Money hasn't got anything to do with being either pro or anti-establishment, because Trump has a lot of money and he's very definitely anti-establishment in US terms.
In US terms, I'd say the movement led by a man born immensely rich, which controls the Presidency and Congress, has the slid support of the Supreme Court, and whose supporters control or own most of the nation's large media organisations, is hardly "anti-establishment".
It is a radical reactionary movement, determined on (ill defined) change, but it seems perverse to call it anti-establishment
Similarly with Farage. He's not exactly anti-establishment; he's a radical reactionary - but not yet in government.
Establishment is defined as 'people whose views I dislike'.
Not 'people who control the government'.
No.
It’s is perfectly possible to be anti-Establishment, without being a Democratic Anarchist (or some such).
Trump wants a *different* Establishment
Consider that he is smashing up a number of consensus positions. He is hounding out of public life, through intimidation and lawfare many public servants of notes. He is pushing out of power a number of those who previously held it. Especially among the permanent structures of government.
He is attempting to create a “New Establishment” - one whose primary characteristic is doing what he says without resistance.
They actually detailed it in Project 2025. They talk about replacing staff with those 'aligned to the President's priorities'
The Unitary theory in full flow. But the UK system is different (for the moment).
It used to be that 300 snobbish comments proved that there were 300 snobs, not that everyone was a snob. Nowadays, thanks to the wonders of computing, it barely proves that there is 1 snob.
It's always been the case that vox pops, letters to the editor or phone-in calls have been selected to be interesting, not statistically representative. Most digital media are the same or much worse.
Money hasn't got anything to do with being either pro or anti-establishment, because Trump has a lot of money and he's very definitely anti-establishment in US terms.
In US terms, I'd say the movement led by a man born immensely rich, which controls the Presidency and Congress, has the slid support of the Supreme Court, and whose supporters control or own most of the nation's large media organisations, is hardly "anti-establishment".
It is a radical reactionary movement, determined on (ill defined) change, but it seems perverse to call it anti-establishment
Similarly with Farage. He's not exactly anti-establishment; he's a radical reactionary - but not yet in government.
Establishment is defined as 'people whose views I dislike'.
Not 'people who control the government'.
No.
It’s is perfectly possible to be anti-Establishment, without being a Democratic Anarchist (or some such).
Trump wants a *different* Establishment
Consider that he is smashing up a number of consensus positions. He is hounding out of public life, through intimidation and lawfare many public servants of notes. He is pushing out of power a number of those who previously held it. Especially among the permanent structures of government.
He is attempting to create a “New Establishment” - one whose primary characteristic is doing what he says without resistance.
Which is tricky given he so frequently contradicts himself.
Money hasn't got anything to do with being either pro or anti-establishment, because Trump has a lot of money and he's very definitely anti-establishment in US terms.
In US terms, I'd say the movement led by a man born immensely rich, which controls the Presidency and Congress, has the slid support of the Supreme Court, and whose supporters control or own most of the nation's large media organisations, is hardly "anti-establishment".
It is a radical reactionary movement, determined on (ill defined) change, but it seems perverse to call it anti-establishment
Similarly with Farage. He's not exactly anti-establishment; he's a radical reactionary - but not yet in government.
Establishment is defined as 'people whose views I dislike'.
Not 'people who control the government'.
No.
It’s is perfectly possible to be anti-Establishment, without being a Democratic Anarchist (or some such).
Trump wants a *different* Establishment
Consider that he is smashing up a number of consensus positions. He is hounding out of public life, through intimidation and lawfare many public servants of notes. He is pushing out of power a number of those who previously held it. Especially among the permanent structures of government.
He is attempting to create a “New Establishment” - one whose primary characteristic is doing what he says without resistance.
They actually detailed it in Project 2025. They talk about replacing staff with those 'aligned to the President's priorities'
The Unitary theory in full flow. But the UK system is different (for the moment).
