Trans group attack Wes Streeting"s constituency office

[DrudgeJedd]

Happened this morning but doesn't seem to be reported anywhere. Trans protest group Bash Back smashed a large window & painted "child killer" (although it looks more like 'chip king' 😁).
Manifesto seems to be the usual MtF centred hyperbole about 'our trans sisters' and repeats the mass suicide myth that Jolyon Maugham & his daughters' group Trans Kids Deserve Better have been trying to blame on Streeting since last summer. I wonder if TKDB have decided that leaving paper coffins outside of this office every day isn't getting the attention they want?
x.com/LeftieStats/status/1951281603776278791?t=z-aJP8CBec9iUri9dZH_PA&s=19

Not rural per se but I know similar people @EdithStourton

Next election will be interesting.

TWAW is not a vote winner and some politicians already know that.

Most of the public are interested in tax, public services, cost of living and jobs. Most couldn’t give a rats arse about anything else.

@EdithStourton I’m a city dweller (city tends to be Labour and was a Remain city) and apart from the farming comment, your post resonated with me.

I'm in an urban constituency that's voted Labour forever, usually by huge margins. It was tighter last time. The runner up was an independent Muslim candidate whose literature was about 70% about Gaza and 30% about useless the local council is.

There's massive discontent with Labour, but it's not clear who is going to be the vehicle for that.

@Ereshkigalangcleg @VictorianChic
Interesting that it's the same vibe in urban areas.

There is a definite sense in this area that the police are basically powerless. I know a farmer who gave up on livestock a few years ago after the best of his beef cattle were stolen one night. It must have been long-planned, and the animals would have gone illegally into the food chain. There was a lot of suspicion about who had been involved, including overheard comments in the local pub, but nothing was done. There is intermittent arson - not a lot, but enough that farmers can't insure straw. Hare coursing is another one - crops wrecked, big money bet, nothing done. An acceptance that if you're burgled and all your tools and your vintage Norton nicked, you won't see Plod for 36 hours, and then he'll give you a crime number so that you can claim on your insurance, and that will be it. Or if you report a car for driving away from your garage without paying for fuel, and tell the police exactly where it's going, and what the reg was, nothing will be done (someone I know was basically told that when he rang the info in).

It all makes for a sense of disquiet and general unease, a feeling that law enforcement has no teeth and hasn't had for 5-10 years.

This is the sort of sharp-end stuff that influences elections. Any party that promises some action on rural crime (beyond a nicely-branded 4x4 'FIGHTING RURAL CRIME' parked up in a tourist spot) will, I think, win votes in the countryside.

And that won't be anything with Corbyn at the helm.

I've been banging on on another thread about a current Radio 4 series which has really shocked me. It's about probate fraud - absolutely blatant fraud, but until the BBC started making noise about it no one in government or the police was interested. Millions stolen from rightful heirs and HMRC and used to fund other criminal enterprises. This isn't the UK I grew up in, or at any rate the UK I believed I lived in. The criminal justice system is absolutely fucked.

I completely agree with @EdithStourton

I know quite a few people who did/will vote Reform, from different demographics. Working class urban dwellers to rural people and land/farm owners, all people who are fundamentally nice and decent people. And all for similar reasons - they're utterly fed up. Fed up with the problems caused by immigration (the cost, the crimes committed by people who've moved here, the pressure on services, the difficulties caused in areas where there are asylum hotels). The decline in public services, the lack of accountability from councils/politicians who just shrug, spout some platitudes but never actually change anything. Crime levels. Homelessness levels, leading to even more crime. Lack of housing. The farm tax. The general feeling that things are shit. Worry for what the future holds for them and their children.

Politicians in the mainstream parties only have themselves to blame because THEY AREN'T FIXING ANYTHING. There is an appalling sense of apathy, of defensiveness, of just not giving a crap.

So the likes of Reform come in. I don't think they're the fast track to fascism that some fear, and maybe even some of the policies are sensible. But I don't think that overall they are a good political movement... but what other option do people have if they're dissatisfied with Labour and the Tories?

