One of two very good threads by Adam on this. A startling number of people - responding, in part, by the tone set by their government - just have this very complacent 'oh, no, this plan will never work'. I mean, 1) it could but also 2) they will definitely try.
Adam sort of assumes in this that the people likely to vote for reform actually give a shit about things like human rights or the suffering of foreigners, though. Why would telling people who often gleefully say we should sink the boats that this policy will cause suffering have any effect?
“Sink the boats” is not all of Reform’s electorate and like many Labour partisans you seem not to have noticed 70 per cent of the country.
Im such a partisan I left the party this year after nearly 20 years of membership. Believe me I know how shit the government is. What I cannot fathom is how anyone looks at reform and sees a valid alternative. Especially those that fell for and were burned by Johnson.
We have to learn from the experience of Johnson as PM. Initially they appear charismatic but fragile egos need to strut, need self aggrandisement, need revenge, they are grandiose, have no emotional intelligence or empathy, no interest in needs of electorate. Narcissists are toxic in public office.
The Lords can’t stop manifesto pledges so if Farage stands on camps and wins that’s where we go. They would be expensive and cruel. When we can’t deport the question becomes where do they go next? Plus the ramifications of destroying the GFA are awful. We would become a pariah state with no friends.
If Reform win the next election, the Lords will become a zombie chamber, representing a political landscape that has passed. Either Reform will get to nominate 200-300 peers themselves, or it will be properly reformed or abolished, or the Lords will act supine out of threat of the above.
Labour's weak responses are again, downstream of the fact they have no project, so when the PM is on holiday just get the usual 'uh, are we against the invasion stuff?' coupled with crappy 'nuh-uh, can't do that because of Northern Ireland' lines.
In before 'it's crap because they agree with it' - frankly even if you agreed with every dot and comma of the big picture stuff, you should have enough about you to attack your opponent's plan to give billions of pounds to the Taliban.
Here's the other good thread from Adam.
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.
Indeed. From 2010 to 2015, would hear constantly (and correctly) that things would change when the forced choice was Cameron vs Milband, but the Cameron machine didn't just complacently assume this. They attacked Ed Miliband relentlessly.
They described the energy price freeze, a policy they essentially adopted wholesale as being from 'a Marxist universe'! Michael Fallon said that Miliband would stab the United Kingdom in the back just like he had his brother!
Ditto, New Labour echoed and gleefully reminded people of the 'something of the night about him' description of Michael Howard and handed out versions of his CV! They didn't just go 'eh, when the Forced Choice (TM) happens it will be fine'. Need to actually have a plan for the Forced Choice (TM).
The final closing argument re: Howard in 2005 was "economic stability is at risk. Your mortgage is at risk. Your job is at risk", frankly, none of which was in any way true.
I mean, it was, but the election was irrelevant to that.
Yes, fair point, but you know what I mean.
A lot of people seem to have convinced themselves that the Starmer strategy is a deliberate masterly inactivity. It's not, but even if it were, no winning government has ever gone quiet and just gone 'well, the opposition is just self-defining as extreme'. They went out and labelled it as such.
The thing is, though, what the government is doing is working. Small boats' arrivals are falling, deportations of foreign offenders have increased, the asylum backlog is a shadow of what it was a year ago. Asylum claims are now being processed in months rather than years. Report that.
To reiterate: literally *NONE* of this stands up to any scrutiny as an argument, but it did something that this Labour party is never gonna do without major changes (win re-election).
Exactly. It should be as simple as, saying "When people say who they are, believe them."
It’s like with the argument that people will vote for them when they see the improvements in public services - first you need to fund them & second how will people know it was you when you respond to people claiming you actually spent their taxes on child sacrifice with nowt more than a wry smile
The 'reject your eyes and ears' around this is quite grating. On one side, "trust the plan"; on the other, "ThIs iS wHAt They ReaLlY tHInk". When it's so clear that the little strategy that does exist is badly misguided electoralism that reeks of insincerity and can't deliberately work.