And this follows on from the long term project on the extreme right, in the US, to get “their” guys into the institutions. See judges and lower level officials - such as election officials.
Money hasn't got anything to do with being either pro or anti-establishment, because Trump has a lot of money and he's very definitely anti-establishment in US terms.
In US terms, I'd say the movement led by a man born immensely rich, which controls the Presidency and Congress, has the slid support of the Supreme Court, and whose supporters control or own most of the nation's large media organisations, is hardly "anti-establishment".
It is a radical reactionary movement, determined on (ill defined) change, but it seems perverse to call it anti-establishment
Similarly with Farage. He's not exactly anti-establishment; he's a radical reactionary - but not yet in government.
Establishment is defined as 'people whose views I dislike'.
Not 'people who control the government'.
No.
It’s is perfectly possible to be anti-Establishment, without being a Democratic Anarchist (or some such).
Trump wants a *different* Establishment
Consider that he is smashing up a number of consensus positions. He is hounding out of public life, through intimidation and lawfare many public servants of notes. He is pushing out of power a number of those who previously held it. Especially among the permanent structures of government.
He is attempting to create a “New Establishment” - one whose primary characteristic is doing what he says without resistance.
Which is tricky given he so frequently contradicts himself.
As the Iranians are finding out.
That's just part of the LOLs. One of the ways of showing you have power is to humiliate your minions by making them do six contradictory things before breakfast.
Every Reform MP has entered the by election fray except one (SFAICS); Danny Kruger, the only Reform MP normal people generally think is a decent person.
During the Makerfield Vorderman row he produced a comment sounding like a hostage video. Over the Farage by election stunt he has been resolutely silent. What is his next move?
Clacton is a cesspit of low aspiration, low education and anger. Let’s not look in the mirror and reflect, let’s point the fingers. Far easier to blame someone else for your shortcomings, isn’t it?
The FRITLF phenomenon at play again. The far right do not and never have done self reflection. It’s always someone else’s fault. Even what they do themselves, even when they bring disaster upon themselves or the country by their own hands, it’s someone else’s fault. “She provoked me”. The abuser’s mentality.
It’s some else’s fault is a very persuasive argument for people with both little and little aspiration.
And that is both Farage’s target audience.
Another day
Another ‘let’s sneer at the underclass’ vibe on PB.
No wonder Reform exists. These people know they and their communities are despised. They have a vote. They will use it.
Agreed. Put most of us in a similar situation to a struggling family in Clacton and we'd express similar sentiments to those in that vox pop.
The country doesn't work for many. And when Labour and the Conservatives seem to have no answers and/or seem to be making it worse, the rational thing to do is to look for alternatives.
It is hardly the fault of the Clacton voter that the main alternative is a corrupt bin-fighter.
Money hasn't got anything to do with being either pro or anti-establishment, because Trump has a lot of money and he's very definitely anti-establishment in US terms.
In US terms, I'd say the movement led by a man born immensely rich, which controls the Presidency and Congress, has the slid support of the Supreme Court, and whose supporters control or own most of the nation's large media organisations, is hardly "anti-establishment".
It is a radical reactionary movement, determined on (ill defined) change, but it seems perverse to call it anti-establishment
Similarly with Farage. He's not exactly anti-establishment; he's a radical reactionary - but not yet in government.
Establishment is defined as 'people whose views I dislike'.
Not 'people who control the government'.
No.
It’s is perfectly possible to be anti-Establishment, without being a Democratic Anarchist (or some such).
Trump wants a *different* Establishment
Consider that he is smashing up a number of consensus positions. He is hounding out of public life, through intimidation and lawfare many public servants of notes. He is pushing out of power a number of those who previously held it. Especially among the permanent structures of government.
He is attempting to create a “New Establishment” - one whose primary characteristic is doing what he says without resistance.
Which is tricky given he so frequently contradicts himself.
As the Iranians are finding out.
