'Wings Over TalkHearts' Politics Thread

[Del-icious]

Labours tactics around this has been absolutely shambolic.

Read the room completely wrong, embarrassing.

[Floyd]

Right out the Trump playbook, hopefully we're on the whole smarter than to fall for this bullshit.

The big problem is I don’t think the wider electorate are. Sadly I can see Reform making inroads in the Scottish Parliament elections in May as people are swallowing their rhetoric about asylum seekers and refugees being the enemy rather than realising that Reform are just a political party full of failed Tories.

I saw one guy in Glasgow being interviewed a few weeks back who said he was voting Reform to “stop the boats”. Last I checked, Glasgow wasn’t on the coast and being faced with people arriving from France illegally on dinghies, but this guy was just repeating what he’d heard from Farage and punching down as a result, rather than stopping and wondering why the area he lived was in the state it was in, top tip, it’s fuck all to do with asylum seekers & refugees.

[Floyd]

Labours tactics around this has been absolutely shambolic.

Read the room completely wrong, embarrassing.

They fucked it from the minute they went out their way to make sure Andy Burnham couldn’t stand.

Trying to cover their own arses rather than working out what the electorate actually want and need. I hate to say it, but Labour under Starmer are a busted flush right now.

[Del-icious]

I don’t think everything they’re doing is all bad but for every wee bit of good news (ie economy looking positive) you end up seeing them take 10 steps backwards.

Rayner resigned on the back of some sort of dodgy accounting advice while the guy who employed a man who dished state secrets to a foreign billionaire paedo continues to have the top job in the country. You then have the political games of denying Burnham the opportunity to stand as an MP, the constant need to slap down the left leaning side of the party, the ugly tactics they tried to use to stop a green victory.

They use the same sort of tactics and political gaming as the tories who we’ve spent criticising for the last 15 year which only plays into the far right rhetoric anaw that everyone is the same. People are absolutely sick of this nonsense regardless of what side of the political spectrum they fall.

This is the future of Labour though I don’t see it ever coming back to being a party for workers first and foremost so people are probably right to look towards green although imo a green government would be a disaster anaw. At least it would be a well intentioned disaster

[2MatoFish]

The big problem is I don’t think the wider electorate are. Sadly I can see Reform making inroads in the Scottish Parliament elections in May as people are swallowing their rhetoric about asylum seekers and refugees being the enemy rather than realising that Reform are just a political party full of failed Tories.

I saw one guy in Glasgow being interviewed a few weeks back who said he was voting Reform to “stop the boats”. Last I checked, Glasgow wasn’t on the coast and being faced with people arriving from France illegally on dinghies, but this guy was just repeating what he’d heard from Farage and punching down as a result, rather than stopping and wondering why the area he lived was in the state it was in, top tip, it’s fuck all to do with asylum seekers & refugees.

By-elections are hard to push on to the national map, but 25k folk voted green/Labour. It's a very poor area and Goodwin is somewhat famous, so it looks like loud mouthed glaswegian bigots and bots in comments sections don't count for as much as people think.

[Floyd]

By-elections are hard to push on to the national map, but 25k folk voted green/Labour. It's a very poor area and Goodwin is somewhat famous, so it looks like loud mouthed glaswegian bigots and bots in comments sections don't count for as much as people think.

I really hope so, the idea of Farage and co. Getting as much as a foothold in Scotland gives me the fear.

[2MatoFish]

I find the whole family voting thing concerning though. I can imagine patriarchal Muslim husbands marching their wives in to voting booths and...

...stopping them from voting Reform?

Not concerned about huge gains in Scotland, although the second vote will see them show up well. Goodwin only further highlights that it's just Farage that captures the public's attention. The issue is, and it's something I brought up here last year, he is someone that English thing is a good guy, a bit of a rogue but charming. I think I referenced Brian Blessed - flash Gordon aside he's loved by the English but we think he's a berk.

[Shuto Makino]

Bloody Muslims, determined to elect women candidates representing parties with Jewish leaders.

[CritchSmile]

The Tory party has collapsed as a political entity so Reform will be the new home for the Scottish right wingers, Rangers fans etc… it is what it is. Probably good that this cohort now have to put an X in the box of a more embarrassing party with unimpressive local candidates. If you’re a reform local candidate you’re likely a total goon/outcast of society who can’t string a word together. The tories on the other hand would play the political system like a fiddle.

The tories at least had their tentacles in all U.K. institutions through the class system/private schooling. Reform is a one man band, financed by global capital to pull the wool over the eyes of the average prole while they steal from them, but the Reform party members themselves will be rag tag bizarros, especially the Scottish ones.

