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.

Sorry, what?

I'm not trying to skate over any facts, if anything I'm trying to be factual that both Reform and the Green party have a worryingly racist element within them.

I agree that Farage is racist but it's possible to criticise two parties at the same time which I do with Reform and the Green party.

Vote Farage? You're voting fox and stag hunting.

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.
Thank you for that @livingonstrawbs I had not seen that point expressed so clearly.

but honestly, when life is continually shit, people do vote for change and will vote for Reform or Greens.
Except for those who voted Labour, did many of us just vote for change? Did we merely make a rude gesture to Labour. Or did we vote for a kind of philosophy?

OK, but...

And I am speaking here are someone who went hunt saboteuring as a youth...

Farage is a Russia-funded, racist, authoritarian who has already provided the biggest intentional economic shock to the UK economy - and therefore to the living standards of ordinary people - since WWII.

The fact that he supports fox-hunting is about the least objectionable objectionable thing about him.

He really looks like a "man of the people" in that photo 🙄

oh, I didn't realise you were making a sarcastic point in asking which. It's a pretty standard phrase and a good way to inject some anonymity so I'm unsure what you've extrapolated from it. I did go to both actually yes, one for undergrad and one for post grad.

Labour’s problem is basically the same problem the Democrats had when they couldn’t hold off Trump.
They just don’t seem to be able to connect with ordinary people at all. They parrot “working people” all day long, but they come across like metropolitan, upper levels of the civil service or the BBC-completely removed from the lives of most people in this country.
Their narrative is patronising and they focus on safety nets rather than aspiration, because they believe that working class people just need a higher minimum wage or better benefits.
They don’t seem to understand that wc people want opportunities for their kids, to start businesses, to have safe streets and good schools.
As for the racist issue- I genuinely do not believe most people are racist. The rough area I grew up in was much more racially mixed than where most politicians come from. But it depends what people mean by “racist”.
Due(ironically) to Brexit, the UK had a massive wave of immigration from African and Asian countries, very quickly. This has caused a very visible change in towns and cities, in schools, in hospital wards, in A&E, in the streets.
This, coupled with the asylum hotels and the high profile sexual assaults, has really scared people. It’s not racist to not want wholesale culture change almost overnight.
I think if the government (and the previous government) had not kept telling the population that it is all fine and nothing to see here, we wouldn’t be heading down this path of extremism on both sides.
Add to that the bizarre weaponising of a foreign war for political gain (Greens) and we are heading nowhere good.
Both scare the bejeezus out of me frankly.
The centre parties need to find a way to a much more honest and much less patronising message, and to be seen to be really tackling accelerated immigration, or we are screwed.

@IfNot How does "They don’t seem to understand that wc people want opportunities for their kids, to start businesses, to have safe streets and good schools." work with Angela Rayer then for example?

Or with the 30% of working class people who voted Labour in the last general election?

I didn’t mean one kind of racism was as bad as another, I meant pretending you could make a woman’s breasts grow via hypnosis was not as bad as being racist.

The difference is, not in the speed at which racist party members were thrown out of each party, but that Farage HIMSELF has a history of making horrendous racist and antisemitic comments. So many people have come forwards as witnesses of this. Instead of saying, I was young and an idiot, I’d like to massively apologise to the people I bullied with racist insults, he denies it.

I don’t believe his denials. There are too many witnesses and it fits in with his actions and beliefs in adult life.

I agree racism is worse but the hypnosis claim was pretty bad - exploiting vulnerable women for money.

Yes I said upthread (or possibly on a different thread as on a few today) that I agree Farage is racist.

It's more surprising with the Green party though. They used to be a party that was seen as gentle, kind, inclusive. It seems particularly abhorrent that they have been hijacked by people with a racist agenda and upsetting that their leader hasn't rushed to condemn that.

I used to like the greens when they cared about the environment.

Angela Rayner? The one who dropped out of school pregnant and calls people scum? Er… maybe this is the problem- the establishment class thinks Ange is the poster child for the working class which exactly illustrates my point!

I voted Labour all my adult life. Im really disappointed.

So Angela Rayner calling people scum is a problem, but Nigel Farage singing “Gas them all” to Jews is not?

It just seems like people judge the established parties by a very different set of rules than the populist ones, who are allowed to get away with anything.

Do you not think that despite her poor start Angela has done well, made a success of her life, spent a lot of her time in public service, been active in the unions and raised her children? Surely if anyone understand what working class people want first hand then it's her.

Im sick of people moaning about the boats, and things like benefit cuts being the reason they support reform, when Farage helped cause the boats and intend to slash benefits even more. Either plain ignorance or an excuse to justify their racism

Where have I said it’s not?? I clearly said that both Reform and Green are both extremist positions.

Wes Streeting has told Sir Keir Starmer that he is preparing his case to be the next Prime Minister, The Telegraph can disclose.

The Health Secretary is preparing to launch a leadership campaign if Sir Keir is forced from office this week, amid mounting speculation that the Prime Minister will have to resign.

When questioned by Downing Street about his intentions, Mr Streeting is understood to have told No 10 that he is not planning to challenge Sir Keir directly, but is preparing a “case” for a leadership challenge in case it “all falls apart” and a contest is triggered by another candidate.

The two child cap removal wasn’t the reason the benefits bill was through the roof though was it. No one has even received the new amounts yet. And when they tried to address benefit spending by means testing the WFA the country lost its mind.

So unless they’re going to demonise parents and the disabled, no one really wants to tackle the benefits bill. Pensions make up 50% of it and you can’t even breathe the idea of looking at that 🤷‍♂️

Pensions are not a state benefit, we pay into those and you need to achieve a certain contribution level.

They are a benefit and have been classified as such since 1948. You don’t “pay into it”, there’s no pot labelled “X’s Pension” - your contributions pay the pensions of those currently claiming, then the tax payers of the time will pay yours when you claim.

They are included in the welfare budget, the one that equalled income tax receipts for the first time last year that everyone was up in arms about when the info was published this year.

And plenty of people haven’t contributed and will still receive a state pension - topped up by pension credit if it’s below a certain amount.

An easy fix for Keir would be to stop the boats coming across the channel by getting tough with the French.

Introduce ID cards which I’m inherently against but now believe their introduction would get rid of the frankly embarrassing black market we are sitting on.

Stop giving pip benefits to teenagers and young people with anxiety. It does them no favours to medicalise normal human emotions.

Reduce the employer NI rates back to what it was. It’s killing the jobs market, particularly for those anxious young people who need to get a job.

Get rid of the Civil Service gold plated pension scheme.