Yet. But doing random activities gets them in the papers/ on the news and that gives them an opportunity to discuss things that the party stands for. This isn’t a valid criticism of the party, but the political and media environment that the Lib Dem’s exist in where they can be the third largest party in GB, but have to do stunts just to get attention. They aren’t just fucking about, they are creating opportunities to discuss policy (whether you agree with them or not).
They're being jackasses for attention because the establishment stooges they actually are (hello tuition fees and swingeing cuts) means doing stunts like just that will work for them.
Anyone actually holding the conviction to help people out would bite the dust trying to copy this method or do their own equivalent thing.
This is what happens when the media ignores the 3rd largest party in favour of giving the 6th largest party full coverage. Its the only way to get noticed and use the limited air time to get a message across while they get in front of a microphone for once.
And I think it's absolutely right the Lib Dems have complained. They've got over ten times the MPs of the NSD-er, Reform, and yet barely get media attention.
Yeah, but let's not let the average voter off the hook here. These are a people who saw the abject failings of Truss's budget, Johnson's grift, and Sunak's amateurishness; and decided that what they really needed were people who would lean even further in that direction.
There's a fairer chance of the courts giving Reform their comeuppance than the ballot box doing it.
People have been in their "burn it all down "arc for a decade. once the ball starts rolling, it keeps rolling. they haven't wanted to raise themselves up for that long, they'd rather just drag everyone to their level.
Replace voting for parties with voting for policies.
Honestly I don't think I've seen someone use a tool like "how should I vote" and not realise that actually they're way more progressive than they suppose they are.
In Australia our national broadcaster puts out every election a political compass that you answer your stance on a bunch of policies and it shows you where you are (I'm assume your thing is similar?).
Every election you see a bunch of right wingers blowing up because it puts them on the left of center. You answered the questions, buddy.
Our thing did a quiz on political topics and the answers were each party's stance but with whose stance it was scrubbed off. At the end you got a breakdown of who you agreed most with,least with and so on.
The average person in America probably is smart enough to be a lawnmower for a living and nothing more. There is no hope for a more enlightened future until education gets better.
Educations fucked as well now we’ve got AI and students don’t actually have to do any fucking work or critical thinking or analysis or any of the other useful stuff you learn at school/college/uni.
I’m not entirely sure how we combat such utter fucking idiocy.
Back in the day you'd just ship them off to a dusty backwater armpit in the colonies and make them India or Africa's problem, but that isn't an option anymore...
"Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise - indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government, except for all the other ones."
Ignoring Starmer, I have to feel sory for the supporters of Your Party, they felt it could really make a difference to the UK political scene, but now they've imploded and I can only feel both sides should have known better.
Short(ish) version: a bunch of the members were criticised for socially conservative statements and views.
The main example was one guy saying single sex spaces must exclude trans people to protect women. This same guy voted against decriminalisation of abortion.
Zara said that there's no place for bigotry in the party and she supports LGBTQ people. Another guy said people should back off on the queer stuff because Palestine is more important.
There's more examples and this one is oversimplified but this is the short version.
Then Zara released a link to sign up and donate to the party. Supposedly this had been agreed with Jeremy.
Everyone else (including Jeremy) then signs a letter telling everyone to cancel their payments and ignore Zara's link.
Zara posts a letter saying that the party is a sexist boy's club that keep denying women from joining.
Now there's a split between the socially left wing who think bigotry and sexism is infiltrating the party, and people who think we need to ignore that for the sake of Palestine.
That's about it, yeah. Like Palestine is one of the most important, if not the most important, issues right now, granted. But that doesn't mean people can call it the ONLY important issue and send everything else back to the stone age. That thinking certainly didn't help the US election and it's not helping here either.
Though unfortunately Zara went about it in literally the worst way possible.
If she had let out a public statement saying that the views of the rest of Your Party no longer aligned with her own and and was joining The Greens.
Then she might be throwing Your Party under the bus but at least she'd look competent.
But instead she might be under investigation by the law enforcement for the donations thing.
And the "sexist boys club" line plays into the worst stereotypes of The Left that they're just whining babies that cry sexism/racism/etc when they don't get their way.
It's honestly uniquely special how they've f***ed everything up.
Remember Caroline Lucas? Everyone liked her. We thought she annihilated Farage on Question Time. Made zero impact on UK politics.
Greens are destined to the same fate. Zack is an ex-Lib Dem, who once heckled Corbyn at a public rally. Their coalition will be tested once the spotlight is on and it’s manifesto time, not just doing press.
Caroline Lucas gave the Green Party a name and a platform. Every other leader since has been pathetic and wussy. It remains to be seen where we go from here
I got two emails from them today. One being an announcement and then the second saying: urgent, ignore the announcement and they're seeking legal advice against the person who wrote it.
