A recent set of cash-transfer programs had lackluster results—but cash is still "near unmatched as a salve for poverty," @anneapplebaum.bsky.social argues:
Can't do their and there. Sorry!
151 followers 975 following 1,891 posts
view profile on Bluesky
A recent set of cash-transfer programs had lackluster results—but cash is still "near unmatched as a salve for poverty," @anneapplebaum.bsky.social argues:
Praying he gets his hole someday
Lead
Honestly, I think a lot of politicians on both sides of the Atlantic got psyoped into viewing salt of the earth bigots as more authentic and worthy than them and thinking therefore they must ritually cleanse their sin of education by rolling in the gutter.
Each day I am astounded and mortified by this country’s descent into open and brazen racism I am equally astounded and mortified that rather than push back on the malign forces taking us to these dark places - an elected Labour government appears more interested in trying to learn from them
It is quite funny that you did the thing you claim others are doing to you in the very sentence you decry them doing it to you.
It seems pretty obvious that the complete absence of pushback against overt and nudge-nudge racism is impacting anti-racism norms that have been a foundation of social cohesion in Britain for decades.
This is why ‘staying to fight’ on X is a flawed argument. It’s a stacked deck, you can’t win.
Believe it or not not everything is about America
Why are Sky News blurring the faces of adults who are likely committing a racially aggravated offence in the process of their reporting? 🫠
The Government is doing its best at the moment to imply it has no problem with the ethnonationalism now rearing its ugly head. And I don't understand why. 1/5
Urgh. Pure cringe. Almost makes you feel sorry for the type of person that holds onto something like that.
Paul, in the name of god. We are the government. We have machine guns.
This government just has a really low view of their own electorate.
is it only asylum seekers our Labour Prime Minister would object to living next to or would the sentiment apply to black and brown people in general? if merely the former, would he like to explain how he knows people he sees, say, in the street, actually are asylum seekers and not citizens?
Government has absorbed, correctly, that there is a conscious project to roll back a half century of making Englishness and Britishness identities based on more than ethnicity, but has no plan beyond going 'I too like flags' to defend it.
This is a tactical, as well as moral, error. Musk is spectacularly unpopular in the UK. There's a chance to take the patriotic high-ground, calling out foreign billionaires stoking up violence in Britain, without being seen to dismiss "ordinary people". And you can challenge Reform to back you.
Why do Americans insist on speaking about my country without knowing anything about it
Paul, you are labour stanning yourself out of any political attack on Farage at any time lol. Our party is full of morally bankrupt morons. We do not need to go into the night with them.
Still on the EHCR are we? British politics is stuck in a post-Brexit doom loop, addicted to spectacle politics and unable to engage with its actual problems: the sclerotic post-GFC economy that has seen real wages stagnate and increasing inability of government to invest in public services.
There are a vanishingly small number of senior people left from the Leave campaign who have not gone utterly batshit or seen their careers implode in the years since.
Indeed. Plain truth is that there is a vast majority in the country as a whole to be rallied against this stuff. Labour seem to want to lead a republican front without ever saying “Vichy was bad”, and other than Obese-Jecty, Tory MPs seem to think someone else will deal with the problem for them.
(I really don’t think it’s sufficiently appreciated just how much more ridiculous the “everything in this country is broken! It’s someone else’s fault!” turn in the UK right is compared to pretty much everywhere else it is happening.)
Death cultist.
Another fun day searching for 'ways to unpick Cameron-era austerity' that don't run through 'taxing the people who got tax cuts under David Cameron'!
I'm ded 💀 😂 😂 😂
Did you just hear the answer you didn't want to hear and immediately change your argument lol? Voters don't neatly silo off responsibility - they expect us to fix the cost of living crisis. Inflation is still nearly 2 points above it's target *and we are making it worse*
In 2024? It moved between around 3.5 and 2.5 - an average of 2.9. it was lower than ours is now in every month since aug 2023. Oh, and the Americans actually did have huge wage rises to compensate.
*does exist
Yes there was certainly another political party that ran this experiment
Hopefully the new adviser is from neurolink and we can implant some politics into the leader of the labour party's brain.