It's the same with the media - so many outlets won't cover immigration issues etc, but the DM and GB News do. BBC and the Graun just stick their fingers in their ears because they wish it all wasn't happening, and it just feeds the narrative even more that the underlying issue is a lurch to the right, rather than it only being the further-right parties/media that will even talk about the problem.

Wrong question.

Even if both groups have the same number of supporters, Corbyn has a problem that Farage doesn't.

His supporters are heavily saturated in a relatively small number of constituencies (basically city university constituencies). Farages are much evenly spread across the country.

It means that they have a reasonable chance of winning certain seats if the election falls in term time. Outside term time they will struggle.

Corbyn will be in direct competition for the Green vote. They've been squatting on the political compass very close to Corbyn for a while. Reform doesn't have the same problem especially since the Tories have pretty much collapsed now.

The biggest issue Corbyn will have is raising candidates and money though. They haven't got union money and they haven't got rich backers. So it's small donations only and this is the group keen on £5 membership cos they are skint. The chances of them being able to stand candidates in every seat is unrealistic and this is relevant most to an election out of term time. Then they have to pick candidates that aren't going to scare people off or haven't got a batshit story. Your Labour marginals tend to be in less city based constituencies. If you are Labour - who gets to pick the date of the election - you want to call an election outside term time so you have less concentrated votes in your city constituencies AND all the students vote in more marginal constituencies where Corbyn can't afford to stand candidates and there's much less chance of voters picking nutty Corbyn Candidates so they end up voting Labour again.

Keep in mind there were a lot of people in 2017 who wouldn't vote Labour because of Corbyn. If the loonie lot move off, there will be a fair number of exTorys who will pinch their noses and vote Labour over Reform because they are happier to do so because the loonie lot have gone in part because the Tory vote has completely collapsed and Labour might be the only way to keep out Farage.

The next election will be a 'Keep out Farage' vote with that being the primary motivation and the line pushed by the Labour pretty hard too.

None of these factors particularly favour the distribution of Corbyn supporters.

The next election will be a 'Keep out Farage' vote with that being the primary motivation and the line pushed by the Labour pretty hard too.

Good point. And Scotland looks set for another SNP government, despite everything.

I agree with all this. I have experienced things here on our streets in the last couple of months that I would never have believed possible. The proponents for the UK are terrifying and I’ve always been a huge defender of our authorities and had faith in the police and that the political system would protect our interests. It’s from the low level street stuff right up to big corporate fraud. It’s become unmanageable and there are no longer any grown ups in the room.

I come back to Gawain Towler's explanation of the Reform vote last year, when by his own admission they had a ramshackle operation and a lot of unvetted paper candidates.

What they had going for them, Gawain says, was Farage's charisma, an army of enthusiastic volunteers, and most importantly voters being massively alienated from the legacy parties. About 4 million of them voted Reform; more might have if it was a professional operation.

So that's what they've been doing in the past year, putting structures in place, making the operation run better, and most importantly finding credible candidates. The Conservative argument against Reform has always been that they're amateurs and we're the people with experience. So it's no coincidence that at Farage's crime presser he was flanked by Sarah Pochin and Layla Cunningham - Pochin was a magistrate for 20 years and Cunningham was a CPS prosecutor.

You're starting to see that bear fruit with defections from people like Jake Berry or Adam Holloway, who were never on the rabble rousing right of the Tories. Their defection is more worrying, because it's sign that experienced middle of the road Tories think the party is dead.

Now how that transfers to Corbyn - there have been multiple attempts over the past 20 years to build a party to the left of Labour, and I think there's a market for it, but the hard left is just not capable of building a professional organisation or finding candidates who aren't loonies. These things are baked in. And the Greens are already squatting that section of the electorate.

And outside the university constituencies, their main chance will be in heavily Muslim constituencies with candidates who appeal to Muslim sensibilities. These independent Muslim MPs currently in parliament are allied with Corbyn on Palestine, but they aren't particularly left wing.

There's an unspoken assumption on the left that white lefties will be the brains of the operation and the Muslims will follow their lead. I'm not convinced that the Muslims will find this appealing.

