Starmer entered office with “the lowest vote-share that a majority Westminster government has received since the introduction of universal suffrage”.
|
|||||
|
We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people. Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house] Authors
Arts, Tech & CultureCivil LibertiesCommentary
Economics |
Samizdata quote of the day – Labour’s support is a mile wide and an inch deepNovember 1st, 2024 |
 16 comments to Samizdata quote of the day – Labour’s support is a mile wide and an inch deepLeave a Reply |
Who Are We?The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling. We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe. CategoriesArchivesFeed This PageLink Icons   |
|||
All content on this website (including text, photographs, audio files, and any other original works), unless otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons License. |
|||||
Let’s hope that these pound-shop Leninists are booted from office in five years’ time.
Once again, I sense that the voting public didn’t vote “FOR” Labour – they voted “AGAINST” the Conservatives. This is a common phenomenon wherever elections happen; the Party in power having been so egregious during the term that a trip to the woodshed is clearly called-for, and widely predicted. The good news is that historically, it has the desired effect: and the incoming Party makes a classic mistake – “WOW! They voted-us-in with a landslide – they must really LOVE our policies!!!” And they apply their policies, which the voters actually dislike which is why that Party was in opposition in the first place, so assiduously that by the following election the voters are happy to do the same thing to them, and their ‘great reset’ only lasts one term.
Examples are legion. One of the best (that even I predicted) was in Australia, where during the COVID pandemic the ruling Party ruled with a monstrously heavy hand; “If we call your home and you don’t answer, BIG FINE. If we call your cellphone, you have fifteen minutes to provide us with a ‘selfie’ proving you’re at home, or BIG FINE.” Said I to me’self said I, “Next election, the voters are gonna’ have their government for lunch for treating them like that”, and they did; and the Greens having made such a shambles of the Australian economy in the name of “SAAAAAVING THE EARTH!!!”, their demise in the next election is just as likely.
Here in Canada we’re capable of such drubbings, and everybody is predicting this is going to happen next election here – and we handed-down one of these a few decades ago as well. A certain P.M. who was widely referred-to as “Lyin’ Brian”, had sunk to where his popularity was at single digits with an election in the offing. So he resigned in favour of his deputy P.M., who became our “First Female Prime Minister!” He clearly hoped she’d turn the tide, and her prospects looked rosy for about a week until she opened her mouth – the Party in question, one of Canada’s two ‘main’ Parties, was reduced to two seats in the following election.
My own take on Canadian politics is that our two main Parties, “LIE-beral” and “CON-servative”, have devoted decades and billion$ of our tax dollars to putting the voters asleep and keeping us there – and now we only wake-up angry or hungry, and we only vote out.
The next election in five years is not going to save you from the intervening collapse.
Good. A collapse is what the electorate deserve – it might wake them up to the government not doing everything for them instead of taking some personal responsibility.
That’s the hope anyway. My thesis is that the UK (other countries as well) lost too much of their warrior DNA on the battlefields of WW1 and WW2.
Y.Knott:
Just refreshed my memory thanks to the Fount of All Knowledge.
In the 1994 Italian election, the Christian Democrats went down from 206 seats to 29. That was due to scandals, of course; but it was also because, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Italians were no longer afraid of the commies. Also, for better of for worse, Berlusconi provided a “”right””-wing alternative to the Christian Democrats.
NB: the Christian Democrats had been the largest party in the governing coalition since 1946.
In the 6 Italian elections between 1994 and 2013, Berlusconi and the “”left”” regularly swapped places in government and opposition. My interpretation is that, in every one of those elections, the Italians were voting against the government, rather than for the opposition.
So what considering that many Western countries are coming apart at the seams under our very eyes. How does hearing about past elections resolve any of the important issues in the here and now.
I have been canvassing for 45 years – I meet all sorts of people, because I knock their doors (so I do not “live in a bubble”).
And I can say, based on this, that most people (not everyone – but most people) wanted a shift “to the right” for want of a better term, at the last election – they wanted an end to mass immigration, lower taxes, and lower energy prices by rolling back the “Green” agenda of taxes and regulations. And, yes, they wanted an end to “Woke” censorship and persecution.
By a combination of some people staying home, some people voting Reform, and some people voting Labour because “let us give the other lot a go – it is there turn” the election, in terms of policy on all the above points, delivered he exact opposite of what most people wanted.
More mass immigration, higher taxes, more of the “Green” high energy prices agenda, and more “Woke” censorship and persecution (including people being sent to prison, for years, for minor crimes – really being sent to prison, for years, for dissent).
The next five years will be very grim – very grim indeed.
If most people wanted a shift to the right did they even have a viable party to vote for. Reform seems OK on some issues but bad on others.