Starmer is not a leader. A leader with courage would point out that Farage is really talking about immigration and his ultimate fantasy of remigration.
American democrats did that about Biden. Don’t make the same mistake the US did.
the opposition (which is now firmly identified by Labour as Reform UK) is only extreme in presentation, not policy
So Farage spins the narrative, the media lap it up and propagate it and you want opposition parties to spend their time responding to what Farage does I disagree, opposition parties need to give an positive vision rather than given yet more publicity to Reform’s batshit policies
'If we go down this road you, Reform-curious voter, will be risking x horrific thing happening to you personally', where x has a grain of truth but is extrapolated to absolute worst case scenario. What Remain should have done, in retrospect.
Had forgotten this! In light of what we know happened a couple of years later, this hits seriously differently.
Yes, as Marwood rightly points out, which slightly undercuts my boy scoutish 'this was a vile calumny against Howard' line.
I always felt that was rather distasteful and played nastily on him being half Romanian.
Yeah, the 2005 campaign against Howard had a grimy underbelly to it IMV.
But then the Tories did campaign with "Are you thinking what we're thinking?"
Totally - it was a combo of that and quiet antisemitism.
Antisemitism? In the Labour Party? Unthinkable.
Forced Choice only works when their fear of the alternative is greater than their loathing of the government this also requires the government to act like the alternative is something to fear
They actually went *further* than the energy price freeze which was a policy to pause some tarrifs for some customers of some suppliers (communist obviously) replacing it with "the government sets the max price for everyone" (pro market, conservative policy). The industry was shocked.
Feels like Labour are employing the same strategists as the US Democrats at times. Reform need to be relentlessly attacked right now on moral grounds not just practical grounds. You need adverts with Farage in Putin’s pocket like you had with Salmond/Milliband.
They literally are. Labour sent some of them to “help” the Harris campaign.
Source: www.politico.eu/article/kama...
Disagree, there was a lot of criticism of the Dems for getting sucked into Trump's world, spending too long responding to what Trump said, instead of setting a positive vision The election needs to be fought on what Labour will do, not getting sucked into Farage’s sewer www.bbc.com/news/article...
It's odd in that in PMQs Starmer is clearly talking past Badeoch and recognises it's going to be him (or whoever is PM) vs Farage in 2029 but then refuses to stick the boot in. PM Farage is legit scary to a majority of people. Remind them why!
Trying to imagine a world in which the Conservatives spent 2010 to 2015 saying "Ed Miliband's Mansion Tax won't work, but we're taking action in Government to tax high earners"...
Everyone could learn something from Graham Platner’s candidacy video, where he explicitly says “the enemy is the oligarchy“
Cancelled my membership today, if they will not push back on 'invasion' and 'risk of public disorder', they are not for me
Yep, Labour cannot fight a fear election if it is terrified itself. And it is a party in government that is very clearly petrified of the nationalist right.
I'm not sure the 32%(?) Reform would need to get a majority would be in any way afraid of concentrating camps for refugees.
People really should have learnt by now that going 'oh I'm going to pick a random figure out of the air for what this party *needs* to win four years out' is not smart. Reform's strength is that if politics fragments they may be able to win with a third to a quarter of the vote, yes.
But their weakness is that two-thirds of the electorate really don't like them. (This was *not* true of Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s - most SDP/Alliance voters chose her in forced choice polling). So a more effective government than the one we currently have should beat them.
Well, I hope you're right and I admit it's 3+ years and Farage has a fantastic inability to share the limelight but at this point I feel pessimistic. As in 'your last sentence' pessimistic.
You'd think it wouldn't be too hard to paint Farage as an incompetent agent of chaos, even without direct comparisons to certain unpopular orange chaos monkeys in the news. Especially as that's a framing that suits both Labour & Tories
Fearlessly speaking the truth is anathema to modern, bare-cupboard governments. Paying performative homage to the dastardly/disinformed/demented is where everyone’s at. Perhaps wanton flattery and pandering to the mindless - in the hope of economic/electoral crumbs - is all any of them can afford.
