Your reality, sir, is lies and balderdash… and I’m delighted to say that I have no grasp of it whatsoever!
Who actually cares which party wins which seat? Surely the idea that voting for any of these chancers will make any meaningful difference has been long given up? Regardless of whomever has more seats in Westminster, their agenda is to continue the reversal of post-WW2 social gains.
I saw that one of the polls predicted the tories would be left with only 25 seats.
That’s 25 seats too many!
He claimed that he wears a hat following a hammer attack which left him hospitalised and severely scarred.
Yes, it’s an idea for an alternate reality where Labour retained some belief in equality and wealth redistribution. Sadly we live in a hellish neoliberal mirror universe where the Labour leadership salivate whenever the Davos Boys ring austerity’s bell.
Time for UK to become Limitarian. Tax the excessively rich at 100% above £10 million. No one needs more money than that.
It’s worth getting a copy of the new book by Ingrid Robeyns extract here. To answer your point directly: surely making everyone “middle class” is a mechanism for dealing with inequality (and poverty).
We don’t. The wealthy do. The wealthy who’ve been siphoning UK money upwards into their offshore accounts since 1979 have more than they need. Wealth redistribution and then investment would sort our public services out.
OK as long as we also adopt a limitarian approach to personal wealth in the UK. Tax personal wealth above £10 million at 100%.
World leading water! Greatest water in the entire universe! Most amazing water in this realm of reality! Wealth-ceators deserve big pay ris… Oops, sorry, I’d gone full-Tory for a moment.
Living in an insanely pro-Brexit area, the usual comments are either: “Best thing we ever did. We control our borders now.” or “We’re not going to talk about it. Democracy won.” I think if the referendum was run again the results would be the same - or a bigger Brexit majority. The crazies in my area are obsessed with “illegals”.
And if they can pull a “Falklands” in the next 12 months may keep their eternal grip on power. War with… er… Greece… over some ancient… oh… Greek statues… anyone?
We’ll just have to disagree about this. What you misread (which is exactly what Trump and the right-wing Tories over here want you to do) is that they want to tear down the structures of power and wealth. They really don’t. They might want to gain advantage within the Establishment but none of them want to see it brought down. It’s purely rhetoric. Look at Truss as an example. She bent the knee. They all bend the knee. Starmer has literally kneeled down and been knighted.
My fear is the rise of fascism. Just saw a poll this morning that showed a large number of young people have no interest in democracy and would welcome a strong military take over.
Frightening when you consider yesterday was the anniversary of Pinochet’s seizure of power in Chile.
Ho ho ho! Next you’ll be telling me Trump is the anti-Establishment candidate in the US.
I use the traditional definition of Establishmemt: all the structures and processes that are used to maintain the political power of inherited wealth in this country. John Gibbs, the cultural writer, describes it as the “Norman Continuity Empire” where 1200 aristocratic familes close to William the Conqueror. The aims of the Tories is to best represent that Establishment and the aims of Labour is to help prevent the redistribution of that wealth.
I can tell that you like to see yourself as a moderate but knowing that half-a-million children live in extreme poverty (a Westminster calculation) and NOT sorting it out is a crime against those children. Starmer, for example, says that he will maintain the 2-child cap on child benefit at the same time as promising the excessively wealthy that he wont tax them. Both parties and all leaders (with possible exception of Greens) agree on that. And it’s not a moderate position.
Edited: added the word NOT
Absolutely correct.
I often wonder whether the UK is used as a petri dish for neoliberal macroeconomic experimentation in the West (in the same way China does with certain megacities and provinces). How far you can cut taxes, how low you can drop living standards, how well you can use the media to manipulate the way that a population behaves.
What nonsense.
I think there’s more chance SIR Keir is on the payroll of the Establishment.
I guess you’re one of those that keeps on saying that Corbyn is a racist and anti-semite.
I think all three of them are not “great reforms”:
We need radical policies that address thr extreme poverty and collapse of our social services in the UK. Things must be made better for the poorest (eg. increasing social security, rent caps, free school meals for all, greatly increase the minimum wage) and start taxing the excessively wealthy and corporations.
Labour won’t do this because they are now utterly a tool of the Establishment to maintain the power and wealth of the excessively rich.
Your analogy is only an analogy. Certainly, on issues I consider important Tories and Labour hold the same positions at the moment. For instance, many people are in utter poverty in this country. We have friends who both work and have to make decisions about whether they pay their extortionate rent or feed their kids. No one in the UK should have to put up with that.
And what do we hear from Labour? Nothing about rent comtrols, nothing about free school meals, nothing about raising the minimum wage to a genuinely living wage, nothing about taxing the excessively wealthy (or anything about redistributing wealth in fact). All we hear from Labour is that they will - like the Tories - “Grow the economy”. I’m sure you heard Rachel Reeves caught out on LBC recently by having her former words about the need to tax the wealthy.
Labour - with SIR Keir - are part of the Establishment and exist to make sure that the excessively wealthy and those with inherited wealth maintain their power and economic position.
That’s not an “optical illusion”, that’s looking at things very clearly in broad daylight. Perhaps your “moderate” postion where you can accept a country where half a million children live in destitution/extreme poverty is the vantage point that needs to be examined.
It’s a shame that Labour can’t articulate what the differences in things like civil rights and foreign policy actually are.
Can you actually tell me a single major policy where Labour fundamentally disagrees with the Tories? (Not vague “We will just do things better” promises. Though I’ve no doubt Starmer and co will run a Tory economic policy better than the Tories.
How big does a movement need to be to describe itself as “mass”?
I’m not sure that any party that wants to participate in the Westmister House of Distraction is anything other than riddled with state security services operatives.