Centrists won’t beat Reform UK by echoing its messages. They should emphasise the true unworkability of policies like Brexit
Yes, yes. All the things that Nige emphasises would be solved if we were just run by Ursula instead.
It’s a fairly extreme political poisition that, no?
I like “poisitition” as a portmanteau term for a poisonous position. The wisdom of typos, eh?
How about “pigsition” as a position adopted by the PM, Sir Greased Piglet?
Dearieme, I think only a very small part of the noble knight is greased and I’m sure piglet, of all animals, doesn’t come into it…
You don’t win by being centrist. You win by capturing the centre, and all of one side except the loonies. It actually requires you to be something like 20-25% off centre. And you can absolutely fuck off the other side. Doesn’t matter if they barely dislike you or hate you. Neither is a vote for you.
So Blair won by being moderate enough to take the centre, and that even the left of Labour Party were not happy, but happy enough to not go and start a Socialist Party and hold their nose and vote. I mean, the sort of loonies that want to nationalise everything down to corner shops weren’t happy but you can lose the 2% of the electorate like that.
Cameron’s mistake was being nice to the left and not sufficiently nice to the right. So the left thought he wasn’t that bad (but still voted Labour) and the right realised they were going to get fuck all and figured they might as well join UKIP.
Reform probably aren’t quite positioned correctly. They’re a bit too far over to the right. But they aren’t that far off. Despite what most of the blob think, immigration is not some sort of fringe Nazi issue. It’s the second biggest issue for voters right now. It’s been one of the top 3 political issues for voters in the “issues” poll of YouGov for 15 years. And more so for voters on the right but it’s also the 4th biggest issue for Labour voters. For Labour voters it’s bigger than transport, the environment, education and crime.
Centrist’ is an elastic term. What the commentariat and politicians consider to be centrist is often not what the majority of the electorate want. Unless centrism is defined by what the majority want, ‘centrist’ means no more than the way that the liberal elite describe their group’s consensus.
To many ordinary voters, many ‘centrist’ policies seem extreme — eg rejoining the EU, pursuing net zero in the vague hope of influencing the weather a century hence, mass immigration, multiculturalism, indoctrination in schools, egalitarianism, intervening in Libya, invading Iraq….In short, Tony Blair and his ilk were extremist, not centrist.
Most of the issues highlighted by WB which the electorate is concerned about but the establishment are not, those issues are not left and right in ideological terms. They are not individual vs collective. The issues have been adopted by parties just be tribal aspirations to differentiate from the other side. Look at Lab or Tory spokespeople say when interviewed. They see it all as a game/conflict between each other. Reform needs to point that out and to show how these are issues for ‘tackling’ not solving. Promise to do something. Something that has been too ‘bold, minister’ for the big parties. And if you get power, do it. Immediately. Run the swamp ragged. Just like Trump has learned to do.
Some excerpts give an idea – like an AI enhanced version of Murphy in many ways:
This week’s English local elections and Runcorn and Helsby byelection may become the latest demonstrations that the era of simplistic politics has plenty of years left to run. Having based its campaign on the dubious claim that almost all Britain’s problems come from too much immigration , Reform UK is expected to take hundreds of council seats from the Tories, has a chance of winning Runcorn and Helsby from Labour, and may also win one or more regional mayoralties. If any of these things happen, Nigel Farage’s insistent bragging that only his party can “fix broken Britain”, and the belief that Reform could even win the next general election, will gain further momentum.
You have to admire the brassneck here – I don’t know anyone saying all Britain’s problems are caused by immigration – a lot do stem from it, but it isn’t the Immigrants normally driving LBTQIAA nonsense, DIE and Net Zero – indeed the whole point was summarized by the late, great Enoch Powell all those decades ago when he mentioned that immigration would be a fulcrum around which the Hard Left would make massive and lasting changes to society without the need to have such policies approved and then present them as a ‘fait accompli’ – which is exactly what has happened.
And yet, there are also more and more signs that the politics of simplicity, when applied by populist or populist-influenced governments to real-world problems, actually turns into its opposite. Brexit has become a byword for more border hassle and import-export paperwork. Meanwhile, the desire to control immigration much more tightly is creating new bureaucracies, law enforcement bodies, migrant quotas, and detention and processing facilities around the globe. Trying to police nationality in a world that capitalism – and generations of previous rightwing politicians – spent decades making more fluid and interconnected is proving much more complicated than many populists and their supporters expected.