But how far down this road are they really prepared to go? Might they soon be ‘understanding’ sentiments like those expressed (and deleted) by Lucy Connelly? bsky.app/profile/flet...
"Things will change when the choice is PM Starmner or Farage. No we will not spend any time explaining why that would be bad. Why? Oh well a decade ago in a 52-48 vote we chose to leave a trading block, and since then we obviously can't disagree with ethno-nationalist parties. No me neither "
This. Terrorism training camps are popping up again in Afghanistan, so it surely isn't beyond the wit of Labour to point out that giving the Taliban money is helping those who would bomb Britain again.
Well since the last lot of those came from Leeds, I'm sure that their motivation will be for a caliphate in Leeds with a Tram system.
Paying people for returns - would some governments encourage this? The states mentioned are generally very skint, easy money, so sending people to Europe can be a revenue raiser
A good operation would be suggesting that they plan to fund the Taliban using taxpayer money, then spend the weekend funding Colombian cartels using their own money.
The only reason I've seen for not doing that is if you don't want "didn't you say--" about the next time your government shakes hands with a blood-soaked regime - and even _then_ I think Labour should go "he wants to give money to the Taliban" because _it's the Taliban_, they're a level up here!
“Nigel Farage will take your taxes and use them to pay the Taliban to kill people” is both a true statement and a good attack line.
If the calculation is that the British people hate asylum seekers so much that they would happily allow say a Afghan woman school teacher to be tortured and killed at taxpayer expense then I think that’s a miscalculation.
Does make me wonder, if asked, would the Labour government promise to honor parts of the Good Friday agreement like neutrality in border poll
Perhaps an elected statesperson will ring the alarm bell as Gov. Pritzker did yesterday. Nope, they're all on the wrong side of the line.
The rest of Labour does know that the one thing the PM has been clear on is to not openly criticise the democratic backsliding happening under Trump.
It's all the more surprising when the have a ready made example of 'what Farage really mean is..' staring them in the face from across the Atlantic
No, that’s why it’s less surprising, in a way: the have clear instructions not to attack Trump or say anything negative about his government, which makes it difficult to attack Reform for the self same policies, I suspect.
That's an interesting point!
I think for me farage obviously wants to be pm for a reason and seeing trump break the law to do whatever he wants it's not hard to see why, if I were starmer I'd have that in mind and be breaking eggs and pulling all the progressive levers I could not scratching around for my long game
And the idea that the GFA will worry Reform falls apart when you remember they ran at the last election in partnership who thinks that the GFA was a surrender to terrorists.
(The internal divide being whether they define terrorists as Gerry Adams or John Hume.)
I spy with my little eye yet another shill for ReFUK. Have you missed ALL that Labour's done this past yr or are you just being deliberately obtuse at the behest of your puppet masters?
Brexit proved quite clearly that the voting public in England and Wales not only don’t care about NI issues but also they fundamentally don’t want to care- remain had major and Blair walk over the peace bridge and what difference did it make?
Yes when you read what the spokesman said recently it i felt fundamentally sorry for them - imagine working with someone so directionless that you dont know if deals with the taliban is on the table?
I think people are understandably afraid of what they might be morally obliged to do (or what they shoulrld do that they might avoid doing) if such a thing came to pass. I know I am.
The more you and the commentariat give Farage and Reform even the hint of legitimacy the more they insinuate their way into the mainstream conversation. You are as much part of the malaise as they are. There are blinding historical precedents. I’m not sure you see that. #avalanchejournalism
I partly agree with you, but what’s the alternative ? Farage & his goons m dominate the BBC & other mainstream media outlets, as well as having effective social media channels that pass many of us by but that hit younger audiences. He is popular across demographics. Should Bush etc just ignore him?
Meanwhile big social media platforms such as Facebook continue their lurch to the right, filling feeds with xenophobic and blatantly racist material. Everyone is talking about flags due to the success of the BNP fuelled Operation Raise the Colours.