@RedToothBrush
Keep in mind there were a lot of people in 2017 who wouldn't vote Labour because of Corbyn.
I had several issues with Labour in 2017 and that was a big one. I thought (still think) that he is an antisemite, despite my far-Left BIL loudly and rather drunkenly telling me he wasn't, he'd been painted that way by 'the rich' and 'big business'. BIL thinks he knows it all, hasn't the faintest idea of the history of the ME, knows no Jewish people, is not well read or well informed, but thinks he knows everything. He's not a good advert for Corbyn-kind.

It's all so depressing. When I first started thinking about politics I was fairly left of centre, and on economic matters I probably still am left of centre, but less than I was, because I have very little trust in the competence of our current political class to spend high taxes wisely. The older I get the more I value competence and common sense. I always worry about ending up like the people who voted in the Fascists in the 1920s and 30s to get the trains running on time and an autobahn network built, and to hell with everything else, but surely it's possible to offer that kind of basic, bread and butter competence without being racist, xenophobic, antisemitic and ultra-nationalistic. That's what I want most now, and I've no idea how we'll ever get it.

I've never voted Tory and their record in recent years is abysmal, so I'm not going to start now. I'll never vote for Farage. I've mostly voted Labour, with occasional switches to Green or LibDem depending on the candidate. I came very close to spoiling my vote last year, but held my nose and voted Labour in the end. (Not that it makes any difference round here - we have an almost 100% Labour council and a Labour MP with one of the biggest, safest majorities in the country. Good constituency MP and, as she demonstrated a few weeks ago when she resigned her Ministerial post, some principles too.)

They won't.

There is going to be a growing movement of Muslim independent candidates. They have the potential to be well supported within their own communities.

They have nothing to gain from joining and following a mainstream party.

I can see them forming a loose alliance where they work together in future but I also don't expect them to formalise and form a traditional party.

Why?

Because one of their selling points to the electorate is the grass roots connection and doing right by their community. The minute you join a party and start doing things in the best interests of the party, you put yourself and the party ahead of the public.

That's exactly what the electorate hates and is currently backlashing around the board against - not just in Muslim communities.

I know the LDs have been shitting themselves for some time about the rise of local independents because the LDs have done well at local level because they've stressed the grass roots stuff. Which is one reason I find them so infuriating at national level - the do the grass roots stuff and become top down loonies for national.

Of course the force teaming left are too arrogant to realise that certain groups won't follow them blindly even if they support the right causes. It highlights their abject inability to properly understand the public at large and anything beyond their own bubbles. They do not listen.

Yes this is definitely one of the emerging UK political trends for the next decade. A lot of success at the next election from Farage is more likely to encourage it as it will be seen as almost self defense by many.

And yes the Tories are now a busted flush. They simply no longer have the money, the manpower or the credibility to comeback from the last electoral wipeout.

There's been a lot said about the same happening on the left and I just don't envision it happening if Labour can secure the centre (which is made altogether more easy by Reform). The danger for them isn't from the Corbynites. It's from a rising LD who pick up more expensive Tory voters than they do.

The incumbent effect will hurt them most though. The stay at home apathy is their biggest risk.

And that why I still to see anyone but Farage being the next PM. And that terrifies me.

It's all a backlash against the main parties though. And I don't think that Reform have the discipline to cope with power even if they manage to put in structure to secure an electoral victory. Similar attempts elsewhere in Europe have been a car crash of infighting and disagreement. The candidates Reform is picking are people who do like to argue and be difficult by their very self selecting nature.

This I think Reform will do one term (possibly collapsing half way through) and we'll then get a lot more grassroots candidates across the board and a massive fracturing in UK politics potentially with no one party able to form a majority for years.

We shall see.

I've been decent on predicting political trends for a while so I'm due to get it horribly wrong soon enough!

The collapse of the political class as a competent bunch, regardless of party, has worried me to the point of vaguely wondering whether I should stand for election, until I remembered I’m not a people person and no idea how to make myself likeable enough to win a vote!

I didn’t consider it because I want power, i want the government to be run competently. Reform are not going to do that, but as the SNP shows, you can cock up a LOT and still get voted in.

