox News - Fox News who famously argued in court that one of their most popular news shows should be considered entertainment and that a reasonable person would understand that it was hyperbolic.

And then there's the old double standard - Harris is a "who're" because she once dated a married man who was legally separated from his wife for more than a decade. Meanwhile, Trump has been married 3 times and has cheated on all three of his wives, was found guilty of sexual abuse and convicted of 34 felonies, but apparently it's fine because he's male.

No one in his former Cabinet supports him, except Nikki Haley, in fact, a huge number of the people who worked in his previous administration have come out and stated that he is a danger to the US.