In fairness to Farage, he does appear to be able to say whatever he likes without fear of challenge - legal or otherwise.
Trains, music, film, theatre. Environmentally green, politically left of centre but well to the right of the real nutters. Retired and very opinionated!
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In fairness to Farage, he does appear to be able to say whatever he likes without fear of challenge - legal or otherwise.
The Greens aren’t taking votes from Labour. Labour is gifting them.
I had such high hopes for this government (Corbynistas please shut the f*** up). And I couldn’t have imagined just how quickly they would ditch some of their most important principles. It’s going to be very difficult for them to get this back.
Some people have all the luck.
I imagine the advisers are saying: “…any day now…it’ll turn around…just hold your nerve”.
‘The numbers’, ‘small boats’ and ‘illegals’ are just the acceptable proxies for racism. Doesn’t matter what the numbers are, the racism will always out.
But David, you need to remember - ‘all time’ only started last July.
We should stop bailing out the private sector when it fails (as it increasingly seems to do). Businesses of critical national importance should be run by ourselves for the security and benefit of the nation. Sensible salaries, no huge bonuses, no dividends. Money ploughed back into the business.
Has anyone done a comprehensive round up of the Reform policies that are currently being implemented in council areas they control? What would interesting is to postulate what their current local actions would look like if escalated to a national level in a national gov’t. It would be frightful.
An excellent thread on why Labour is heading up a blind alley. I think the belief that traditional Labour supporters will always vote Labour and the chase is about the floaters was perhaps true once, but not now. If they think of lifelong Labour voters as ever-loyal, they’ll get a shock.
Glad to see someone finally using the word ‘intimidation’ in relation to this ridiculous epidemic of flags. That’s really what it’s all about. It has nothing to do with patriotism - it’s being done to provoke and intimidate. Because the language used to defend it is primarily that of threat.
I think it might be a bit like ‘small cock syndrome’. There is certainly a level of insecurity in the people who are currently obsessed by it.
It doesn’t matter which side of the ‘illegal immigrant’ nonsense you’re on, this is weapons-grade hypocrisy from Cooper and one of the main reasons why the Labour Party is haemorrhaging support. We spent 14 years listening to hypocrisy and lies and were promised an end to it. Quite unacceptable.
Bang on! To the untrained eye it also looks like they’re taking their policy and comms leads directly from the cesspit of X as well. Which would explain a lot.
Well done for making the entirely valid point that record sales and chart position are no guides to musical quality. Simply how popular stuff is.
This is good news. He’s a savvy populist who knows how to communicate better than the No.10/No.11 comms operations combined. The challenge for him and the Greens now is to get the exposure they need to put up a proper challenge to Farage and the far right. Given the opportunity, he can do that.
I’d be much more worried about my daughter walking past the gang of thugs and morons gathered outside, waving their pathetic little flags and shouting hideous racist abuse at the occupants. They’re much more likely to be the ones with violent criminal records.
I don’t know who is dealing with their comms at the moment, but they don’t appear to have any idea what really cuts through. This vague talk of growth is intangible and irrelevant to the man and woman in the street. They want real examples of real stuff that affects their day to day lives.
I wouldn’t have thought many Labour MPs came into politics to strip the rights of torture survivors to be reunited with the spouses & children. They need to take a long hard look in the mirror & ask whether Starmer, Cooper & Reeves are really the leadership their careers should be remembered with.
Kevin Maguire: "If you're put up in a hotel & you get meals you get £10/wk.. all these terrible myths.. free iPads.. myths & lies have gone mainstream & we've got to challenge them.. we've gone back to the worst aspects of the 1970s where racism is becoming mainstream" Well said
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
Labour’s comms have been appallingly bad from Day 1. It also doesn’t help that the strategic focus for their comms is burying them deeper and deeper in a right-wing mire every day.
I’m afraid we do keep having to do this. Both Sky and the BBC are utterly complicit in the rise of Reform. Of course they’ll deny it, but we can see the extensive and unwarranted platforming of Farage and his party that belies their minuscule number of MPs. They don’t do news these days.
As a former public sector senior comms manager, I couldn’t agree more. I’m appalled at their failure to tell a good story. It looks like there is a complete disconnect at the heart of No 10. Comms works best when it is at the heart of strategy development. That just doesn’t seem to be happening.