Our local new mayor is Reform. Nice young man, former Olympic gold medalist boxer, local hero. Cleverly chosen by Farage, but no history of public service or running a business. I think he’s already in trouble with the Reform heirarchy for breaking with them on Green Energy. Lots of the quality new jobs and businesses on Humberside are in renewables and he’s already come out in support of them. Fair play he said he’s here to champion the local community and businesses, but Tice and Jenkins are next door in terms of constituencies so I do wonder what’s happening behind closed doors.

Aren't they ALL like that?!

I think he's an anti-semite in the same way that many people (including him) are anti-women.

They don't hate (those people): they are just utterly callous towards them and refuse to consider things from their point of view. And also think they are secretly powerful and privileged despite the millennia-long evidence of oppression and cruelty.

I once had a friend who thought that society is being run by and for the benefit of women and men are just their puppets (no prizes for guessing what he thought of the ME conflict). I bet he was gutted when he 'transitioned' and wasn't invited to join the secret cabal.

The late Alan Clark had a good line about how the Liberals in the 70s and 80s used to win seats in the West Country. They'd run some hyperlocal, almost apolitical campaign (Tintagel mums stand up to Whitehall), build a miniature personality cult around the candidate, get them elected as councillor and then MP, and if they took care of the constituency it was impossible to dislodge them.

The Lib Dems still do this to a big extent. It's a Jeremy Thorpe strategy but it's stood them in good stead. It's telling that when Farage talks about building the Reform organisation, he keeps saying he wants to be as good at grassroots politics as the Lib Dems. And the Greens have a very similar approach.

The thing about the Lib Dems and Greens, of course, is that the national parties are a complete shitshow.

The rise of independents is going to be a trend for a while, I think. Certainly I don't see the Muslim candidates forming a traditional party. If you're Adnan Hussain and you've got a majority of 100 over Labour, your best bet of retaining your seat is to build up your brand as Mr Blackburn.

The traditional parties used to be able to incorporate people like this. There used to be Tory backbenchers who never spoke in the Commons without mentioning Basildon or wherever their constituency was. Localism beats the Omnicause.

That was part of what I meant 😁
Should have been clearer.

Theres two camps in society at the moment.

The outward lookers and the inward lookers.

The outwards are very much focused on international politics and things like Europe and causes like global warming and Gaza.
The inwards are more concerned about local community, having a job and keeping a roof over their heads.

The former tend to be affluent and well educated. They travel more (as opposed to going on holiday abroad) and perhaps work abroad or were born abroad. The latter more working class and hand to mouth, have lived in the same community for several generations and have a lack of opportunity.

I personally have a foot in both camps for various reasons, so I 'get both' better than most.

The problem is that we are in a period of economic stagnation, so the latter group has a lot more traction than it did even just a few years ago.

The different dynamics definition polarise and thats how and why we've ended up with luxury beliefs. Those who care about Gaza most, aren't the ones trying to pay the bills. Having to pay the bills and raising children in an area of high crime is a sure fire way to convert you from an outward looker to an inward looker.

The outward lookers have managed to forget that politics is ultimately driven by basic needs - it always is. Housing, food and jobs will ALWAYS trump everything else.

Thats why grass roots is on the ascendency and will be for some time. This fuels nationalism/religious conservatism - until various groups wake up to it they won't provide an alternative non-nationalistic alternative to looking after communities. Its definitely possible - LDs have effectively done this to a degree for some time though it usually centres on nibyism about building houses. I think the Labour strategists get it, but they aren't very good at coming up with policies to do this precisely because they don't have the grassroots to enable it.

Transactivism therefore falls into a political space which is in decline and will fall out of favour for many of these underlying trends; its a luxury belief pushed by the outward lookers who don't have a clue about the reality of others lived lives. Its imposed without consent and doesn't have sufficient grassroots support. It is doomed to fail. It is inevitable. The only choices are in terms of HOW that plays out. You don't have to 'take sides' on this to understand the direction of travel. Smart people should read the room and plan accordingly. Unfortunately for transactivists, the ability and willingness to do this is in somewhat short supply.

The pattern isn't unique to the UK either. Its happening across Europe and the US. The idea that the Democrats will lose control of California is one thats alien now, but I do think it will see an increasing independence movement due to the concerns above and the inability of Democrats to deal with it. The affluent and mobile are already starting to move because of those reasons which will change dynamics too.

