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Comment by weevil | Hacker News Reader

> social equality ego theme du jour

Labour actively avoid doing anything the Tories can spin to weaponise the electorate against them. They don't feel bold enough to reverse anything the Tories have done, because the Tories will spin it as Labour taking away our freedoms or charging us too much tax whatever nonsense.

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> Labour actively avoid doing anything the Tories can spin to weaponise the electorate against them

Except on immigration, where the roles are reversed [1]. That's why immigration to the UK increased post-Brexit, despite the referendum being an expression of anti-immigration sentiment [2].

[1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/immigration/10055613...

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/25/world/europe/uk-migration...

Easier to import supportive voters than create them.

Immigrants don't get to vote for MPs until they've become citizens[0], that takes ages and is really expensive[1].

[0] https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-...

[1] https://www.gov.uk/apply-citizenship-indefinite-leave-to-rem... for the citizenship itself, plus double-paying for the NHS in the meantime: https://www.gov.uk/healthcare-immigration-application/how-mu...

Their kids will get to vote though

They take even longer to any electoral payoff (even if it's positive), both because of the legal minimum age and because younger people tend to participate less in elections.

No doubt that'd be playing the long game.

I see nobody in the Labour or Tory parties who could play that kind of long game, and seldom few who even think past the next election.

They don't have to physically vote. They just give their ballot slip to a "Community Leader" and he fills them all in for the candidate. See Tower Hamlets as an example.

The only irregularities I know about in Tower Hamlets were (1) illegal at the time, (2) caught, (3) not of a large enough scale to change the result, and (4) were cited as a reason for the change of law forcing all voters to present photo ID at the booth[0].

Also: What ballot slips? You don't get a ballot slip if you're not on the electoral register, and that only happens at voting age. Waiting for migrant's unborn kids to reach that age will always take longer than waiting for their parents, who, again, don't start off able to vote as soon as they arrive.

[0] this in turn was condemned as a way to suppress votes from various communities (because e.g. some of the ID was allowed if you were a pensioner, but the identical equivalent ID for students wasn't).

If your own policies are so easily weaponized against you then maybe your policies aren't very good. Is it so hard to believe that regular voters might have ideological reasons for preferring a smaller, less intrusive government that imposes lower taxes?

And blaming a hostile media is entirely too facile. Other politicians and parties have managed to win despite such obstacles by crafting messages that actually inspire voters.

Like brexit right

whether that was the right choice will be seen in a 20 year timespan, given how soviet-like the direction EU has started taking looks like they might end up winners in this equation.

> given how soviet-like the direction EU has started taking looks

Then they should have left in twenty years. Britain has managed one of the more drastic peacetime reductions in wealth, influence and stability of any rich country post WWII.

That's objectively false.

The collapse of the USSR to Russia et al might count as a "rich" country doing worse. Can you name any others? Now I think about it, I suppose the loss of the British Empire itself might be one… after all, that was what got it excited to join the European project in the first place, though given national attitudes I'm sure the fact that the French boycotted it initially probably also helped sell the idea.

> Is it so hard to believe that regular voters might have ideological reasons for preferring a smaller, less intrusive government that imposes lower taxes?

Those wanting a "smaller, less intrusive government" should certainly avoid the Conservatives, then; given this government's authoritarian agenda has included:

- Criminalised being noisy (Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act)

- Authorised police to stop and search without suspicion, and the banning of individuals from protesting (Public Order Act)

- Overruled a devolved government (an unprecedented action), specifically to intrude on the personal freedom of Scottish citizens.

- Violated rights (of citizens and non-citizens) so often that they're considering scrapping the Human Rights Act, and withdrawing from international rights bodies.

Those wanting "lower taxes" presumably didn't want this government to raise National Insurance (breaking a specific manifesto promise not to), or their sharp upward trend in most taxes (other than stamp duty and fuel duty; both nominally and as a percentage of GDP) https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/hmrc-tax-and-nics-r...

We're seeing the same in the US. I wonder the where this rise in authoritarianism will lead, especially in the current timeframe where it's so easy to push out misinformation to win narratives and robotic armies you can control with a small team are right around the corner.

Pretty soon revolutions will be impossible and the masses will be slaves to whatever conditions the rulers desire.

Dark times are nigh.

