I read somewhere that Labour tend to feint left, then move right, which made me laugh. In other words, before an election, they make left wing noises, then if they win, revert to fairly conservative positions. But what amazes me is that they've always done this. Harold Wilson had a left wing reputation, but moved right. And so on. Yet somehow we are taken in. I suppose they are running out of road.
The difference with the current shower is that they feinted left to win the leadership and sprinted right well before the election.
They more than feinted left. They pushed left credentials to the max. Then I agree they ran to the right
The one sensible thing Labour have considered recently, raising income tax, and they're bottling it. If the economy and public services recover no-one will care that you broke manifesto pledges to do it, and if they don't no-one will give half a fuck that you kept them. How are people this inept running the country?
The "sweeping reforms" of asylum announced by Shabana Mahmood are, of course, nothing of the sort - just a repackage of what Reform and the Conservatives have been calling for and current practice, it's the "hostile environment" all over again.
And, her statement that "illegal immigration is tearing the UK apart" fails to actually identify the problem. Yes, there are increasing tensions about asylum seekers that could, with a little hyperbole, be described as "tearing the UK apart" (it might be more accurate to say "tearing some communities apart"). But, the problem isn't asylum seekers. The problem are those who whip up hate of migrants with lies and misrepresentation; those who describe asylum seekers as "illegal immigrants"; those who blame migrants for the problems of policies of government for a decade and a half, indeed quite a bit longer than that, that have favoured the wealthy over the majority including reduced provision of council housing, underinvestment in the health and care services, ongoing support for expensive energy sources and opposition to cheap renewables, and Brexit; those who hype every example of crimes by migrants into massive scare stories, while simultaneously ignoring the greater (in number and severity) crimes of those who have lived here for generations, and even blame migrants for crimes long before the culprit has been identified.
It's really troubling the way the government are playing with fire like this.
Yes. I agree. It also only adds to the list of things the back benchers have against Starmer. Even some Labour favouring commentators are predicting a regicide. Publicly his term has been a disaster.
Daft is something kids might do when they are very young.
Fair point. How about foolish, ill conceived, pointless and silly?
The second part is Ms Creasy's quote (Labour MP) that I was alluding to, which is that it is performative cruety.
It is both.
One of my great frustrations with the conversation about refugees is the discussion of 'pull factors.' Thr truth is that the 'push factors' are far more important and that there are really only two actual 'pull factors:'
1. The English language
2. Familial ties / friendships / community etc.
The only way to fix 1. would be to go back in time and not make an Empire. Never mind all the massive benefits to the UK that English is the international language. The only way to fix 2. is to never accept anyone ever.
Which is why anything aimed at reducing asylum claims by focusing on pull factors is just stupid.
And, add to that the stupidity of talking about "deterrent" (whether that's "you'll end up in Rwanda" or "you'll be back in France within a week" or whatever other cruel and inhumane idea right-wing politicians come up with). When migrants are already putting their lives, and the lives of their children, into the hands of criminals who will cram them onto unseaworthy inflatable rafts to cross the busiest sea lane in the world, where death is a real and recognised possibility, what sort of deterrent is going to be worse than that?
There's a good bunch of opinion here collected by Chris Osuh of The Guardian - (not just Rt Rev Dr Anderson Jeremiah, though what he says is excellent)
But on Tuesday, as Denmark votes in municipal and regional elections, polls suggest the most probable result is a loss for the party’s candidate, a former government minister understood to have been handpicked by the PM.
Among the reasons cited by analysts are fatigue and frustration with Frederiksen’s hardline policies on issues such as integration and immigration, which have partly inspired a new asylum and migration policy unveiled by the British government
Yeah, this tactic of adopting right wing policies in the hope of staving off the far right has been tried often enough that there's now fairly clear empirical evidence that it doesn't actually work:
This is behind a paywall from Stephen Bush at the FT but I think he nails how bad their current approach is - taking on Shabana Mahmood's dangerously misguided contentions
Zoom out and it is repeating the biggest and most catastrophic failure of the Starmer government, which is that its year in office has been an utter disaster for race relations in this country. No other government since 1970 would have suggested that such a direct linkage between “immigration policy” and “the safety of ethnic minorities in the UK” was something we should accept. The two are entirely orthogonal: the Labour government should pursue the border policies it thinks best, not suggest that somehow the failure of those policies creates conditions in which racism is acceptable or in any way explicable.