Brexit has indeed created more hassle, but that is inflicted entirely by the civil service who oppose it religiously and on the European side because the ‘integration ratchet’ is only supposed to go one way.
Because the bureaucracy has been completely taken over by left wing groupthink, whenever any ‘right wing’ administration comes in it faces institutional resistance to taking things in a different direction. That’s why you need to potentially create your own power base to do the dirty work.
The scale and thoroughness of this state intervention in a private university, which Harvard is trying to fight off, is profoundly disturbing for anyone who believes in academic freedom. Yet the letter also suggests that the Trump administration could become immensely and impractically bureaucratic. It’s aiming to reshape and then monitor an undefined number of previously independent institutions, to impose “diversity” when it benefits conservatives, but eradicate it when it benefits anyone else.
The notion that the Academic Hard Left is a paragon of commitment to ‘free expression’ is risible – they don’t believe inn academic freedom any more than the Hamas terrorists they adore believe in going for a pint.
Rightwing populists are correct that many people find the modern world chaotic and frightening. But conservative populism focuses on the struggles of straight, white, working-class men, and largely ignores capitalist modernity’s many other victims. This narrow outlook makes the movement’s social vision, however electorally appealing, a nostalgic dead end, in essence a deluded and coercive plan to return to the 1950s.
I think a return to the 1950s in any other aspect than Technology would have a very powerful appeal for many. A simpler, less confusing time. No ‘Pride’ flags or all the other panoply of ‘progressive’ propaganda. Maybe Beckett’s onto something…
“Populists like Farage promise voters a simpler life. In fact, they produce ever more hassle and chaos”
I’d quite like a chaotic complicated life if it got rid of millions of migrants.
“… the politics of simplicity, when applied by populist or populist-influenced governments …”
Arrogant bastards. They’ll be telling us to get in line for cake next.
Someone who couldn’t even describe Brexit other than as “bad, bad, very bad” tells us that it’s unworkable. In our next episode our friendly Guardian commenter will tell readers how to build a fusion reactor in your kitchen.
Why do “centrists” all have big, smug, goofy heads balanced on the skinniest, scrawniest necks you’ve ever seen? They look like hydrocephalic chickens, ffs
You could easily strangle two of them at the same time.
Well, the night is young.
Speaking of the chokable chickenmen, here’s ex-Con MP Tobias Elwood:
The era of complacency is over – for the sake of our national resilience Britain must wake up and start preparing now
How prepared would you be if the internet went down tomorrow? Or if the power was cut for 72 hours?
What if your phone buzzed with a national emergency alert warning of a swarm drone attack en route to your city – where would you go? How would you respond?
These aren’t scenes from a dystopian thriller – they’re real-world scenarios we must now seriously consider. As global instability grows, the threats to the UK’s security are becoming more complex, more targeted, and more difficult to defend against. It’s time we all started thinking less about if, and more about when.
Britain is now facing a surge in grey-zone warfare – deniable, covert attacks aimed at weakening our economy, undermining our infrastructure, and sowing confusion and panic. Russia’s so-called shadow fleet is already mapping the UK’s undersea cable networks – those vital arteries that deliver our electricity, gas and data. Autonomous underwater vehicles are criss-crossing the seabed, gathering intelligence.
What do you worry about more?
* Russia interrupting your broadband service, or
* The British government dismantling our economic future whilst talking away your rights and importing foreign rapists to live off you forever?
Let’s prepare. Let’s take responsibility. Because safeguarding Britain starts with all of us.
If Russia invades and kills our MPs, I shall write President Putin a stern letter of compliment.
Yeah, it’d be a baaaaad thing if a million people invaded us…oh.
Incidentally, this also means that they’re going to blame the Net Zero power cuts on Russia.
@Steve
And Trump and Musk.
‘Yeah, it’d be a baaaaad thing if a million people invaded us…oh.’
Y’know, when I was a kid, we had about 8 million people in Oz. Now we have over 27 million.
So Rhoda, do you think being invaded by 20 million people is what’s caused all our problems???
PS. Though Spain and Portugals’ present problems seem to have been caused by too many windmills and solar panels.
I think Oz’s problems stem from too many of your population being descended, not from prisoners, but from prison guards.