Well, obviously, Liz Truss and Kwazi Kwarteng's brief spate in government was as right-wing economically as you can get. American-style libertarianism.
The whole hostile environment and the way they treat migrants is just vile. The language they actually use in Parliament is directly fascistic (“invaders” THAT’s the hyperbole people shoukd object to!) What next? Cockroaches? The whole nasty lie about illegal migrants when it is bloody impossible to be a ‘legal’ migrant from some countries.
The massive intolerance to the democratic right to protest, and vilifying of protestors.
Following Trussenomics, talking about bringing in laws to control unions and strike action even more - when it's already massively controlled - feels like another tone-deaf right-wing authoritarian response to a problem that directly evolves from Tory policies: Brexit, Truss, austerity.
Prior to that it was the authoritarian behaviour that horrified me: proroguing Parliament, behaving as if international law is a trivial consequence, the lies around NI agreement, ignoring their own laws wrt party gate, the rampant fraud around PPE contracts being written off, talk of withdrawing from international human rights agreements ...
Honestly, I could go on and on and on.
I live in Scotland, never liked the SNP, voted against Scottish Independence and occasionally voted Tory. But, my god, the tory government from Cameron to Sunak has been a total gift to the SNP, and people like me are BITTERLY let down by all of it.
When the only media talking about GC issues are the right-wing media, we’re in trouble up here. Anyone pro-Indy almost automatically disregards anything written by those papers anyway, because of those papers’ stance stance on independence. And the rest of us? It’s easy for the SNP and the Greens to discredit any GC article in a paper like that as yet more distasteful right-wing media prejudice, because those same papers also trumpet support for this bunch of tossers.
Most people don’t read the detail behind GC issues, and most don’t understand the nuance, so the Westminster corruption plus media really does have significant influence on views up here and it makes me despair. It feels like, before you can even start discussing GC issues, we have to first convince who we’re talking to that this is an issue that exists irrespective of politics. It's like a wall that needs to be chipped away first.
I feel like I have to navigate two social risks among my Scottish peers on the GC topic: first, that the person I talk to might file me away in their mind as someone who is probably also racist, xenophobic and intolerant of the poor —— as well as transphobic. I can cope with being (falsely) labelled as transphobic, but I really don’t want people I generally like and respect thinking I have all the other unpleasant qualities.