Douglas Carswell has skirted the line and now he's crossed it. This is disgusting racism from a former MP who now demonstrates who and what he is.
It would - as would Labour not putting out statements that could have come straight from a Reform press office. It would be nice to believe they’re being misquoted - but they’re not.
Oh dear! The biggest factor here is that this group has let itself down. A ragbag disaffected bunch, who led the line when it came to voting for Brexit and for idiots like Johnson, is now having to live with the consequences. Blaming others just doesn’t wash. Their bed - they can lie in it.
Not me mate. Not me.
The prospect of handing my personal human rights to Farage or one of his band of nasties, should they end up being elected, is quite abhorrent. These rights have been hard won and I will do everything in my power to stop them being taken away by a lying, racist toad like Farage.
People’s homes are being stormed by far-right groups. The govt. Is saying nothing about how violence like this will not be tolerated. Where is Starmer’s “law and order” now? They’ve no control and we are moments away from someone being killed. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...
I just hope that, if he does get dumped, they don’t find someone who simply perpetuates all the mistakes. Needs a fresh pair eyes, a complete clean sweep of advisers and comms team at No.10, a chancellor who is not in thrall to the bankers and a new start. They’ve only got one shot at this.
Yet again their comms are badly framed. When will they get a grip and involve someone who understands effective and timely comms? So many instances over the last year when they’ve just got it horribly wrong.
Nigel Farage says he hates Europe but all his children, which have European mothers, have EU passports not British ones. He is a disgraceful fraud everything he says is a lie.
These are not protests - they are organised acts of intimidation of vulnerable people. That’s why the police need to disperse those gathering.
Doing nothing was never an option. But what they chose to do was as bad as doing nothing. Where are the challenges to the right wing rhetoric? Where are the explanations of why we need immigrants? Where are the safe routes that would put the smugglers out of business? MSM trap? Really?
Exactly. We should have zero tolerance of racism of any kind. Allowing the minor stuff only leads to something much worse. Prosecute those daubing paint on roundabouts, get the unauthorised flags on lampposts down and police any gatherings firmly.
And your point is?
“Rational, sensible and not completely distorted and biased”. Not a description you’d associate with anyone in Reform, least of all Ticey.
No, Lord Falconer. Labour should stop pandering to this nonsense. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...
It’s getting worse by the day. This is straight out of the Daily Mail ‘Playbook of Popular Prejudices’. Really, what on earth are they thinking?
The Government has lost the plot completely on this. I really cannot believe that a party with such a massive majority is proving so weak at challenging this right wing rhetoric. If I’d known they’d do this, I would not have voted for them.
This whole summer only one story has dominated our entire politics & it comes down to literally 30,000 people in hotels. Ridiculous. The government needs to get a GRIP it’s pathetic.
I agree that they SHOULD be peaceful and non-aggressive. But that isn’t what’s happening and the more passive we are, the more these people will push the boundaries. Sure, put a line of police in front of the hotel, but at the first sign of threat or aggression, clear the lot of them away.
Labour has painted itself into a corner on asylum seekers. They’ve failed to realise (I think) that once you side with the anti-immigrant lot, you inevitably get added elements of xenophobia, racism, thuggery and all-round nastiness. And it won’t go away unless they change the rhetoric.
I haven’t come across the concept of ‘flat scrambled egg’. Omelette, yes.
Police seem afraid to do anything. The moment a crowd gathers, it should instantly be dispersed. If that escalates, then so be it. Whatever it takes. Because not to do this is giving in to right wing thuggery and racism. And the end point of that is a whole lot worse.
This is possibly true for me too. First ELP tour - Leicester De Montfort Hall - first half of the gig simply consisted of ‘Pictures at an Exhibition’ - Emerson playing the big DMH organ - people were standing on the seats cheering at the end of it.
We also need better proactive policing. Whatever happened to dispersal orders? These crowds should be kettled and kept away from the immediate areas. If the racists then want to riot, we should again use the full extent of the law to deal with offenders. Enough is enough.
They’ve caused problems on one of our local rail lines too. We need a few prosecutions.
Seems to me most Reform voters are coming from the ‘everybody else is shit, why not let him have a go?’ position. Like the kids football team who haven’t scored a goal by halftime - someone says ‘why don’t we give the dopy kid who’s never played football before a go? Can’t be any worse’. It can.