As the saying goes 'May you live in interesting times' (apparently its English but its attributed as a Chinese curse which is a myth).

The pattern isn't unique to the UK either. Its happening across Europe and the US. The idea that the Democrats will lose control of California is one thats alien now, but I do think it will see an increasing independence movement due to the concerns above and the inability of Democrats to deal with it. The affluent and mobile are already starting to move because of those reasons which will change dynamics too.

Patrick Ruffini's book Party of the People goes into a lot of these dynamics in the US. Ruffini interests me because he was an anti-Trump establishment Republican (who still doesn't like Trump) but he's a pollster whose predictions turned out to be wrong in 2016, and he said "hmm, maybe Trump has intuited something about the electorate that I've missed", and drilled down into the data to see what that was.

A lot of what's valuable in Ruffini is looking at very specific areas and demographics that have shifted left or right and their specific concerns. It's a story about the luxury belief class sorting to the Democrats, and working class/minority demographics who aren't natural Republicans being receptive to a populist message. But Trump himself is kind of secondary to this - you get to hear about influencers in the Cuban community in Florida or the Vietnamese community in the LA suburbs, and it's not so much that the Trump campaign had a brilliant strategy, it's more that these communities were fed up with the Democrats and the Trump people had an open door to the influencers.

Or the "security moms" who may dislike Trump's character, but they're worried about the economy, they don't like genderwoo in schools, they definitely don't like boys in their daughters' locker rooms, and many of them own guns because of rising crime. Bill Clinton, for all his character flaws, knew how to appeal to them.

I can't believe Morgan McSweeney and other Labour strategists are unaware of these trends, but Labour seem unable to respond to them in a sensible way. The face of Labour at the moment is Alex Sobel saying he doesn't want terfs voting for him.

I think the first real references to inward/outward looking voters I can recall dates back to 2016.

That nine years ago. Labour still haven't got to grips with it fully. The Tories understood it but failed to compete with Reform on those idea. Johnson actually had a manifesto based on many of the ideas Andy Burnham was pushing in Manchester and talked about the Northern Power House, then did fuck all about it. Burnham on the other hand has had a fair amount of success with those policies which have proved to be reasonably popular (the buses is the star of the show).

Patrick Ruffini's book Party of the People goes into a lot of these dynamics in the US. Ruffini interests me because he was an anti-Trump establishment Republican (who still doesn't like Trump) but he's a pollster whose predictions turned out to be wrong in 2016, and he said "hmm, maybe Trump has intuited something about the electorate that I've missed", and drilled down into the data to see what that was.

This response to being incorrect is now rare in itself. Why bother analysing data and asking difficult questions when you can just label voters stupid, bad and wrong?

Say what you like about the Conservative Party, but they have been consistently good at winning elections over the decades, especially at disposing of weak leaders. I wonder what's gone wrong behind the scenes in recent years.

Slight tangent, but I've been fascinated by the current furore over The Salt Path author; 9 threads on MN I think? The public can turn very quickly when they smell a fraud, and the comfortable middle classes like to think they're too clever to be had. Must Be Kind to that poor misunderstood unhappy marginalised transwoman........ who has a cock bulge and a double rape conviction?

As the saying goes 'May you live in interesting times' (apparently its English but its attributed as a Chinese curse which is a myth).

Nooo, don't tell me that, I've been saying to people for years 'Old Chinese saying' it's not going to be as dramatic if I have to change to Olde English saying.

The Old English Spangles packet contained "traditional English" flavours. The standard line-up was liquorice (black), mint humbug (brown), pear drop (orange/red), aniseed (green) and treacle (opaque mustard yellow),[9] but other flavours appeared from time to time.

The sweets' individual wrappers were striped, distinguishing them from regular Spangles. The tube was black, white and purple, and designed for a more mature and sophisticated clientele than the regular variety.

I understand this may be a bit like explaining The Kinks to millennials.

But these generational things happen - a teen boy of my acquaintance sometimes complains that, thanks to his mum's immature sense of humour, he's the only one of his peer group who knows what Carry On films are.