UK Politics

3090 readers

132 users here now

General Discussion for politics in the UK.
Please don't post to both !uk_politics@feddit.uk and !unitedkingdom@feddit.uk .
Pick the most appropriate, and put it there.

Posts should be related to UK-centric politics, and should be either a link to a reputable news source for news, or a text post on this community.

Opinion pieces are also allowed, provided they are not misleading/misrepresented/drivel, and have proper sources.

If you think "reputable news source" needs some definition, by all means start a meta thread. (These things should be publicly discussed)

Posts should be manually submitted, not by bot. Link titles should not be editorialised.

Disappointing comments will generally be left to fester in ratio, outright horrible comments will be removed.
Message the mods if you feel something really should be removed, or if a user seems to have a pattern of awful comments.

!ukpolitics@lemm.ee appears to have vanished! We can still see cached content from this link, but goodbye I guess! :'(

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

tom@feddit.uk

GreatAlbatross@feddit.uk

flamingos@feddit.uk

I'm thinking that noticing the many similarities between Labour and the Tories misses the most important thing, the fringes. (lemmy.world)

submitted 6 months ago by essell@lemmy.world to c/uk_politics@feddit.uk

7 comments fedilink hide all child comments

To elaborate...

The UK has always favoured centrist governments, when the Conservatives get too nasty they're unpopular, Labour only wins when they do Thatcherism-Light, etc.

We now have a choice between a relatively moderate conservative prime minister, who is admittedly being dragged to the right by his party and others, and a relatively moderate labour leader who has purged the extremism from his party to pursue a centre left agenda.

In both cases, what I see are two people who believe in principles, compromise them for politics sake, who are fundamentally in favour of the status quo rather than revolution and prefer to win through being seen as competent.

Fine, this has been the case most of my life. It's why I've been relaxed about politics. Whatever happens, things will largely stay the same with small incremental changes.

The difference now is about the fringes. Not a day goes by recently without a headline grabbing policy coming out of the government press machine making a virtue out of being a bunch of ****s.

The ridiculous culture war stuff, the politicisation of fear and anger. Pointless, ineffective policies that are intended to win a few votes regardless of the harm they cause. Sickening stuff a lot of the time, born out of selfishness of behalf of those in power to try and keep that power and get as much as they can for themselves. It feels like they be the ones looting the Titanic as it sank.

So whilst Labour are not likely to usher in a revolution, a golden age or fix things overnight. I'll take centrist middle aged dad running the country if it means an end to this nonsense. An end to a government attacking it's own citizens in the name of defending the people.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] wewbull@feddit.uk 8 points 6 months ago (2 children)

When you're traveling in the wrong direction you need to move the steering wheel and correct course.

If labour comes in and just tweak things it won't really make a lot of difference. The direction of travel in the country is the wrong way and maintaining the course that the Tories set isn't a solution. Labour need to steer in the other direction and work to undo a lot of the things the Tories have done.

Reverse the slow creep of NHS privatisation.
Reverse the immigration shit show.
Reverse the enablement of corruption.
Reverse the loss of public trust in regulators, and stop letting them be funded by industry.
...and the one that they really don't want to get a grip of, reverse the damage to our relationship with the EU.

After 14 years of Tory messing with stuff, there should be a stack of action items on day 1 to halt the damage. A bonfire of legislation. The fact that they don't have a plan like this worries me immensely.

[–] essell@lemmy.world 4 points 6 months ago

I'd love to see those things.

I'm going to maintain hope. Reason being that no one except me will be helped or harmed by whether I choose worry or hope.

[–] Tagger@lemmy.world 3 points 6 months ago

I would argue that I'd rather straighten the car then continue turning in the direction we're currently going.