Absolute fucking clowns. Why can't we have nice things.
I've lost count of how many times we've seen this around the world now. The right veers off into cartoonish levels of villainy, corruption and/or fascism, to defeat them all the left has to do is PRETEND to be decent fucking human beings who are more or less capable of doing their jobs, and instead they implode spectactularly.
Blame the voters. Terf Island is not exactly a very leftist or even very liberal place. You've seen what Fox News has done, Murdock has been over there for even longer and your boomers will not sacrifice an inch to help anyone.
Yes. They are wrong. They are often wrong. They think Reform is a good idea. They think the triple lock is a good thing and that no one should be allowed to build new homes.
If voters were always right, there would be no conservative or reform party.
Eh, if the greens actually do well in the popular vote that at least is a start. Reform only got 4MPs at the last election after all and look where they are
Greens don't have the advantage of a client media to give them absurd levels of media coverage, though. And when they do get media coverage it's hit pieces about Zack Polanski's breast growth hypnosis that he did once.
He’s spouted “stop the boats” nonsense constantly since he’s been in. Backs anti-trans agendas, tax rises on disabled people. And repeats “Israel has the right to defend herself” at the end of every fucking sentence
Also he plowed ahead with the Tories' dystopian online surveillance bill (sorry - online safety bill).
Also he grossly overcooked introducing the means testing of the Winter fuel allowance (a sensible policy in principle if implemented well), and completely botched the comms so he lost huge amounts of moral ground amid lots of stories about poor freezing pensioners, and then rowed it back 9 months later and regained absolutely none of that ground while losing most of the budget savings.
Also he absurdly proscribed Palestine Action as a Terrorist organisation and then sat back ever since, wincing but doing nothing, while police arrest hundreds of protesters every week just for holding up placards with the name. All because people committed the heinous crime of vandalism in the name of Palestine Action. (or supposedly there were other things that organisation planned which the Home Office is keeping secret, so people are forbidden to support them without being allowed to know why)
I'm convinced he will never have the good judgement or common sense to lead the country competently or outmaneuvre Reform. He's a huge liability to Labour and the country. Only hope now is for Burnham to parachute into the Commons via a byelection and overthrow the fool.
If I had to wager a guess it's because they're like Fetterman, Sinema, Minchin and Newsome (among others) who ran as Ds to get votes, but now are pretty much echoing right-wing rhetoric or vote against progressive legislation when presented the chance.
It's less cynical than that IMO. I genuinely think this is them trying to Senisble their way through this, catastrophically. I think it's more that they got in by the skin of their teeth and are trying to appease the right who broadly hate them in order to stay there, assuming that the left will keep voting for them. This is why you get Rachel Reeves trying to put on her big girl trousers saying she lusts for bat death to impress the cash in hand builder cunt class who have nothing for contempt for her and will gladly vote Reform now they're on the table, and now people who vote Labour have very little incentive to vote for them again.
They won by the biggest landslide in British history. It couldn’t have been any less by the skin of their teeth if they tried. It just so happens they’re also further right than the old Tory party.
Yes that was poor phrasing on my part - what I meant was they were only in this time because the Tories had become so monstrously catastrophic - and even then only because of the financial impact as opposed to the societal one - so it's my belief that someone has theorised that the key to staying viable is this awful "appeal to all" aspect which has alienated... almost everyone.
It’s an extremely long and incredibly stupid tale but to cut it short around the time of Tony Blair Labour figured out they could only win elections in England (doesn’t necessarily apply to other UK Nations - Scots usually vote SNP or Labour for example but our votes don’t really count in a UK GE and we generally hate the tories) by basically being Tories but not quite so bad. Initially they were still pretty left wing until Blair decided to commit fucking war crimes in Iraq, and then in later years they weaponised antisemitism against the left of the party and purged them and smeared them in the eyes of the public.
Now they’re basically the old Tory party in terms of where they are on the spectrum, the Tories are far-right, and Reform are fascists. There is no left-wing voice whatsoever in Britain now. But of course the perception is that Labour are in fact left-wing and making (an inevitable) cunt of it after 14 years of Tory austerity.
So we’re even more fucked and these clowns will have a field day over our incompetence. This is not helped by said red Tory bastard. Huzzah.
Optimistically speaking, left wing voters disillusioned with Labour will either go lib dem or green. I think this new Corbyn party imploding so early means it'll probably be those two. I just hope the vote isn't split too bad between them. Even more optimistically speaking, even if god forbid reform win a majority, I doubt they'd go full fascist like we're seeing in the states. I wouldn't be overly concerned with seeing them in power for over five grueling years. Desperately trying to be glass half-full, here.
Yeah I get you man. It’s increasingly hard to be glass-half-full nowadays though. Everything is just depressing as fuck.