Or to put it another way, it’s not being pulled down by the weight of reality.
I agree. Ten or 15 years ago I might have felt inclined to fight for a national broadcaster that was free of the influence of the money men and vested political interests. Today’s BBC is not that broadcaster. In fact, its news and current affairs are actively working against the national interest.
I find the whole flag-shagging campaign utterly disrespectful. I don’t care what other countries do, in this country flags are raised respectfully on special occasions and lowered immediately after that occasion. They’re not strung up on lampposts with cable ties and left to fade and rot.
The problem is we’ll have five years of this sort of stuff. It won’t get changed until the following election. The consequent damage will take decades to sort out - something as a country we just can’t afford.
Because news and current affairs now revolves not, as it used to, around information and facts, but around controversy, dispute and outrage. So to fact check Rylan’s remarks is, in today’s world, counter-productive. We are appallingly served by pretty much all of the country’s media.
Ppl, they promised you Brexit would solve everything, and it was a piece of shit. They’re telling you leaving the ECHR will solve everything. It will also be a piece of shit. Stop believing them. They talk self-serving bollocks.
Having spent half a career working for a large council, I saw many new councillors arrive with little idea of their roles. Generally, established parties accept that newbies need guidance of older hands and officers to fully understand the role. Reform seem to think that’s unnecessary. It’s not.
This is what really worries me about the prospect of them leading a government. They have shown nothing but hopeless incompetence on the small stage, with a vetting process that is not fit for purpose, resignations causing extra cost to councils, failure to develop policies. All mouth, no trousers.
Automatic full permission to stay for people seeking asylum from Afghanistan, Eritrea, Iran, Sudan and Syria, is not an out there idea. A similar move was done under the previous Labour government, and shown to be a humane and effective way to reduce those waiting. www.bigissue.com/news/social-...
Reform doesn’t do detail. Plans are unnecessary if you can convince the proles that vague and undeliverable statements are all they need to know. Hell in a handcart….
It’s becoming increasingly obvious that people who should know better don’t.
I’d love to have been present at the vetting meeting. Bet it was a bit one-sided.
Probably quitewrong to say this, but this is encouraging. “Out of the mouths of babes…”
There will be a bunch of Reform supporters out there who won’t see this as parody at all. It’s exactly the heartless inhuman action they want. That’s where we’re at in the U.K.
Can’t get clearer evidence than this - Farage is just a lying grifter who will say anything. God help us if the morons put him into high office.
Is the BBC Reform UK's mouthpiece? Yup. "Researchers at Cardiff University have produced a detailed analysis of every episode of the BBC’s flagship Question Time programme broadcast between September 2014 and July 2023 to see if the broadcaster was balancing political viewpoints."
Sorry, had to repost this. The BBC are not fit for purpose. They are not a neutral source of news. They are promoting a right wing populist party that has 4 MPs ( same as the Greens). This is dangerous for the country.
Meanwhile the UK Government and our national broadcaster seem quite happy to stick with the toxic mess on Xitter. It speaks volumes that the Government won’t even establish a presence here. It doesn’t seem to understand that doing so would push others to do the same and improve its comms immensely.
I didn’t have much time for the ‘defund the BBC’ lot, but now I’m not so sure. Its non-news output is no better than other channels these days - its programme development is stale and predictable. Its best output lies largely in music radio. If its news operation can’t be turned around, then….?
It shows such a basic lack of political understanding that Labour didn't go straight on the attack over this. Just because most people are worried about immigration being too high it doesn't mean they're psychopaths.
Reports that No.10 failed to challenge this stuff when it emerged yesterday - and had been flagged at least a day earlier - point to a No.10 comms operation that is weak and simply not fit for purpose. They should have been down Farage’s throat the moment this stuff came out, if not before.
What we are witnessing is the most drawn out political suicide mission of our lifetimes. Four more years of this stuff and I’ll personally join the queue to help tie the rope onto the branch for them.
News has become focused on argument and controversy. With Farage you get both. Oh for the days when we switched on BBC News and learnt something about what is really happening in the world. Real information that tells us something. Not simply a racist baiting non-racists being presented as news.