Not sure how many Scottish Tory politicians will defect to Reform. You’re already a leper in Scottish society being a Tory, imagine having to tell your granny etc.. that you’re bend the knee at the alter of Farage. Posh English twat who finds Scottish people repellent.

[Del-icious]

I will also fight against the extremes in politics on the right and the left, parties who want to tear our country apart.

It’s stuff like this that have me absolutely loathing Starmer. When you have the serious threat from parties like Reform and now Retain or whatever they’re called, why would you not be open to working with a party like the greens? Extreme left

Remember Labour done the exact same thing with the SNP and flat out refused to work with them if it meant keeping the tories out. Absolute weirdos.

[Johnny]

Isn't one of Reform policies to close the Scotch parliament?

Imagine voting for that

[Del-icious]

Isn't one of Reform policies to close the Scotch parliament?

Imagine voting for that

Is it

I had always imagined that would be on the cards but didn’t realise it was a pledge. Short term pain for long term independence in that case - Fraggle I maybe had you wrong

[Vieri]

Bloody Muslims, determined to elect women candidates representing parties with Jewish leaders.

Anti-immigrant gammons determined to elect candidates representing parties with a Muslim as one of the key leaders.

[Del-icious]

Dear Colleagues,

The result in Gorton and Denton is deeply disappointing.

Instead of a Labour MP who can be a local champion delivering for Gorton and Denton alongside a Labour Government and a Labour mayor, the people of Gorton and Denton now have a representative who is more interested in dividing people than uniting them. We have to learn lessons from that, and we will.

I know this is a tough result for our movement but I still want to thank you for everything you did to support our brilliant candidate Angeliki Stogia. She did a fantastic job and Gorton and Denton deserved to have her as their MP.

We’ve seen the true colours of Zack Polanski’s Greens in this campaign. The Greens were able to capitalise on an endorsement from George Galloway to win over enough voters to push them over the line. Their willingness to welcome Galloway's divisive, sectarian politics is a sign that the Greens are not the harmless environmentalists they pretend to be, and their position on legalising all drugs shows how unstable this electoral coalition is. It cannot survive a general election campaign.

It hurts, but this is the kind of result that we have often seen parties of government face. In by-elections people can make their voice heard without risking a change of government. I get it: people are rightly impatient to see the change they voted for.

It’s my job to make sure that happens. And I’m working day in, day out to see it through.

Over the coming months, people will feel the benefit of the long-term decisions this government is taking. Look at the good economic news we’ve had in the past week: inflation and borrowing coming down, retail sales and business confidence rising, energy bills falling. And look at the policies that are going to make a difference in people’s lives in the coming months: the landmark Employment Rights Act, money off energy bills, the cruel two-child limit scrapped, more free breakfast clubs opening, Pride in Place funding coming through, NHS waiting lists continuing to fall. It will show what we’ve been saying from the outset of this year: the country is turning a corner. These are all Labour policies, putting Labour values into action - policies no other party would or could deliver.

The Greens may have won here, but they simply do not have the resources, the activist base or the local knowledge to replicate this victory across the country. We’ve seen that before. We’ve seen it with the Lib Dems, who have often won mid-term by-elections against both the Conservatives and Labour, but never been able to come close to winning nationally. We’ve seen it with George Galloway, who won two mid-term by elections but held neither of those seats in a general election.

We will continue to warn of the risk the Greens pose: the risk of extreme policies like legalising all drugs and pulling out of NATO that most voters strongly reject, and the risk of splitting the progressive vote so that Reform come through the middle.

The next election is too important to let that happen. It’s a fight we can win, and we’re going to win it.

Best,
Keir

Keir Starmer, Prime Minister and Leader of the Labour Party

[Charlie Kelly]

The standard Keir response or "we're not them" instead of actually standing for something. They'll never realise this is why people are looking elsewhere for options.

Labour and Tories are dead in the water.

[Floyd]

https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/2589...er-resign/

[Pete Seeger]

Have they got to the bottom of the Ukrainian rent boys that tried to burn him out yet? That’ll be some scandal when it breaks.

[2MatoFish]

Hopefully any expats British traitors in Dubai, people who left the UK because taxes it wasn't safe, get told to fuck off by the home office when they request passage home to the old country.

[King Kebab]

Radio Scotland saying that petrol costs will go up in 2 weeks.
I go to fill up and what do you know, they've already gone up.
Pricks.

[Del-icious]

Lucky you don’t need to put petrol into a bmx, you’re sorted