The problem at the moment is that Reform has no expectation of forming a government until the current Labour rabble are ousted as the Tories were in July.
While I would prefer that elections took place sooner rather than later, Labour, knowing beforehand that their electoral defeat is imminent, will probably hang about until 2029.
One advantage is that it gives Reform UK time to get it’s constituency parties in order, seize council seats left-right-and-centre (they are already doing well at this as council by-elections attest) and prepare a proper foundation for a manifesto for 2029 (ideally earlier).
Even up here in Perth, Scotland, we are getting a Reform UK constituency party up and running.
Reform UK needs to move from a party of opposition to a party of potential government before 2029. That is a hard task, but the foundations are already being laid.
Vote Reform!
Paul Marks, another question: if people decided to give the other lot a go why didn’t they vote en masse for Reform. It was much more the other lot than Labor.
That seemed to me to be the more logical option.
I am truly curious considering how elections unfolded in certain other Euro countries. Nothing to write home about but still.
Ignorant as I am about UK government and politics, it amazes me to read that this unpopular short-term lame-duck temporary just-for-now Labor government is fortunately only in power until . . . 2029?
Weird strategy just to teach the T’s a lesson.
” My thesis is that the UK (other countries as well) lost too much of their warrior DNA on the battlefields of WW1 and WW2.”
I’ve often said the same. The first half of the 20th century gutted the UK of its best people.
It’s amazing. One day you turn around and your age begins with a six. So I have been about this a while. And I am a Liberal. (Socially liberal as long as we are still within touching distance of sanity, small government, locally charitable, fiscally conservative.) I have even voted for a Liberal Party candidate – in 1979, my first go. And since then I have voted for whoever struck me as a good egg. If any actual candidate in my constituency seemed so to be, and if not I voted for the most likely-to-be-liberal party. Generally this has meant Conservative but I regularly turn up in person and levy a narrative spoiled ballot paper.
Last time I voted Reform in the sure and certain knowledge that this would lead to Starmer stamping his prissy little foot for five years. I did this because I thought that it would lead to the slaughter of the Conservative Party. And it did. My objective was that as many as possible of the worthless Conservative MPs in the HoC would lose their seats and be gone forever. Most of them were treasonous troughers who obstructed Brexit long after the will of the people had been expressed. By and large, we did a pretty good job.
It does not matter that Labour is “in power” because they are not. The international coalition of Woke is in power, and it must be allowed to destroy itself in the full glare of the spotlight. The idiot Milliband and the positively imbecilic Reeve are doing their best. We are off to a good start.
In order to take back the reins of this nation, the right must be united. No, Farage, not a change to the voting system. Why would the Left change from FPTP while the right is disunited? The Conservatives and Reform must come to an accommodation that allows the votes to be joined together – or a local non-competition deal put in place. I recommend a long spoon, Nigel.
Five policies for you:
a) Scientifically-illiterate net nonsense scrapped.
b) Irish Sea pretend border scrapped,
c) Every future illegal immigrant instantly delivered back to the beaches of France,
d) 5% reduction in headcount and spend of every public organisation and government department every year of the next Parliament.
e) BBC defunded and the back catalogue separated from the rotting hulk
If d) is not achieved, subtract from the top levels of the organisation down the org chart from the head/CEO until the number is brought about.
I think Reform did quite well at the election given that they weren’t a properly organised party beforehand. Prior to Farage taking the reins, they were underperforming badly in by elections in seats polls suggested they should be doing better in, and Richard Tice as leader was getting nowhere. Given the party lacked the access to money, press support and membership Labour and the Tories enjoyed and instead were largely reliant on the charismatic leadership of Farage they did well. They would have probably done even better but the Tories, the Tory press, and MI5 related outfits like Hope Not Hate really ramped up Project Fear 3.0 against Reform the week leading up to the polls, and I suspect that got enough boomers who read the Daily Mail, Spectator, and Telegraph still to stay in the Tory camp for at least one more election.
Henry Cybulski.
Because in most seats the Reform Party had no chance of winning. And this was at the high point of its support – after 14 years of centre-left policy from a supposedly Conservative government.
Even now the dreaded word “practical” is being used high up in the Conservative Party – for those who do not know “practical” is code for give in to the officials and experts, rather than get out of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), and repeal such things as the Equality Act and Environment Act of 2010.
I hope, desperately hope, that Kemi Badenoch decides NOT to be “practical” – but even if the lady does hold to good principles (and rejects surrender – rejects being “practical” – we had 14 years of being “practical”) there will be no General Election for five years.
I believe that most people still have no idea just how bad things are going to get over the next five years in the United Kingdom.
It will be truly terrible.