And, if the current government continues to brush aside these concerns - as the Democrats effectively did before Trump’s recent election in the US - then ‘could’ will become ‘will’. And history will hold Starmer and his party wholly (and rightly) responsible for whatever catastrophe follows.
By common consent Brexit has been a failure. The only people now believing it can be made to work are xenophobes, racists and those people who just cannot accept they got it wrong. Having failed once, Farage is having another go with the same arguments. And the same idiots appear to be buying it.
I cannot get over just how weak Starmer and his government are proving to be on this. We need a national leader who will stand up to the racists, not someone who cowers in a corner every time they say something vile.
Anyone who understands where this country actually is at the moment realises that, far from saving us billions, Farage’s vile plans will cost us billions. Sad fact for the hard of thinking: the birth rate is falling - and with it our ability to generate tax revenues. Without immigration we’re sunk.
What vile, heartless people these Reform members are. Without a shred of compassion or decency in their entire bodies.
Presumably the sort of support the Taliban will be looking at if Farage returns expat Afghans to Afghanistan will be things they can attach to prison ceilings?
When apologists and supporters of our government, which has the power to do so much, come forward to try to defend what it is apparently doing for hard working people, they don’t talk about stuff like this. Its failure to act on energy prices is a very large element of its current unpopularity.
Bearing in mind it has a majority that allows it to do pretty much anything it wants to do for the next four years, we have an unbelievably weak government. And that weakness is allowing the people we really don’t want in government to dictate agendas and set itself up to win the next election.
Farage is a man completely devoid of morals, compassion and humanity. A snake oil salesman whose snake oil is venomous and deadly. Why can people not see that he will destroy lives and our country - as surely as night follows day?
Give Farage his due though - he’s trying very hard to make it much more than that.
The ECHR creates a backstop of legal appeals against changes to UK Laws. Without it the Government could scrap the State Pension, Minimum Wage, Working Hour Limits and Paid Holiday in 1 day and there is nothing you could do. This is exactly what Farage would do.
The only threat to public disorder is from the racist morons he’s inciting and who the police seem incapable of keeping in line.
‘Network’ - great film.
Doesn’t help that Labour’s communications operation is pants and has been since Day 1. I don’t know what they think they’re achieving, but none of it is remotely helping the cause. It’s so bad, it’s embarrassing.
Nope - that one seems to have passed me - and pretty much all of the nation’s media and even her own web page - by. Communication not really firing on all cylinders - again.
I’m rapidly coming round to the view that McSweeney is actually a Reform plant.
Wouldn’t it just be better if they all resigned together rather than this piecemeal approach After all, dodgy personal histories are going to catch up with most of them sooner or later.
I have seen nothing to make me believe they deserve a designation as a terrorist organisation. Protest - yes, but I want to see actual evidence of real terrorist activity, rather than a Government minister simply telling me it’s all a bit ‘secret squirrel’ and I’ll have to take it on trust.
Two points worth noting on the Farage stuff today. 1. The Tories have completely ceded the August opportunity to get publicity when govt slows down to Reform. Nothing to suggest they're not headed fast towards oblivion. 2. Labour look even more lost than before. Paralysed with indecision and fear.
Seeing some politicians competing for just how brutal and dehumanising they can be to vulnerable minorities - I can’t help comparing that to 16th and 17th witch trials. It’s so depressing.
Labour response has the stench of Morgan McSweeney’s corrosive right wing influence about it.
Unfortunately, according to current polling, Reform are about 30% right when they treat everyone as fools.
The BBC grandstanding of Farage and his desire to leave the ECHR on TV this morning with no reference to the dire negative influence of that - confirms they have joined the right-wing propaganda campaign.
Vandalism is what it is about. Mindless yobs obsessed with breaking the law and being racist.
I wonder if there is a list of crimes somewhere which are sort-of OK and which don’t really count as crimes. Even if you’re found guilty and do time for them.
Straight out of the Trump playbook - say any old rubbish and the morons will accept it like dustbins. When will someone tell the truth about why we need these levels of immigration? Why without immigrants this country will spiral downwards as we fail to cater for an ever-ageing population?
Let's be honest: Labour have chosen to strap rocket boosters to Reform from their very first day in office. They had the numbers to set the agenda, and the public conversation. Instead they've banged on about immigration almost more than Farage has, with scarcely a word about "good" immigration.
