The impossible has happened - Trump has made me a Keir Starmer supporter!

[mumofoneAloneandwell]

'This is not the age of churchill'

Thank God. Fucking orange twat.

What has the Rochdale(which has a Muslim population of 30.5%) by-election in 2024 got to do with anything that is happening now? In any case, the seat went back to Labour five months later.

Yes, derailment is the point

Not at all.

Anyway, I'm out of here, so talk/argue among yourselves.🙂

Oh @PandoraSocks , @Hyacinthbucketsgarden is just being helpful and providing even more evidence against their own assertion.

That article is from 2024 and lays out the electoral risk to Labour from its Gaza policy (much, it must be said, from younger voters rather than only Muslim voters).

And here we are in 2026 knowing that Starmer didn't change policy to appease those voters. Hence the Green win in G&D.

[edited to correct typo]

Dear me. Did I say something to upset you, @Hyacinthbucketsgarden ?

Because that 6% is not evenly spread and is concentrated in certain seats (eg Bradford, Birmingham etc) which means that under first past the post if you can get their votes on a particular issue (eg Gaza) then you win the seat.

Yes, it is concentrated in certain areas, which means that only a handful of seats have a majority Muslim population and the vast majority of seats don't have a Muslim population as high as Gorton and Denton, for example.

Pps have demonstrated exactly why the premise that Starmer is deciding policy based on what the Muslim population want is false. Did you read them?

Its clearly been demonstrated that Starmer isn't deciding policy based on a small section of the pop. regardless of where they live.

I ve seen Labour criticised over the Iraq war countless times, usually by more right leaning posters such as yourself, yet when we do stay out of a pointless ME conflict, you & others criticise that too.

Had Starmer jumped to the Trump tune, you'd be saying that was wrong and we should stay out....

Lets see what comes out of their current conversations.

I've been looking at the websites of various newspapers - being old , it's easier than trying to keep track of all the podcasts. What strikes me is how excited the legacy media is getting about the prospect of Britain getting into yet another war by choice. In stark contrast to the comments below the articles , which are at least 80pc behind Starmers tactic , ie don't annoy the nutters too much but don't go to war either. Whereas Farage and Badenoch seemingly can't wait to send a task force to the Gulf.

When ...if ....all this is over , Farage will still be in clover. He'll probably have some Lord Haw Haw style channel in the USA. Not sure about Kemi. The Lords I suppose and non executive directorships. Not a big fan of Steer Calmer myself but Trump is making him look amazing.

I don't think that Starmer is deciding policy based on what the Muslim population vote. But I do think that he has been rattled by the result of the Gorton and Denton by election and that the Labour party is losing so many votes to the Islamo leftists (ie Green Party).

He is therefore trying to walk a tight line between keeping the centre left (traditional Labour voters) and the Islamo left all on board .

Hence his stance on Iran which is supported by around 48% of voters. This to be fair then is a safe topic that gets him the support of both factions.

However ultimately this approach cannot be successful on wider topics particularly the economy, because the increasing polarisation of politics means that the Islamo left vote is pulling further away from the centre.

Islamo left

A term that has been "hijacked by right-wing journalists and intellectuals to denounce a part of the left that, in their eyes, had fallen into the trap of multiculturalism by questioning national unity and national values.

I don't think it is worth engaging with someone who uses the phrase Islamo left.

This is what the US bombing is doing to the lungs of people in Tehran

"Black rain has fallen over Tehran after strikes on oil facilities, coating streets and rooftops in dark, oily water. “The rain is actually apparently saturated with oil,” CNN reports."

Indeed. See the Tory party's strategy of essentially writing off all 57 seats in Scotland and still successfully going on to form the UK government many times.

I mean, the Tories aren't unhappy when they do pick up a Scottish seat (managed 5 out of 57 in 2024, a big improvement on the years they've had 0), but caring about Scottish seats is not a key part of their strategy.

Of recent years the Tories have been completely overt about abandoning seats in England and Wales, too: "they don't vote for us anyway" we heard so often about help for poorer constituencies.

By the way, guess what: now some of those areas are voting Reform. And it's not the Labour party that is losing MPs and ex-MPs in droves to Reform. So maybe the Tories should have given a shit about the people who "don't vote for us anyway" after all.

[edited cos I can't write for toffee]

A war makes good copy. The press are competing with a wider variety of news sources. You can drum up lots of Opinion Editorials geared to your owners preferred outlook. Cheaper than having journalists actually in the ME.
It's no accident that the majority of newspapers are owned by right wing non-doms. More effective to own media than run a political party. GBNews has been run at a massive loss to Paul Marshall and Legatum but its worth it for the opportunity to direct discourse and politicians.

Farage and Badenoch can say they want to declare war simply because they don't actually have to do it. Both Reform and the Conservatives are quite reliant on their US counterparts (lots of overlap in their networks) so its no surprise that they need to support Trump at every opportunity.

Personally I think it's quite surprising! For the Tories at least. Because Trump is unpopular in the UK and there are now multiple examples of Anglosphere right wingers potentially suffering from the Trump effect in elections. To some extent I can see why Reform are going for that strategy, since they were so linked with the US right already, but there is no sense in the Tories doing it.

well if the EU were doing the fighting instead of the US then at least they would be taking into account the carbon footprint of their actions and making sure that there were no single use bottle tops.

I agree it doesn’t make sense from the perspective of their base. I’m sure a lot of Conservatives find Trump’s commentary regarding UK armed forces (and everything else he’s denigrated) deeply distasteful and don’t trust Trump in the slightest particularly given his changing war objectives.
But in terms of connections the IEA, Policy Exchange etc - hugely influential in the Conservative Party - receive cash from US donors. The Heritage Foundation has been represented at the Conservative Party conference. There are also links with America First Policy Institute. It’s a good opportunity to curry favour, keep in step with Reform and maintain a clear demarcation with Labour - all without having to actually fund a war effort. just my view obviously.

• chemicals are producing acidic precipitation that causes skin burns + severe lung damage on contact

• the rain is corrosive + could damage structures

• heavy metals leaking into soil/water systems

But bottle tops

Maybe some lives are worth more than others to the pp?

The main thing Pandora is it's anti-woke.

Did you post on any of the threads about Iranian lives when the regime killed 30,000 in 48 hours?
The left were very quiet in January, it didn't matter until they could blame US/Israel.

I wasn't on those threads for those 'the Left' reasons.

Were you?

I did post saying how horrific that was, yes. I am not sure which threads though. Eta: I don't go on the CITME board, so if there were threads there I would not have seen them.

Interesting how there is never any response from the 'of course we should go to war and carpet bomb the Iranians posters when a military expert vehmently disagrees and points out some of the major flawa with Trumps 'plan'.