Quite. There has historically been less solidarity and collegiate working on the left than the right which is quite odd, given the right ar supposed to not tolerate difference so much. The right works like the Church of England - obviously the institution is nonsense and was set up out of convenience, but the overarching philosophy has just enough glue to tie people together so everyone feels they are getting enough of what they need. That is probably poorly expressed but you get the gist.
I blame Osborne myself - firstly for austerity, but then for a Tory campaign that knocked out the LibDems and removed the excuse Cameron was going to use to avoid the referendum.
Not saying Osborne caused Brexit deliberately but I believe actions he took for other reasons were very instrumental in causing it. And, in a valiant attempt to drag the thread back on topic, that appeasement of Farage and his ilk from then onwards indirectly led to Reform threatening the continued existence of the Tories as a significant force.
I don't think Sadiq Khan was an immediate influence on these people's views, but I certainly think having a Muslim mayor of a progressive city as diverse as London certainly reinforces them. Few things could be worse in the eyes of a nationalist. I have my own reservations about him as an individual but I can't exactly say he's been terrible for London.I live in a seaside area (Thanet) which had the first UKIP council in the UK and where Farage lost in the general election in 2015 (first time I had voted Tory)
By then I had been here about eight years. I had retired and was volunteering in an advice bureau. Certainly a lot of people had moved down from South and East London (indeed I did) and the immigrant population were mostly Eastern Europeans. As with a previous poster they did the lower paid jobs - care, hospitality, fruit and vegetable picking
I can say that there was an amount of hostility towards the Eastern Europeans then. We had it expressed to us in the advice bureau - sometimes based on apocryphal stories. IIRC Khan became mayor in 2016 so, in this instance anyway, I don't believe that the stories about what London is like under his rule influence(d) these folks views. They were there already although I guess it maybe reinforces them
Fwiw the UKIP council was awful - fair to say that we have had bad Tory and Labour administrations too.
The right wing are very well organised and generally don't care about how right you lean as long as they believe you're on their team. Meanwhile two lefties might walk into a bar with three split factions walking out by the end of the night. Much as I welcome the potential for a Reform-Restore rivalry splitting the nationalist vote it's not something I've typically observed in my lifetime. The Tories were always more organised in their messaging than Labour during elections.
I suggest you read Tim Shipman’s account - to call the various factions dysfunctional is to suggest they were able to work together.
I Suspect that the 5m will be the least of his worries, already Reforms finances are under scrutiny both him and Tice, are under investigation, over where and from whom their funds originated from,
That's got to be the most likely outcome surely? I do think it will be interesting to see how Count Binface does as if he gets 20% or so of the vote that's going to be quite amusing. Farage faced with an open field with his main opponent being a man who wears a plastic bin on his head and he only manages 60/70% of the vote?
Delete ‘establishment’ and insert ‘rules’.
"I, Nigel Farage, stands here as your voice, against the representatives of the Establishment - a man with a bin on his head, three self proclaimed loonies and Laurence Fox"
I wonder if he thinks it puts him in a better place when it comes to taking the rap for failing to declare his £5m present and whatever else comes to the surface. He will no doubt say that calling another byelection would be a waste of time and money because the people have already spoken.
I have a relative in Clacton who would quite likely tear any down and burn them. He says loudly, often, in public what a crook Farage is, and never has any trouble. A bloke in a pub bought him a drink because he said he'd be voting for Binface.
If I were one of those homeowners and if they had the nerve to do that while I was at home to see them at it, I'd tear them right back down and throw them into a bonfire right in front of those meat-heads; see if they dare try and stop me from exercising my rights as a homeowner in disposing of unwanted crap in my garden that was put up without my permission. They'd no doubt throw a fit if I put, say, a Binface sign in their garden.
It's for the best. If possible (I suspect it isn't), go no-contact with such a person in the workplace for the sake of your sanity. Apart from anything else, I personally wouldn't be able to bite my tounge sufficently if he started to go off on one.
The ‘next one’ still has two hurdles - the standard committees conclusions and, if it becomes eligible to occur, a recall petition that reaches the threshold.
There's also the issue that this particular stunt has not gone down well in his constituency. The Tories could try fielding the previously MP Giles Watling again, who was reportedly popular in the area, however he is 73 so would probably only be a stop-gap for the remainder of the parliament.
Bot. A modern buzz word. Is that what people call someone to avoid admitting a point is hard to counter. Straight from the Reddit Dictionary. I find it absolutely incredible that a lot of people cannot understand why Reform is so popular. If so many people are in favour of Reform, why is it so hard to accept that people are fed up of the status quo. And for saying that, I am surely a bot to someone who disagrees.
A "bot" is a computer program that is designed to either trawl through websites to extract information, or one that is designed to spam bulletin boards and social media with adverts or politics.
You must surely know that an Internet bot is a software application that runs automated tasks over the Internet, including posting politically biased messages on web forums. The BBC traced one, 'GenZBloomer', which posted hundreds of messages containing political or divisive content, or reposting the same repetitive phrases. Often, the same bots had posted messages about US politics, sports, animal cruelty, COVID-19 conspiracy theories, or posts opposing Ukraine and supporting Russia, before switching to Reform UK. I'm fairly sure you are a real person, but I still very much disagree with you. I see Reform are slipping badly in the polls, so your 'so many people' is now around 23% (less than a quarter) in some polls, with Labour now slightly ahead.
I walked from Harwich International to Clacton-on-Sea today right through the heart of the constituency (17.5 miles if anyone cares). Great Oakley was particularly Faragist - ten garden posters/wall displays with "SEND THEM A MESSAGE" prominent - but his physog stared back at me from all quarters of the Tendring peninsula. Yet everyone I met en route was friendly and welcoming, from the dog walkers to the shopkeepers to the beach dwellers. I guess you can never judge a book by the cover, and hope that come Thursday enough people locally choose to send him a message too.