...
this government’s biggest failing... is that it is essentially incapable of saying that racism is wrong, full stop. That is a far bigger contributor to emboldened racism in the UK than anything the previous Conservative government might have done, or failed to do, on immigration policy.
[ Hosts - are you wanting this thread under dual rules or do you want discussion of Labour racism moved to Epiphanies?]
Is the 'racism' of Shabana Mahmood the lesser of two evils -ie Farage winning the next GE is not impossible?
That assumes that voters will be attracted to Labour over their anti-refugee position. But maybe it will attract voters to Farage. Why buy the monkey when you can have the organ-grinder?
Is the 'racism' of Shabana Mahmood the lesser of two evils -ie Farage winning the next GE is not impossible?
That assumes that voters will be attracted to Labour over their anti-refugee position. But maybe it will attract voters to Farage. Why buy the monkey when you can have the organ-grinder?
Yeah. No-one was ever placated by "just racist enough".
Is the 'racism' of Shabana Mahmood the lesser of two evils -ie Farage winning the next GE is not impossible?
That assumes that voters will be attracted to Labour over their anti-refugee position. But maybe it will attract voters to Farage. Why buy the monkey when you can have the organ-grinder?
Yeah. No-one was ever placated by "just racist enough".
As @chrisstiles posted above, countering the radical right by adopting some of their policies has never been effective. Those already attracted to the radical right, but who might consider their policies to be too extreme, tend to find that the right shift of mainstream parties validating their position - and, if that makes the radical right seem a lot less extreme then they start to look electable, or as @quetzalcoatl put it you might as well have the organ grinder. Those who will never vote for the radical right will start looking for other people to vote for if they see their party (especially if that's been traditionally on the left) shifting to the right and adopting policies that they see in the loathed right.
For Labour, their shift to the right to try and counter Reform will benefit parties to the left (LibDems, Greens, Corbyn's yet-unnamed party if they get going, SNP and PC in Scotland and Wales) picking up traditional Labour voters who do not like right wing policies from the Labour Party, and parties to the right (Reform and Conservatives) who find their political opponents in Labour reproducing and validating their policies. The only losers from the strategy would appear to be the Labour Party who appear to be heading for electoral disaster in coming elections - polling in Scotland is beginning to suggest Labour could fall behind Greens and LibDems, in less than 30 years of the Scottish Parliament falling from the biggest party in Scotland to 4th or 5th place.
Is the 'racism' of Shabana Mahmood the lesser of two evils -ie Farage winning the next GE is not impossible?
That assumes that voters will be attracted to Labour over their anti-refugee position. But maybe it will attract voters to Farage. Why buy the monkey when you can have the organ-grinder?
Yeah. No-one was ever placated by "just racist enough".
As @chrisstiles posted above, countering the radical right by adopting some of their policies has never been effective.
The political scientist Ben Ansell has reproduced results but coming from a different direction, namely looking at the attitudes of Labour voters in both core and marginal constituencies:
Where does is all lead to. Bluntly I think the McSweeney pivot has been a mistake. It assumes that Labour-curious voters in the marginals Labour needs to win are fundamentally different from Labour-curious voters elsewhere. And that social values are the key difference. That’s just not accurate. It’s true Reform voters and those who have defected from Labour to Reform are very socially conservative. But that’s not really related to where they live. It’s who they are.
The core group that Labour are most likely to win back are current Don’t Knows. As last time’s post and this one shows, these people aren’t enormously different from Labour loyalists. They are indeed slightly more socially conservative and slightly more economically right-wing. But they are not natural Reform voters. They are substantially closer to Labour, particularly those who previously voted for Labour.
It doesn’t matter where you live, or how politically salient your constituency is. The story is the same. Focus on voters and what they want. Put your hex-map of the battle for British politics away. This is not Risk, where you are placing all your troops in Indonesia or Kamatchka to defend at the margin.
Yesterday I looked at the comments on the BBc News website reporting this story. All the comments I read (but I didn't read all of the purported 3,000 or so) were anti-asylum seekers were and strongly in favour of the proposed legislation which didn't go far enough. Labour MPs opposing it were unpatriotic (and worse - traitors) idiots and would justly be punished in the next election.
Ho hum. This woolly minded liberal was shocked and disappointed, but I suppose I shouldn't have been. I obviously live in a bubble!