*nor actually much like them either
Not all the voters are always right but en masse the voters are right to smell a rat with labour because labour are acting like "voter understanderers" that neither truly understand voters not actually much like them either.
They can't see the link because they don't think British people are smart enough or moral enough to see it! The people in number 10 don't like the people they want to govern!
There's no excuse for them here. Their attacks on Farage has been (such that they have attacked him) "he wants to make the world more dangerous for women and girls" The next week Farage commits to sending women and girls to their deaths and they can't see the link!
The voters are right! In other words. They tend to be.
This is a bad government, run by people who haven't learned from labours history of (mainly) bad governance. It will fail because the prime minister is an empty vessel. He needs to go as a pre requisite for recovery.
I have a sympathy with it taking a while if they were actually grasping the nettle. They are actively refusing to do this by ignoring system wide social car reform AND doing their best to stoke inflation in the system that doesn't exist.
We are making inflation worse by bearing down on legal migration as a proxy for illegal migration. Inflation is running at over 3.5% and we are still making it worse PLUS adding new costs onto business. Inflation is the government killer. It will kill us too.
The diminishment of the state that most people feel most acutely is their local governments collapsing. Labour has done *nothing* to change this and has indeed made it worse by tossing care reform into the long grass.
The McSweeney case is that you beat the far right by letting them blow up while you concentrate on the local environment. The latter is what needs to be delivered, and it isn't - this government isnt helping local government whatsoever.
I think we are dealing with people that just aren't that good at their jobs responding to a prime minister that just doesn't have a politics to speak of.
Butlerian jihad now :)
Now this - this - is an issue to hammer Reform on. They've bowed to political inevitability in Lancs. Not yet in Lincs.
This is the key thing about the Voter Respecters: they neither respect, nor understand the voters.
Listen, you cannot expect the geniuses in no 10 to think of this very easy line of attack.
Signifies a complete and utter moral collapse.
No it isn't lol. Is trumps deportation campaign not working because of practicalities. I really feel like some people need to wake up and realise that they will break the law to do this.
"we will tell the voters that they have no choice but to vote for Keir over Farage" "We also will not tell anyone that what farage wants to do is actually bad, just technocraticslly impractical (it isn't)"
They don't do delivery either!
Horrific. 9 months now the manager has wanted a new striker. Never mind letting Kuhn to before the qualifier.
If you want to fight and win a fear election, you do in fact need to be able to say loud and clear what it is people should be afraid of.
No I want you to tell me the distinction, be brave. I want to know what it is that labour (as an extreme far right party) has to do to go that extra tiny bit to fascist?
The extreme far right? Fair enough. I've got a question though. Can you give me the main distinction between a fascist party and a party of the extreme far right? 🤔🤔
I notice none of you are actually willing to type out what you all seem to be accusing labour of 😭
I ask again, plainly state the labour party is an example of a fascist political party.
No. Let me explain. Do you know what a set and a subset is? As in apples are a subset of fruit but if I say I want a bit of fruit I might mean a strawberry. Some of the people that voted labour in 2024 will be protesting - it's a tiny subset. There will also be a tiny subset of serial killers.
It is a binary question Timo. You either are a fascist party or you are not. You simply don't want to say something that you know is stupid, but you do want to continue to use the political attack. That's pathetic.
I'm sure theres some overlap but not a lot as the number of people that actually demonstrated is so low.
I ask again. Plainly state that th labour party are an example of a fascist politically party.
Timo, I'm still not sure on your opinion. Are the British labour party an example of a fascist political party? Yes or no. Don't tell me about the weimar or your schooling. Just commit to it first and then you can justify it
Stuart, with respect. Don't tell me to go and read a book when you've just said that the labour party are an example of a fascist political party. It is totally absurd which is why you won't say it plainly and only through implication.
Like I want you to write. "I believe the labour party is an example of a fascist political party". Can you sign onto that statement?
So do you think in 100 years time students of fascism will do a labour party module between the Hitler and Mussolini?