Once there was another republic and empire. It also had a Senate, the original one. In this republic populism became also strong, there were even civil wars. Later strong army leaders removed the republic (and then reinstated it on paper). It was not necessarily a dark time for their minions (Pax Augusta). In the end the empire broke down in the west. Much later also in the east, but some say it lives on in the Russian empire (for example Putin). Often enough in history though if a society moved fast in one direction, it would regress to the mean. We'll see.

The difference is the ability to command an army of robots and not having to rely on humans with free with that can turn against you. The (increasingly) mass surveillance society we have combined with robot armies that can police you, enforce whatever rules they want, and oppress you will be imo an unstoppable force. Especially when combined with misinformation controlling the narrative and making half the population thinking there's nothing wrong with any of it.

The saying is in General Elections that Parties don't win them, Governments lose them.

That being the case, sitting back and doing very little could be a sensible strategy.

It's not the Tories alone but the mainstream media that they are in bed with, which has an overwhelmingly right wing/neoliberal bias. The stories of Rupert Murdoch's influence on our politics are not exaggerated.

The last time Labour secured an election victory on the back of a Tory government was when Tony Blair got into bed with the media and played hard ball with PR and spin, all the way back in 1997.

I've no idea what Starmer's strategy is but it seems to be successfully keeping the media's attention on the current government's incompetence.

Murdoch is still alive?

His network of cronies very much is, from Rebekah Brooks to Piers Morgan. They still pull in the same direction.

He is busy at this time of year.

The good die young (see also: Henry Kissinger).

The media Tory relationship is very understated.

The media is very much the reason most of the British electorate will still vote Conservatives, even after years of scandals.

"Everyone who doesn't vote like me has been taken in by the media. Only people who agree with me are smart enough to see through it."

Come on. Even the BBC, which the Tories always say is against them, openly called Jeremy Corbyn "unelectable", right after he won the vote for party leadership. And those statements went unchallenged, while much smaller statements against Theresa May or Boris Johnson were vehemently debated and shouted down.

Where do you think the BBC stands on Brexit, Immigration, Israel etc? Their view doesn't align with that of the Tories, that's for sure.

I don't think Sunak is incompetent, I just think he has his own agenda to enrich himself and his cronies at the expense of the country.

Just look at how Shell and BP got new oil licenses right after they signed massive outsourcing contracts with Infosys, his in-laws business.

Or the way that Tory party donors made millions inflating the prices of PPE purchase during the Covid crisis. Tory peer Baroness Mone still hasn't faced any legal sanction or paid back £30M she initially said wasn't resting in her offshore bank account.

That whole Infosys thing stinks. I'm sure that's why they made the changes to IR35 ultimately killing a lot of Infosys's competition.

I contend that Sunak is incompetent in his duty to the country. He is not fit for leadership.

You support that point. His interests don’t serve the country, they serve his interests. By definition that makes him a corrupt or otherwise incompetent leader of the UK.

>>which has an overwhelmingly right wing/neoliberal bias

Apart from small pieces of media like the Guardian and the BBC which you have forgotten about.

Starmer's strategy is to just be plain boring. The Tories have made such a mess all he needs to do is not bring any attention on himself or the party and they pretty much win by default. He knows full well that the media in this country will use anything they possibly can to nail him and the Labour party in general, so he's being as boring as he possibly can. Once Labour are in power you'll see some actual policies that the right wing media will attack relentlessly but at that point he's got at least five years, with likely a sizeable majority, to do whatever he wants. And so long as the country feels better in six years time than it does now he's probably got a very good chance of winning the following election as well. The Tories have really fucked up bad this cycle, I reckon it'll be at minimum two election cycles until they're even considered again. With the current poll numbers they may even be relegated into being the third party. There is one major wildcard in the room though which is the potential for a Nato country to get dragged into war (e.g WW3 breaks out) in which case who fucking knows what will happen.

> they may even be relegated into being the third party

This would be hilarious, especially given that second place almost certainly won't be the LibDems given how many people still hate them.

The idea of the SNP being His Majesty's Most Loyal Opposition tickles my fancy almost as much as the fact that religions of the leaders of the SNP and the Conservative Party meant that we've now had a Hindu and a Muslim seriously discussing the possibility of a partition of the United Kingdom.

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