The realist asks: when will people stop flocking to the organ-grinder? Will that happen soon enough that Reform don't run riot and have loads of idiots elected in 6 months time? Or, are you only looking towards the next general election? Unfortunately, I don't see any rapid end to the Reform bubble and Labour collapse feeding voters into it and we're in for a depressing set of results in May - even massive gains for left-wing parties (we await to see if the Corbyn party will be in a position to stand candidates in May, but all the others I previously listed) won't offset the disaster that significant numbers of Reform candidates elected will do.
Yesterday I looked at the comments on the BBc News website reporting this story. All the comments I read (but I didn't read all of the purported 3,000 or so) were anti-asylum seekers were and strongly in favour of the proposed legislation which didn't go far enough.
Well, you read a selection of comments from a bunch of people who were excised enough to comment on the story.
Below the line comments on newspapers/ BBC etc. have been a sewer/ wasp trap for decades now. They were never well enough moderated anywhere to rein in brigading/ crusading/ performative bigotry so they quickly developed a toxic culture where those not of that ilk mostly avoided those spaces.
Below the line comments on newspapers/ BBC etc. have been a sewer/ wasp trap for decades now. They were never well enough moderated anywhere to rein in brigading/ crusading/ performative bigotry so they quickly developed a toxic culture where those not of that ilk mostly avoided those spaces.
But they reflect the fact that attitudes that were deemed unspeakable 20 years ago are now spoken aloud and changing wider attitudes.
Nice people now say stuff they used not to say.
I'm not entirely sure about that - because I remember when BTL commenting was a novelty all those years ago and how quickly it became dominated by antisocial or extremely blinkered and fanatical posters who used it precisely to say extreme things normal people wouldn't say in real life even back then. It was always like this.
Below The Line commenter soon became a new and deserved synonym for the green ink brigade. In fact newspaper BTL comment communities were in some ways one of the earliest examples of toxic social media - a forerunner of what Facebook and X do now.
Your wider point about attitudes is probably correct though, from experiences I know people have had in real life or of people they know coming out with stuff on Facebook but part of the reason racists and bots swarm Below The Line comments is to make it look like there are more of them than there are, to help normalise their views and discoursge others.
So I would still be cautious of rabid comments BTL but I think there are other indications that the racism people are expressing and acting on has got much worse - people of colour say so from their lived experience and police records of hate crimes are up
There's not much point fighting back in unmoderated or badly moderated spaces where you can simply be brigaded and that's part of the problem. Where and how is it effective to push back?
Current notions of 'impartiality' platform and normalise racism. The Labour party has embraced this populist racism so it's no longer useful for opposing it.
Yeah, this tactic of adopting right wing policies in the hope of staving off the far right has been tried often enough that there's now fairly clear empirical evidence that it doesn't actually work:
"They found that anti-immigration rhetoric had much more of an effect when it was made by politicians on the centre-right than when it came from those on the radical right. The views of the latter were largely shrugged off and had no effect on what the researchers called “tolerance norms” among the public. But statements from the former were more consequential; anti-immigration statements from politicians on the centre-right had an impact. “Our results,” the research team concluded, “highlight the pivotal role of mainstream politicians in enforcing or eroding democratic norms.”"
and then looking at the impact of the 'island of strangers' speech:
"Analysis of that data released recently showed that prime ministerial speeches can indeed shape public opinion. The speech increased the salience of the issue – more people said it was the most important issue facing the country – and made people overall see Labour as more right-leaning and more anti-immigration, although it had no effect on those already most opposed to immigration. It lowered evaluations of the Prime Minister and Labour’s electoral support, the latter by just over one percentage point. It appeared to have no impact on views of, or support for, Reform UK. It is not obvious this was the intended outcome."
I dont understand why the Labour leadership haven't twigged that they're sawing off the branch they're sitting on.
In Scotland the other night we were treated to Anas Sarwar the Scottish Labour leader doing smiley photo-ops with the ghouls who dedicate their lives to persecuting trans people, who were celebrating getting an award for that.
They're not just incapable of saying persecuting vulnerable minorities is wrong, they act like it's an excellent and acceptable and positive thing to do.
I hear, with surprise and trepidation that there are plans to scrap - or at least severly restrict - trial by jury.
This is scary. Have this wretched shower forgotten Magna Carta?
Did she die in vain?
I hear, with surprise and trepidation that there are plans to scrap - or at least severly restrict - trial by jury.
This is scary. Have this wretched shower forgotten Magna Carta?
Did she die in vain?