It's much more relevant to compare this government to labour in the 60s and 70s rather than Nazi Germany and fascist Italy. That this needs to be said is ridiculous.
Fascism as a meaning and the meaning isn't "socially conservative politics with a long history in the labour party and in social democracies more generally". The policies are bad, the politics are bad, you do not need to invoke the spectre of fascism and it's crimes to say that.
Do you think the labour party is a fascist party yes or no? Let's get this over with quickly
The position is bad on trans rights. It's not fascism.
Ok but that isn't fascism, Timo.
I think if you think that labour are acting like fascists you need to get a reality check.
Yes, but again. They think they can lose them 2:1 because we stack up voted in cities and a lot of those votes that are being drained are being drained in cities. Ultimately they think enough of those will back labour inf a Farage Vs Starmer election.
He's trying to mitigate the loss of voters to reform. He's trying to keep the people that voted for him last year that are now intending to vote for reform. That's who he is trying to appease. Any more questions ?
Because the right works on the principle of the friend enemy distinction. They select and enemy and organise against it. What you are essentially asking is 'why are Starmers far right political opponents dishonest and cynical' and I mean, I don't know what to tell you bud?
Yes I think they have it wrong, but that is apparently part of the theory of how to beat farage.
He's making the bet that because libs are packed into cities he can lose 2 to the left for every 1 to the right. Libs suffer from being inefficient. The progressive eighth of the country is even more packed into fewer constituencies
You don't need to launch a full bore defence of liberal internationalism to be able to question the ethics of sending refugees to their certain deaths.
Guess which party holds massive influence over the bbc via DCMS?
That's not hard. Because Starmer isn't coming out to forcefully oppose these things, and because the right have lost their ever loving minds.
“Uniparty”, from someone talking about British politics, always means “I won’t take any responsibility for the government I supported for 14 years”.
We don't want to enjoy the act of mass deportation is about the message I'm getting from the party ATM
I have a PhD in civility actually, so that's apparently impossible.
don't think anything I want to say about this which should be posted publicly
I'm seriously worried that you didn't get an education worth the opportunity cost if you think giving labour party members the right to get rid of a sitting pm is compatible with our form of government. Your credentials don't mean anything if you are wrong.
Norbert, believe it or not. I am not so self centered as to belief that my feelings of frustration means that I should have a special privilege to tell the voters: no, I will choose your pm for you. And yes, the lab membership are freaks! We all are
Are you two seriously, seriously comparing the labour party to parties that passed the enabling act. Can you get a fucking grip.
He's elected to represent a constituency, and wins his status as pm because he commands the confidence of the house. What you want is to remove parliamentary sovereignty and replace it with the freaks of the labour party membership! Hell no.
He isn't elected to represent the views of the people in the party. You don't understand our form of government.
How can you be theoretically conscious and not recognise how what you are saying directly contradicts the lived experience of the last few months lol.
Patronage powers don't help when you don't have enough jobs to give out and your MPs don't think they have a chance of getting reelected.
It is a veto. You want the membership of the labour party to be able tbring down the prime minister if they want. No. That isn't parliamentary democracy. It isn't democracy at all. I get b) but that isn't what we are talking about here, you don't want it just for opposition times.
I don't think giving the labour party membership defact veto power over the prime minister of the united kingdom is a good idea, Norbert.
Members can't remove a leader, only MPs can.
Ten thousand. Stick her in with the titans.
He can be replaced whenever MPs become unconvinced he's going to be able help them keep their seat. I imagine the 2026 local elections give a decent time for this. What exactly is your alternative timo? Pretend Jeremy Corbyn can spin a party of malcontents up? Pretend the greens can win?
Yes we'll he can be replaced faster than another party can be built. There's one show on the road here.
The only thing worse than the left of the labour party is the blue right. Fucking invasive species.
This is pathetic & anyone who belives you can’t tie Farage to his plan to pay the Taliban to murder people he sends back is a fucking idiot and coward
It's the only party that can theoretically stop Reform if it gets its shit in order. There is quite literally nothing else aside from hoping the Tories pull back from the brink.
And frankly I'm a liberal, neither wing or then suits me