This post nails it about left wing voters on Mumsnet over the last two days

[ProudAmberTurtle]

It's by an ex-academic on X, about posts on Reddit over the last 48 hours but is equally applicable to Mumsnet, where I can seeing posts stating things like:

"How stupid are Reform voters? Don't they realise they'll get fewer benefits?!"

The irony is of course that it's those posters who need to be educated, not the working class voters they mock because they think they're thick.

Here you go:

Reading through Reddit threads in which leftists/progressives express their bewilderment/confusion/fury at working class English voters for casting their lot in with Reform, one of the things I'm starting to understand is this:

They simply do not understand how a government could help working-class people in any other way besides giving them benefits, handouts, and other free things.

Their entire mental architecture is premised upon the premises that

1. Working class people are poor
2. The only way for them to not be poor is for the state to give them free stuff
3. So left-wing parties need to promise them lots of free stuff

Then, when these working-class voters instead vote for right-of-centre parties who instead promise an economy in which they can build a career, start their own business, make a financial success of themselves and start a family, they're confused.

Because, again, in their mental architecture, what the working class are supposed to want is free benefits from the state.

But what they actually want is a fair shake at making their own way in the world, making money, getting on in life.

And the left simply doesn't understand that what these voters want from the state is an economy in which they can actually do this.

x.com/i/status/2053073719086469193

"National Pride" is a ridiculous concept. It implies there is a natural hierarchy to countries and nations

There is a hierarchy, which is why migrants go to the West and nobody is going to places like Somalia. Because the former have made nice countries that people actually want to live in.

Well posters like InstantlyBella and XDownwiththissortofthingX have really really made your point for you OP. Of course there is room for Reform when the left / anyone is this deeply out of touch. I just wish more people were capable of providing and voting for a genuine middle option and we had less extremism on both sides.

But everybody already gets a fair go at things - free education, free health care, a NMW, employment rights, the right to free speech, the right to join a union, loans and grants to access higher education - I could go on.

The fact is that some people chose not to see all of the above (and more) as the way to a better life. They instead think they’ll somehow ‘get more’ under Reform. They genuinely don’t know how much they’ve got at the moment.

They’ll get less under Reform as there will be no NMW, no lift on the two child benefit cap, no workers rights, no right to strike, no NHS etc

Just watch any of the videos when reform voters are asked if they think it’s good that NMW will be scrapped, ‘oh no, that’s not good’ ‘It’s a Reform policy’ ‘Is it?’

You're right, achievements are something to be proud of. And Britain's achievements are huge relative to the size of the country. How many inventions have the people of this island come up with over the centuries? People are proud to be associated with that inventiveness. It's not batshit at all.

Possibly because left and right have an overlap. Quite a big one really. And there is a lot to argue about inside that overlap without going to the edges where the policies are distinct.

I don't come across working class people.
I think that sums up this poster who is doing a stirling job of wind up on this thread. Either that or they are very, very young and wealthy🤣

If that's what you took from my post then shame on you!

@inkognithahow would that work? If I am on NMW and you reduce my income I am worse off. ‘Relaxing’ worker rights means I am potentially worse off if I want to take holiday leave, not work unsocial hours, need sick or maternity leave. Because my wages are already so low either in work benefit increases or I can’t meet basic costs. So that’s baked in. Either I pay or the state pays.

On the plus side my employers will have increased profits and might employ more people and I might get to recoup my losses if I earn promotion?

Why not keep NMW and worker rights, stop employers relying on the state to pay low wages and minimise staff and reward me for my merit?

Why is it OK for low paid workers to take the risk but not large employers making millions in profit?

In work benefits, that allow employers to pay low wages or landlords to charge high rents, are a right wing policy that do not allow the dignity of labour (as in work) to enable self sufficiency. It preserves profit (which never trickles down) whilst making workers dependent on both their employer and the state.

Left wing policies have traditionally focused on wages and employment rights being adequate enough to allow self sufficiency in a context of universal benefits available to all with a safety net for the temporarily unemployed and those unable to work due to ill health, disability, caring etc.

What are Reform policies on in work benefits? How can you reduce in work benefits whilst lowering NWM? Or does Reform want to increase state support of the working class whilst removing universal benefit (like the NHS) and support from the sick and disabled?

Posts like this really don't help Reform's cause.

And typical that they now think any well written summary is AI and end up hurling insults as an answer.

Christ OP is it you again?!

For someone who thinks people should be more industrious you don’t half waste a lot of time making the same points over and over on here.

Nothing wrong with pride in your country but when the flag is used outside immigration centres and hotels to intimidate those fleeing some dreadful situations it's no longer about national pride or cohesion.

As a immigrant myself I can tell you, these flag bearers are full of hate. They don't have any national pride and many don't even know how to hang the union jack the right way up. I'm Irish and as a child I had to endure the English and there orange order parading the streets hurling abuse to catholics..so I don't share your enthusiasm for immigrant bashing vile scum that camp outside hotels making everyone else's life a miserable. Or the people who march through our cities causing chaos.

Why should I put up with people hanging jacks on lampposts outside my house 🏠...it's litter in my opinion and people should be fined for doing it. If you are that proud do something for community yourself, plant flowers on road sides, pick up rubbish, plant bulbs on the verges in the autumn, volunteer to help at a food bank or a homeless drop in centre like we do at our church.

These people waving the flags have done more harm to our national identity than any immigrant. I used to look at the flag with hope now it strikes fear because of the people using it.

What you state isn't quite correct.

It was because of money and a changing capitalist landscape.

Look up The Zong and the court case surrounding that.
Also Eric Williams' book.

Yes there was a huge moral campaign to end slavery. But sadly that wasn't the catalyst that actually caused it to be outlawed. It was money.