This is an area where their authoritarian instincts and their penny-pinching instincts both pull in the same direction.
I was called for jury service many moons ago but the NHS Trust I was working for got me exempted. (I believe that exemption is no longer allowed).
Mrs Vole was called for jury service a few years ago when she was still working in the NHS. She had to do 2 weeks which for her was 2 cases. Her NHS Trust continued to pay her but not everyone was so lucky. She said the whole experience was a pain in the neck and the jury was a hindrance to the judicial proceedings -the judge having to explain everything in detail and effectively guide the jury -especially as the police evidence was barn door obvious concerning the guilt of the persons being tried. She thinks it was a complete pain to the other jurors with her, eg someone having to work through the night to keep their business running and a head teacher likewise trying to keep lots of plates spinning.
Comments
They more than feinted left. They pushed left credentials to the max. Then I agree they ran to the right
And accusing doctors of wanting to strike.
Because it takes a little bit from a lot of people, more from the better off, and doesn't penalise work vs unearned income like NI increases.
As someone who gets one (as well as working), yes.
Because the economy is close to capacity and there's a need to shift real resources from private consumption to government investment.
And, her statement that "illegal immigration is tearing the UK apart" fails to actually identify the problem. Yes, there are increasing tensions about asylum seekers that could, with a little hyperbole, be described as "tearing the UK apart" (it might be more accurate to say "tearing some communities apart"). But, the problem isn't asylum seekers. The problem are those who whip up hate of migrants with lies and misrepresentation; those who describe asylum seekers as "illegal immigrants"; those who blame migrants for the problems of policies of government for a decade and a half, indeed quite a bit longer than that, that have favoured the wealthy over the majority including reduced provision of council housing, underinvestment in the health and care services, ongoing support for expensive energy sources and opposition to cheap renewables, and Brexit; those who hype every example of crimes by migrants into massive scare stories, while simultaneously ignoring the greater (in number and severity) crimes of those who have lived here for generations, and even blame migrants for crimes long before the culprit has been identified.
Yes. I agree. It also only adds to the list of things the back benchers have against Starmer. Even some Labour favouring commentators are predicting a regicide. Publicly his term has been a disaster.
There's no Laffer Curve for racism, only a long downwards spiral.
They appear to be amoral with neither backbone nor vision.
We're doomed ........
I'm with Stella Creasy MP on this.
Daft is something kids might do when they are very young.
Fair point. How about foolish, ill conceived, pointless and silly?
The second part is Ms Creasy's quote (Labour MP) that I was alluding to, which is that it is performative cruety.
It is both.
One of my great frustrations with the conversation about refugees is the discussion of 'pull factors.' Thr truth is that the 'push factors' are far more important and that there are really only two actual 'pull factors:'
1. The English language
2. Familial ties / friendships / community etc.
The only way to fix 1. would be to go back in time and not make an Empire. Never mind all the massive benefits to the UK that English is the international language. The only way to fix 2. is to never accept anyone ever.
Which is why anything aimed at reducing asylum claims by focusing on pull factors is just stupid.
This is why I am no longer a party member.
AFZ
Anglican bishop shaken ‘to the core’ by home secretary’s asylum seeker comments
Bishop of Edmonton says people coming to UK are being ‘scapegoated’ for years of policy failures
Centre-left tipped to lose Copenhagen for first time in electoral history
Political rivals say PM’s divisive politics have encouraged voters to ditch the Social Democrats for the far right
Yeah, this tactic of adopting right wing policies in the hope of staving off the far right has been tried often enough that there's now fairly clear empirical evidence that it doesn't actually work:
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/political-science-research-and-methods/article/does-accommodation-work-mainstream-party-strategies-and-the-success-of-radical-right-parties/5C3476FCD26B188C7399ADD920D71770
This is behind a paywall from Stephen Bush at the FT but I think he nails how bad their current approach is - taking on Shabana Mahmood's dangerously misguided contentions
https://www.ft.com/content/37b00112-6e60-4a8a-979a-7c2aabb9b29a
[ Hosts - are you wanting this thread under dual rules or do you want discussion of Labour racism moved to Epiphanies?]
That assumes that voters will be attracted to Labour over their anti-refugee position. But maybe it will attract voters to Farage. Why buy the monkey when you can have the organ-grinder?
Yeah. No-one was ever placated by "just racist enough".
