AIBU to feel so weary of labour voters going on

[livingonstrawbs]

I think if people in real life knew I was saying this, they would be shocked or maybe not.

Reform are not my politics but I'm honestly so fed up of labour voting friends lamenting the rise of reform and blaming it all the greens and declaring everyone voting reform to be racist, stupid, ignorant.

Reform absolutely have some racist nutters but I do not believe that councils that were labour for more than 50 years turned reform because everyone became a racist overnight or is ok about racism.

Even saying yesterday that the rise of reform was down to failure of lab/conservative to do do anything other than maintain the status quo for many working class communities, let alone others, and the media to properly question, inform and hold to account farage was met with a barrage of hostility and false accusations. one person genuinely thinks this is all down to zack polanski and that farage has been questioned as hard as he has. Really?!?!

I should say by the way that I am a person of colour, was on free school meals, ended up going to Oxbridge and doing professionally well even if it's not lucrative. that's fine - those are all my choices. I'm miles better off than many other people and I know that. But i'm still very connected to the community i grew up in and see how working class people of all races etc without the same chances are living in immense poverty and the grind that is going on for them. Meanwhile, my very affluent labour voting friends seem to repeat 'labour is the best of a bad bunch.' for who, i say?? maybe for you. but honestly, when life is continualy shit, people do vote for change and will vote for reform or greens.

i'm just sick of being patronised and told i'm stupid, ignorant etc etc.

Couldn’t agree more. 👏🏼

I agree with this. A lot of people are voting Reform as they feel let down, frustrated and disenfranchised and there is a little bit of hope that someone/something new might be a change for the better. The tragedy to me is that if reform do win and actually enact the policies they have said they plan to then the likelihood is most of those who are voting for them will end up worse off and even more distrustful of politicians and politics. I wish I could have enough faith in a party (& confidence in the global economy’s stability) to say they would be better but I really don’t. What I would and have said to family who plan to vote reform is that while the main political parties have done really poorly and been really disappointing over a long period of time we shouldn’t be complacent in thinking it can’t possibly be any worse than it is.

Unfotunately you won’t get the honest answer, which is that for many people anti semitism is acceptable.

Some of the comments from Green candidates are abhorrent, yet they never seem to get labelled racist like Reform.

I notice they’ve gone silent.

It’s OK - we now know the answer. It has nothing to do with alleged racism - it’s just anti-Reform/pro-Labour.

Both are populist parties led by snake oil salesmen, but Farage is legions worse than Polanski and my feeling is that there is a much larger percentage of racist reform voters than there is of antisemitic Green voters. Not all parties are the same, there is most definitely a sliding scale of atrociousness and reform are, in my opinion, worse than greens. Lots of the reform voters I know are racist. None of the Green voters I know are antisemitic, They tend to be more of the type that are “so open minded their brains have fallen out”. I don’t live in an area with à l high Muslim population, so I imagine my viewpoint is skewed by my experience. Lots of the “non-racist” reform voters I know see the same spread of people that I do, so why are they less bothered by it?

In addition, Labour has been horrendously cowardly in not taking a far stronger stand on the war crimes in Palestine. I can understand people marching in protests against war crimes, and we should all protest, but it’s impossible to march without doing so alongside “internationalise the intifada” types, so I don’t know what the solution is there.

I think there’s a proportion of people in both Green and Reform who are basically just football hooligans, up for a politically motivated literal punch up, wherever they can find one. I don’t like brown shirts of any denomination.

Thanks - I realise that these are your experiences, but one racist/anti semite, is one too many, of course.

We simply must ensure our collective opprobrium against anti-semitism and racism is applied evenly.

Remember, Labour had a significant anti-Semitic element under Corbyn.

I agree. The media and the manipulation of social media.

Following that logic - voters are malleable and gullible.

I think that’s way too simplistic, and dangerous.

Sorry, thinking more about it, my view of greens is probably shaped not by the fact that I don’t live in an area with lots of Muslims, but by the fact I don’t live in an area with lots of students. The “up for a fight” crowd on the Green side are probably concentrated in the “young, male and living away from home” demographic. The up for a fight on the right side seem to be more made up of middle aged wife beaters (40% of those arrested in the summer riots had previously been reported for domestic abuse).

The North East has been overlooked by successive governments for decades. Entrenched inequalities, higher rates of poverty and unemployment and lower educational outcomes in many communities compared with the UK average. That’s not a reflection of a lack of potential though, the North East is a brilliant part of the country with huge strengths. They’ve been left behind.

They all have the vote, of course.

Whatever their background and motivations.

This week we were voting for bin collections, street lighting, library opening times not corporation tax and the taxing of billionaires though.

You've said before you live in London and are surrounded by wealthy Labour voters. To be fair the country as a whole is very idfferent from London. You say your Labour voting friends don't want a redistribution of wealth - in which case Labour is the wrong party to be voting for isn't it? Surely the Tories would be a better bet? Or Reform whose MPs are all ex Tories.

Polanski has said he can hypnotise women into growing bigger boobs. Farage, as a teenager, sang “gas them all, gas them all, the long and the short and the tall” in the face of Jewish students and made other equally racist comments to black students. I wouldn’t vote for either of them, but I think Farage is the worse of the two. I can’t see how voters could get past that.

Voters are malleable. If they weren't which party would ever bother campaigning, issuing leaflets or making party political broadcasts.

Why would billionaires with a motive seek to own the media and social media?

The relentless drip of media - from the first day after the last election was intense. The Telegraph and Daily Mail were intense and hysterical in their reaction to the extent that my lifelong Telegraph reading elderly friend stopped buying it for the first time in their life. They said it had become a comic/tabloid.

We are all malleable and gullible to an extent but we have our limits.

We have our limits, agreed.

And, for many, those limits have evidently been exceeded.

Newly elected Reform councillor believes the holocaust was a hoax.

www.jewishnews.co.uk/reform-uk-face-questions-after-holocaust-is-a-hoax-candidate-elected/

Where’s Oxbridge? Do you mean you ended up at Oxford? That’s all I’ve taken from this sorry!

Whose fault do you think our financial situation is because if you think it’s 2 years of labour over 14 years of austerity and Brexit, you’re deluded.

Whose fault is it then?

However from Labour voters I’ve heard a lot of introspection, talking about how the party needs to change, re-position, new leadership etc. I think Labour realise they’ve fucked up

That's basically what our Labour councillors are saying, even the ones who were successful.

Do you think that message has reached Starmer, and the cabinet?

And, if so, talk aside, do you think they are willing and able to change course?

'overlooked'? We've had more money pumped into this region than any other. There's been millions spent attracting business. The people voting Reform will be the ones most adversely affected if they ever form a government. We're awash with flags in an area that's 98% white. Most people I know tempted by Reform are getting their news from social media, never fact check anything. Some of the comments I've heard are off the scale ludicrous. People are being told their lives are terrible - it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. The Most I know who are continually bemoaning hardship are actually living nice lives. The ones who are truly struggling are too busy surviving to worry about being told how hard their lives are.

DH and I are wondering whether to have a small wager on how many newly elected Reform councillors are gone within 6 months for shit like this.