But that's the point - before they have gotten in and failed, people will believe it's true. Deeply worrying.
Wow, Labour are responsible for all that in the 11 months they’ve been in. They really have been busy haven’t they. I mean, we should’ve given the Tories another 14 years perhaps because no-one seems to remember the first 14 years.
I think overall that may be true, but the problem they have is that they seem to be losing to Reform in their actual 'safe' heartlands. In my area the Winter fuel allowance removal has gone down like a lead balloon, I know one of our local Labour suppporters well, he told me that the doorknocking went badly due to very negative reactions on the doorstep, so badly they stopped doing it. The other issue that came up as a major issue was ( surprisingly to me) Net Zero...it's normal for local MP's to turn out to support their Council candidates, apparently the candidates requested that Ed Miliband not visit the area, and he didn't. The strange thing is that a right wing party has never won a seat here, or picked up more than a fringe vote in my lifetime, and yet Reform won easily with Labour finishing third. Reform had no local policies at all, and all their candidates came from out of town .It seems like national issues took precedence over the multitude of local issues.
The Labour Party should be spinning a genuine narrative about what the real reasons are for economic decline and insecurity but under Starmer they're not doing that at all because they have no vision beyond maintaining the status quo they inherited from the Tories. They are trying, in effect, to manage the same broken system more efficiently than the Tories rather than explaining why there is massive inequality and explaining that this, not immigration, is the root cause of peoples' problems. Then, because Reform do have control of the narrative Labour simply fall in behind and go along with it which actually adds further fuel to Reform's chances. It's a dreadful, hollow position that Labour are in. They will get truly and rightfully hammered in subsequent elections by people who lap up the Reform rhetoric and simply switch to Farage but also by people on the left who've decided that the Labour Party offers nothing and a better option with some vision will be to vote Green or in some cases even Lib Dem. Starmer and his puppet-masters (McSweeney et al) are destroying the Labour Party in my opinion and, possibly leading the country into the arms of a far-right government which will end up doing nothing to help millions of working-class people who need help and hope. Farage offers nothing except hatred, bigotry and division - things which won't help our society. Sadly, Starmer is proving to be a willing accomplice for Farage. Its very sad and very worrying that we have a Labour Government like this.
No but they've helped nothing, the budget, waspi, his unrealistic house building targets, failing to get to grips with migration, winter fuel.... I could go on he's got everyone's back up. People don't want the tory/labour circus anymore.
It’s vital and as Starmer promised when seeking election he would make the progressive argument for it. Longer term we can incentivise people to have more children. Again that’s exactly what a party of economic stability and social justice should be doing. Instead via insane policies such as the 2 child cap makes it worse and increases our reliance on immigration. short term unless we want to stop SRP and deny over 60s health support unless they go private we have little or no choice
do we have enough centre left to go that? I mean Labour are more right so couldn’t really be included.
Great point about children. The population collapse that is coming will have huge impacts on future generations across the world. I believe South Korea are one of the countries furthest down this path, actually beyond the point of stopping it now.
Yeah and Japan too. Anything around 1 is an extinction event. I think we are about 1.5. But just to stay still we need 2.1. That’s why we can’t fund the NHS and social care. It’s not about middle managers or ‘efficiency’. We have too few people having children so too few tax payers. a genuine party that believes in economic stability should embrace this agenda and should be targeting housing at younger people who could have children. They could be run by local authorities. We could call it council housing.
When you look at the graph and the spike in immigration since the late 90s then again a spike in 2021 it's unsustainable.
How do you fund social care, pensions, the NHS without immigration given our birth rate? is always easy to give some answers to complex questions. But ultimately that leaves you with no answers. Spikes in immigration tend to be around conflicts where white people (cos let’s be honest we don’t really care about anyone else) have to leave their jobs country. So Bosnia in the 90s and Ukraine in 2021 The issues we have is that the Tories 2010/24 knew that the needed immigrants but we politically opposed up building infrastructure to support them. They should have invested the net positive economic boost provided in more social hosting and schools and the NHS but they didn’t. They trousered the money. That’s the issue. Longer term you can reduce the need for immigration by incentivising people to have kids.
It's up to Starmer to think up some good incentives so families feel more inclined to have a bigger family. Better maternity pay...Better paternity....Better value of sending your child to a nursery so it pays to work....
Cache22, working families are getting taxed to death, rents and mortgages high, so if food fuel etc, so cant afford big families. Net migration pushing near on 1million a year for the past 4 years. Need infrastructure houses, hospital beds, prisons,carehomes, schools etc built to keep up. Just not sure it's sustainable at this rate. Like I said both the Tories and labour have talked the talk about net migration and the boats but broken promises.
Remember on here when Labour was never going to win another election and then not long after they did. Now the same pundits 9 month in to a new Government are already calling Reform are going to be the next Government. Nowt stranger than folk.
The Tories were too scared to tell the truth. Labour are too scared to tell the truth. To spell out how bleak our economy will get without immigration. If we decide we want to cut migration now then that’s fine but we then have to realistically say we can’t afford SRP and we certainly won’t have the capability to fund new houses and hospital beds. The small boats thing is a tiny part of immigration stats. It’s a couple of percent. But it’s allowed politicians to offer up simple answers to complex problems. I think we should wean ourselves off immigration in the medium term but we have to do that through working out how we can incentivise people to have more kids. Housing is definitely part of that. Increasing wages to where they should be if they had increased properly post 2008 is another.
I think if the current trend continues the Tories will disappear altogether and become Reform and Labour will never get in again and won't be a viable opposition. Proportional Representation would create a Coalition government which is what happens in Germany. This would end the two party system but apparently also makes getting owt done difficult. Sadly were heading towards a Right wing government mainly driven by immigration which could be sorted. But I could be wrong...
https://x.com/lewis_goodall/status/1922037222255043048?s=46&t=j20zR706pmXrBtdI_7p-NQ pretty on point from Lewis here.