Exactly. Your first paragraph sums up many of the reasons why we have so many immigrants, yet huge swathes of our home grown population take their kids out of school for totally lax reasons, or can’t be bothered to take them at all, send kids in without breakfast to the extent that we now have to provide all meals for free (WTF), don’t engage with homework, disrespect teachers and teach their DC to do the same, turn up to the school gates in their dressing gowns… and then wonder why the immigrants are taking all the jobs.

We don’t all start from the same base but by God in this country we are all given access to healthcare and education at a minimum, multiple other benefits depending on your circumstances, and it’s up to you from there isn’t it?

There was a thread about people on UC getting massive discounts on UK attractions recently and people said it was unfair, but it turns out that the uptake on this is really low amongst that group. That’s just one example, you can lead a horse to water…

Says the person who just said they don’t come across working class people in their daily life…… telling them it’s wrong to be patriotic. I wonder what the problem is here?…….

My own take on this is that people who feel disillusioned, ignored and let down by successive governments and traditional parties are desperately seeking a ‘hero’. They want to believe that there is a saviour out there who will solve their problems and give them hope of a better future and turn back the clock to make ‘Britain great again’.

So I don’t think it’s so much stupidity as naivety. Alongside a longing for some great populist leader who has great sound bites and appears to represent their interests. (Which is pretty much what happened in the US).

Call me an old cynic but Nigel and his pals are in it for themselves as are most politicians. They’re going to make a few people very happy but the majority are in for a shock when they realise all those low skilled jobs done by immigrants play a hugely vital role in a well functioning society.

The first 4 policies on Reform’s website are about immigration- I’m sure we all want great healthcare and education- the inability to provide this without immigration will be sorely tested if Reform get in.

So yes sometimes there appears to be an abandoning of logic and a baffling trust in a man who only appears to want to increase division in the UK rather than bring people together.

This is the point isn’t it - getting rid of NNW but also removing various top ups just means loads of people who are not loaded end up on less money . The idea it creates more jobs isn’t exactly much consolation when you still have the same costs and less way of paying them. To be honest for many it’s turkeys voting for xmas.

Ive always said the problem in the UK isn’t so much minimum wage ( it was little higher when we lived in Denmark) it’s the costs - tax was much higher when we lived there, ( they don’t have NI) - but they also don’t have council tax, full time childcare is around £250 a month , there is far far more good quality social housing ( modern flats with balconies) - the expectation was that single mums and mums in couples both worked full time or as near as and the childcare was there. So many people expect to not work and do the minimum to still be able to claim - the mentality in Copenhagen was simply different - too many people are paying way too much just to be housed- particularly in southern half of England and more in demand areas in midlands and north. The biggies are costs and expecting to get by on little work or one income but dual income mentality and debt levels

The St Georges Cross and Union flag should be unifying symbols of pride in our country but they've been hijacked for a long time. It only improves during major football tournaments, when at least the SGC is a signifier of support for the team and not otherwise loaded.

It wasn't the Left that is responsible for this (and maybe people need to look at where St George probably came from, in so much as we know anything about him)

Clue: somewhere hot and in the Near East, rather closer to Syria than here.

As a James Bond fan it is a bit dispiriting that in the pre-credits of The Spy Who Loved Me, when the parachute opens to reveal the Union flag, now the main thought would be - oh, Bond's a Reform voter.

Although, in contrast, for the odious Gustav Graves in Die Another Day, his Union flag parachute into Buckingham Palace is now quite appropriate.

There used to be something niche, a bit cute, about the flag - it used to be sexy and celebratory. Now it isn't - it's been hijacked and squabbled over, like the Eagle colours in the Sharpe's Napoleonic Wars. It's all rather unseemly.

This flag obsession is something that insecure foreign powers used to do, but now it's us.

@PocketSand Don't shoot the messenger, it is simply how many people think, not invented by or specific to Reform.

I loved national day in China, even though it wasn’t for me. Usually a crisp fall day (sometimes polluted but there you go), red flags lining the streets, vividly dotting the usually gray streets.

That flag …. represents so much suffering and death, pain. But it also meant so much to the local people, so much pride in themselves as a unified people, under the current Han leadership (itself a hard fought thing). Not to reflect so much on grim events past (well not totally allowed depending on the event) but pride in what good they have inherited and hope that they will have a strong and powerful country that will deliver prosperity to them and their descendants.

You cannot understand their patriotism, but it was incredibly touching to this outsider. I know that in 1000 years there will be a Han people. Much the same as they are now. Maybe they can discuss their past a little more openly by then.

There of course will be no such thing as ‘the English’ by then, with current attitudes.

Maybe a successor group will gut and wear your culture as a skinsuit. But the English will be long gone, all because they stopped valuing themselves as a distinct people, denied that they were a people at all, in fact.

I read that article - it just seems to me that it's all about immigration. I watched the news, and the people interviewed were saying that they felt Labour had let the working classes down. But they could only talk about immigration. I haven't seen any other evidence on what the working class feel they've been let down on. Only immigration.

And I'm not denigrating their views (I absolutely think they have to be taken seriously), but I don't find them well thought through, or logical, or morally correct.

And I think it's like Brexit all over again. We were told that Brexit was a protest vote - but it really backfired because Brexit won! And this will too - we're fucked in Reform get in. Absolutely fucked. And I don't think that people who vote for them are seeing much beyond immigration.

I

I really don't think you can talk about national day in China. Are you aware of the human rights abuses of people who aren't Han chinese?

You can be sure I know about it, especially as I lived in Beijing when a bunch of Uigher terrorists knifed people to death in Tiananmen Square.

Luckily I was never in Kunming when they killed like 30 people at the train station.