For Labour, their shift to the right to try and counter Reform will benefit parties to the left (LibDems, Greens, Corbyn's yet-unnamed party if they get going, SNP and PC in Scotland and Wales) picking up traditional Labour voters who do not like right wing policies from the Labour Party, and parties to the right (Reform and Conservatives) who find their political opponents in Labour reproducing and validating their policies. The only losers from the strategy would appear to be the Labour Party who appear to be heading for electoral disaster in coming elections - polling in Scotland is beginning to suggest Labour could fall behind Greens and LibDems, in less than 30 years of the Scottish Parliament falling from the biggest party in Scotland to 4th or 5th place.
The political scientist Ben Ansell has reproduced results but coming from a different direction, namely looking at the attitudes of Labour voters in both core and marginal constituencies:
https://benansell.substack.com/p/labour-at-the-margin
Ho hum. This woolly minded liberal was shocked and disappointed, but I suppose I shouldn't have been. I obviously live in a bubble!
Well, you read a selection of comments from a bunch of people who were excised enough to comment on the story.
But they reflect the fact that attitudes that were deemed unspeakable 20 years ago are now spoken aloud and changing wider attitudes.
Nice people now say stuff they used not to say.
Below The Line commenter soon became a new and deserved synonym for the green ink brigade. In fact newspaper BTL comment communities were in some ways one of the earliest examples of toxic social media - a forerunner of what Facebook and X do now.
Your wider point about attitudes is probably correct though, from experiences I know people have had in real life or of people they know coming out with stuff on Facebook but part of the reason racists and bots swarm Below The Line comments is to make it look like there are more of them than there are, to help normalise their views and discoursge others.
So I would still be cautious of rabid comments BTL but I think there are other indications that the racism people are expressing and acting on has got much worse - people of colour say so from their lived experience and police records of hate crimes are up
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/nov/08/midlands-attacks-walsall-sikh-womens-daily-lives
There's not much point fighting back in unmoderated or badly moderated spaces where you can simply be brigaded and that's part of the problem. Where and how is it effective to push back?
Current notions of 'impartiality' platform and normalise racism. The Labour party has embraced this populist racism so it's no longer useful for opposing it.
Just to build on this a little, via https://www.politicshome.com/opinion/article/professor-see-now-island-strangers
Regarding a study on German politics:
"They found that anti-immigration rhetoric had much more of an effect when it was made by politicians on the centre-right than when it came from those on the radical right. The views of the latter were largely shrugged off and had no effect on what the researchers called “tolerance norms” among the public. But statements from the former were more consequential; anti-immigration statements from politicians on the centre-right had an impact. “Our results,” the research team concluded, “highlight the pivotal role of mainstream politicians in enforcing or eroding democratic norms.”"
and then looking at the impact of the 'island of strangers' speech:
"Analysis of that data released recently showed that prime ministerial speeches can indeed shape public opinion. The speech increased the salience of the issue – more people said it was the most important issue facing the country – and made people overall see Labour as more right-leaning and more anti-immigration, although it had no effect on those already most opposed to immigration. It lowered evaluations of the Prime Minister and Labour’s electoral support, the latter by just over one percentage point. It appeared to have no impact on views of, or support for, Reform UK. It is not obvious this was the intended outcome."
The ‘Danish model’ is the darling of centre-left parties like Labour. The problem is, it doesn’t even work in Denmark
I dont understand why the Labour leadership haven't twigged that they're sawing off the branch they're sitting on.
In Scotland the other night we were treated to Anas Sarwar the Scottish Labour leader doing smiley photo-ops with the ghouls who dedicate their lives to persecuting trans people, who were celebrating getting an award for that.
They're not just incapable of saying persecuting vulnerable minorities is wrong, they act like it's an excellent and acceptable and positive thing to do.
This is scary. Have this wretched shower forgotten Magna Carta?
Did she die in vain?
This is an area where their authoritarian instincts and their penny-pinching instincts both pull in the same direction.
Mrs Vole was called for jury service a few years ago when she was still working in the NHS. She had to do 2 weeks which for her was 2 cases. Her NHS Trust continued to pay her but not everyone was so lucky. She said the whole experience was a pain in the neck and the jury was a hindrance to the judicial proceedings -the judge having to explain everything in detail and effectively guide the jury -especially as the police evidence was barn door obvious concerning the guilt of the persons being tried. She thinks it was a complete pain to the other jurors with her, eg someone having to work through the night to keep their business running and a head teacher likewise trying to keep lots of plates spinning.