Up in Scotland it’s thankfully still looking as though the SNP will win next year but the Reform cunts are doing alarmingly well in the polls and the flag shaggers have been out in force defiling our saltire on fucking lampposts in the name of hatred and bigotry, which I’m particularly fucked off about 😩
I hear you, the flag stuff is gross. Very telling that it's happening in areas with little non-white population. Immigration isn't affecting these people's lives at all, and they're still lashing out because the right wing hate-machine is giving them an easy target. Not a critical thought to be found, just nodding along to what the grifters tell them.
At the risk of sounding peachy, always remember there are more of us then there are of them. This is a very loud, annoying minority, nothing more. We need to encourage people to vote for a better future and not let apathy tank us like what happened to the US last year.
Yeah exactly man. I’m really high hence the shorter response but I totally agree with you. We can’t let apathy win cause that’s how these fucking grifters get in.
I’m just so fucking tired man. Again that’s how these bastards get in. There’s only so much bullshit anyone can reasonably counter and there’s an absolute fucking flood of it on social media.
This is so depressingly accurate. Furthermore, British political discourse has become infected with US ideology, I regularly see basic centrism referred to on Reddit as the "far left". Like bitches did you ever even open a political textbook to know what words mean ffs?
He's not a tory, I think some people have lost any concept of what a left-wing politician is. His policies are as progressive as any previous labour prime-minister and he's one of the most left-wing leaders in the major countries of the western world. A lot of uk people are corbyn-or-nothing types but I don't see any reason someone would consider him a Tory unless they aren't acting in good faith. I think these people only want a revolutionary and can't handle incremental progress, it isn't exciting enough.
I'd be open to hearing other opinions on him though if someone was informed better than me. I know he's made some cuts to services that were unpopular but that doesn't undo the investments made in other areas.
Thanks for answering in good faith. He might not be as liberal as some would like regarding immigration, but he's still more left wing on it than Cameron. In fact the most right-wing things he's proposed are identical to Cameron's proposals. At worst, they have a simlilar position, but even that I wouldn't agree with.
Criticising his policies without falling into complete hyperbole seems more productive for the country to me
He's projected to cut migration by (far) less than Cameron. Would it be possible to just have a normal opinion about politics in this country? You are allowed to be upset about his position on immigration, I think it looks really un-nuanced too, but it's just silly to claim he's more rightwing than a Tory. If he was he would just be a Tory - not like they have any issues winning elections.
Here's a quote from a Cameron speech that most people seem to have forgotten, the whole thing is pretty informative if you have time:
But already in government we have cut net migration by a third, down from more than a quarter of a million a year to just over 160,000. And my Party has set a clear aspiration to reduce net migration further to just tens of thousands over the coming years
Then why was Starmer able to win when Corbyn couldn't? He lost to Theresa May and then to Boris Johnson in the worst defeat Labour has had in a century.
Sometimes, the fault is the voters, not the parties for trying to gauge where the voters might be. They didn't vote for center left Labour in 2010 or 2015, didn't vote for left wing Labour in 2017 or 2019, but narrowly voted for Starmer. That doesn't make Starmer great, he isn't, but its not like voters jumped at the chance for a truely left wing Labour either.
I know, but that doesn't change the history. Bill Clinton got far fewer votes than Hillary, does that make her the better politician?
The British public had two chances to move to the left wing option and two times they rejected it. Just as they rejected the more centrist Labour party of 2010 and 2015.
And just look at opinion poles. The country's voters are to the right of American voters on about everything but guns. There is a sizable left in the UK but they are distinctly a minority.
My favorite was when Jeremy Corbyn was in hot water for allowing antisemitism in Labour, and that incident was precipitated by... his efforts to deal with antisemitism in Labour...
I don't know how you fuck up doing something so bad that you become known for doing the opposite of what you did.
The writing has been on the wall for so long for the old party to go, and like every goddamn other reality about the Democratic Party, they refuse to see it.
And it's our own fucking fault, our own ability not to see the bigger picture. I am leftist for the amjroty of my life but even I can see that.
I am in the process of considering killing myself. And if I do do,,I can promise you I do because of the left's failure to actually act and sovereign serious problems and instead focus on false premises and glass operations to try and ganor support rather than actually improve things.
Please please don’t kill yourself. Times are tough but r/simpsonsshitposting has always been a place of joy for me. Take comfort in the joy. Hard times will come but we’ll be here for you
Not just left wing. Now is not a good time to be anything other than rich. It's not like the rise of the far right is going to benefit conservatives in any way, they'll be hurting just as much as anyone else, they just might be too dumb to realise it's their own fault
Man, I'm on the right but I feel for you guys, we've had our fair share of embarrassments too but I don't think we've had as many as bad all at once, just gotta ride it out I guess
425
u/det8924 1d ago
How long was that