Farage has already won in the minds and hearts of many people.
There might be a reason for that! He’s platformed 24 hours a day by people who should recognise the dangers, but don’t seem to.
Sitting here in Washington DC, I feel like operating under the assumption that just because a given policy is absurd, cruel and completely unlikely to work means it won't be attempted is not the way to go.
Tells you everything you need to know about our politics that every debate is now framed technocratically. Another way that people learned the wrong lessons from Labour’s 1997 victory, including Labour themselves.
It will work. 110 %. there are no checks and balances. Our parliamentarians are as supine as those in the US Congress. There will be no S Korean defence of democracy. Any demos will not be covered by the media. All protestors will be locked up as terrorists. All the tools are in place.
The biggest issue is most Reform voters (wrongly) believe there are safe legal channels for all genuine refugees. That’s why even when you poll harder “send them home” voters, the majority of them (61%) are actually OK keeping genuine asylum-seekers. They just can’t imagine Channel crossers count.
Lots of good points in this thread but sense check: there won't be a Reform majority government. They don't have the votes and the majority who oppose them will also vote tactically to keep them out.
No UK one-party government since 1931 has "had the votes". The UK is not a democracy. The present government has a big majority on 33% of the vote. Previous had 43%. And so on back through the decades. Blair, Thatcher, Heath: never won a democratic election, not once. Reform can win, easily.
You're conflating the limitations of FPTP with the actual Reform voting base. The votes are not their in sufficient numbers or in the right places for a majority. Only the skewed nature of political coverage here in the UK makes it seem so.
Well, I would love to hope so, but any country where 3 of the 4 main parties are different flavours of Fascist Clown Party is very much asking for trouble.
If you can’t tell the difference between three of the four main parties that’s very much a you problem.
If I couldn't tell the difference, I wouldn't know there were three flavours, would I? 😉 What unites them - wilful ignorance, incompetence, authoritarianism, xenophobia, contempt for democracy - is far more meaningful than what divides them (does anyone know what that even is anymore?)
Authoritarians always tell you what they're going to do. We need to believe them.
I can see there might be a diplomatic angle to this, as the Trump regime will blow up if their top boy in the UK is attacked by Labour, but their domestic audience needs something more than technocratic talking points and passivity.
To what extent is this literally Americabrain lol, like there's no division of powers or veto points, a majority government can do a phenomenal amount if it tries to
It does seem likely that a Farage government is more likely to look to the Trump administration than to past British Governments if it got into power. No idea how successful it is but I think people would do well to look at the US for an understanding of how serious Farage's plans are.
Thanks Stephen. I am unsure why people looking at the actions of the present American Government would assume that such a thing cannot happen here. A peculiar British exceptionalism.
They have always thought that the UK just because they are “British” can’t possibly be fascist. Yes they can, there is no vaccine against it.
Reform have a vision. It’s a dystopian hell hole for many of us, but it’s still a vision. Until Labour are able to contextualise their practical actions in an emotive, positive and forward thinking vision, the argument is lost.
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I feel I have to point out that Nazi Germany *also* found it impossible to deport populations they decided (unlike Stalinist Russia), but that should be no comfort when you see what they turned to in place of deportation.
The fact they're actually trying to vaguely think through the practicalities shows they're pretty serious. Ultimately Trump's plans aren't working - but he's still trying them. It's not about policy logic as we understand it but ideology
I suppose it depends on your definition of "working". Achieving their stated aims, then no, but energising and enthusing his base, yes.
This is it now, though, isn't it? Get power, ram through performative stuff. Bark about it. Move on to the next thing as the chaos makes people's lives measurably worse. Rinse & repeat. E.g; The asylum hotels were entirely deliberate. It's energised the base so well it's become someone else's!
The only constitutional protection we have is for the King to dismiss the Russian-backed traitor. And that's a button you press once and see where the pieces fall.