“We can’t possibly win the argument on ‘is the Taliban bad?’, but “the NHS is now only as bad a state as it was in 2018”, “immigration still high by historic standards” and “above target inflation”, now those are real winners!
Replies
Indeed. It’s just Labour people making excuses/fake rationales for something that is the product of dysfunction. It’s like the Vance/Zelensky bust-up statement, acres of “it is right that he not say something”, which continued even after he had said something.
aug 31, 2025, 6:29 pm • 61 0 • view
I mean also. So what if some do support the horrific thing because Reform say is great. Your aim is to pick people off.
aug 31, 2025, 7:33 pm • 7 0 • view
Possibly it’s all downstream of their refusal to state the (by now obvious to most) fact that Brexit was Just Bad. Once you have convinced yourself that you must never criticise such an obviously bad policy, it’s only a small step to never criticise *anything* from the other side
aug 31, 2025, 8:05 pm • 1 0 • view
I think they're putting everything on "we have built¹ a million houses" ¹possibly removed some regulatory obstacles to building
aug 31, 2025, 5:40 pm • 7 0 • view
To be fair, one thing that is funny about the Starmer defenders on here is they are literally constructing elaborate justifications as to why an operation he is halfway through firing are making the right decisions!
aug 31, 2025, 5:43 pm • 16 0 • view
Although even that has a combination of "old people in the north and midlands are the true hero voters, and what do those people like? Falling house prices!"
aug 31, 2025, 5:42 pm • 5 0 • view
They're running the risk of creating a record that's about as sellable as a Gary Glitter 12".
aug 31, 2025, 5:52 pm • 5 0 • view
If you think Reform’s opponents are in a ‘debate’ with Reform’s prospective voters, it’s like bringing a knife to a gun fight. They’re not being shown information that challenges their support for Farage. Corbyn’s prospective supporters absolutely were. In spades.
aug 31, 2025, 6:15 pm • 0 0 • view
It’s not about a “debate”. Caricaturing my view, and posting things that are just factually incorrect about the media diet of Reform voters may warm your tribalist heart, but you should maybe read a paper and notice that your view is not shared *by Keir Starmer*.
aug 31, 2025, 6:17 pm • 3 0 • view
To be clear, I have not ‘caricatured your view’. Calm down ffs. Not sure which tribe you think I’m being tribal in favour either.
aug 31, 2025, 6:26 pm • 0 0 • view
Ok, for some reason you’ve decided to go ad-hom on me twice already, treating it as open-&-shut that I don’t know how Reform voters consume media & that I hold them (ie a substantial portion of my own family who I’m very fond of) in contempt, so I’ll leave it there until you calm down.
aug 31, 2025, 6:23 pm • 0 0 • view
I’ve gone “ad hom” because you opened with the word “obviously” and because you are literally making claims that are untrue. You can switch from condescending to Reform voters to condescending to me, but it won’t make what you are saying true.
aug 31, 2025, 6:25 pm • 1 0 • view
You seem to be confusing “ad hom” with “statements that are true”. You are a Labour partisan, and you’ve stated as much in the past.
aug 31, 2025, 6:27 pm • 0 0 • view
And yet one who disagrees with both the current leader and the last one on so much, it seems. I’m absolutely someone who will need a very strong reason to not treat a social-democratic option as the least worst one. Tell anyone who knows me that I’m some pro-Labour dalek and they’d laugh at you.
aug 31, 2025, 6:34 pm • 0 0 • view
Yet in the here and now, you are excusemaking and the reality is for all your disagreements, you are in the tank for it. That’s ok, but you are also kidding yourself if you think you are not a partisan.
aug 31, 2025, 6:36 pm • 2 0 • view
Ok. I think I know what you’re arguing against, but not what you’re arguing for. I think political biases are only a small part of this, but do you think, in aggregate, the news & commentary consumed by the public judge Labour politicians/policies by the same standards as they treat conservatives?
aug 31, 2025, 6:43 pm • 0 0 • view
The bias across old media, YouTube and TikTok is not so great to make “don’t even take a punt on attacking the Taliban” a good call, and the audience is not just Reform voters. It is also people who think that the government’s economic policies took a marked turn for the worse after July 2024.
aug 31, 2025, 6:50 pm • 2 0 • view
He will row back on it. He will get the benefit of the doubt. I mean, it may sow some small doubts but the traffic is v much in the other direction. Again, to think there is an equivalence with Salisbury is a mistake.
aug 31, 2025, 7:04 pm • 0 0 • view
I said “I believe, obvious reasons”. In our replies I offered the the point which I believe to be obvious: that The Public Sphere gives a huge benefit of the doubt to right-wing populism at the moment. Do you think it doesn’t?
aug 31, 2025, 6:30 pm • 0 0 • view
No, this is wrong for two reasons. There isn’t a public sphere any more, and that same dynamic also allowed you lot to get away with a manifesto that had a big fiction at its heart.
aug 31, 2025, 6:31 pm • 0 0 • view
Wait… what? “There isn’t a Public Sphere any more”? I didn’t have that argument on my bingo card!
aug 31, 2025, 6:36 pm • 0 0 • view
So if they’re totally brainwashed and nothing, not even Farage’s planned pub lunch with Mullah Omar, can stop them voting Reform, then Reform have won already so should Labour not at least go down fighting ?
aug 31, 2025, 6:21 pm • 0 0 • view