That's just part of the LOLs. One of the ways of showing you have power is to humiliate your minions by making them do six contradictory things before breakfast.
Do you see yonder cloud that’s almost in shape of a camel?
YouTube comments section in “not very nice” shocker. Do you go around looking for enemies?
No need - plenty on here show utter contempt for the intellect of voters who support the right. Utterly pathetic and one reason why the likes of Reform thrive.
But they only have 7 MP's. Is that thriving?
Let’s turn that around. Labour have a huge majority. Why are they changing leader if they are thriving?
I was fairly early on the Binface bandwagon but have greened up and am now laying him. For simple reason that he reads amusingly but having now seen some interviews he comes off as the kind of guy thats going to seriously irritate Clacton voters, he's the sort they'd have bullied at school.
I should have known with the Uxbridge hand dryer stuff. Which is a shame because the hand dryer absolutely does need moving according to photographic evidence, but that is the kind of thing that's unmistakeably metropolitan elite (literally one of the ends of the met line ffs, albeit a branch) and goes down like cold sick in the provinces in a way that Londoners never get.
Have some friends who knew him at uni, albeit vaguely, and they more or less confirm my instincts. If Reform need to go for the jugular they will and he'll be destroyed.
He doesn't need destroying, he's a joke candidate who would never get more than 5-10% even in a situation like this where lots of anti reform voters might choose to go for him as the only alternative.
Most people just stay at home rather than actively vote for a protest candidate.
YouTube comments section in “not very nice” shocker. Do you go around looking for enemies?
No need - plenty on here show utter contempt for the intellect of voters who support the right. Utterly pathetic and one reason why the likes of Reform thrive.
But they only have 7 MP's. Is that thriving?
Let’s turn that around. Labour have a huge majority. Why are they changing leader if they are thriving?
Nice try. There have been 5 by-elections since the 2024 GE. Reform have won one of five- and by the tiniest of margins. Of course, Clacton will be two from six.
But the usual reminder that Reform do not have a ground game and rely on media stunts for their coverage. Perhaps we'll see more Reform MP's resign to stand again - if they feel they can carry their electorate.
Money hasn't got anything to do with being either pro or anti-establishment, because Trump has a lot of money and he's very definitely anti-establishment in US terms.
In US terms, I'd say the movement led by a man born immensely rich, which controls the Presidency and Congress, has the slid support of the Supreme Court, and whose supporters control or own most of the nation's large media organisations, is hardly "anti-establishment".
It is a radical reactionary movement, determined on (ill defined) change, but it seems perverse to call it anti-establishment
Similarly with Farage. He's not exactly anti-establishment; he's a radical reactionary - but not yet in government.
Establishment is defined as 'people whose views I dislike'.
Not 'people who control the government'.
No.
It’s is perfectly possible to be anti-Establishment, without being a Democratic Anarchist (or some such).
Trump wants a *different* Establishment
Consider that he is smashing up a number of consensus positions. He is hounding out of public life, through intimidation and lawfare many public servants of notes. He is pushing out of power a number of those who previously held it. Especially among the permanent structures of government.
He is attempting to create a “New Establishment” - one whose primary characteristic is doing what he says without resistance.
Which is tricky given he so frequently contradicts himself.
As the Iranians are finding out.
His capriciousness is more damaging than his corruption for international relations, as no one can plan for what he will do and cutting a deal is much harder.
Another major fire in old grand building here in Scotland. Princes Street again, I think in what used to be the Debenhams.
I don't even remember where Debenham's on Princes Street was?
Another victim of Private Equity. The stores were sold to a property company, rented back to Debenhams, the Property company paid huge dividends, the core Debenhams business loaded with debt until it went bankrupt, with little real attempt to meet the needs of a changing High St. The result is another yacht for the super rich, and more gutting of our city centres.
Clacton is a cesspit of low aspiration, low education and anger. Let’s not look in the mirror and reflect, let’s point the fingers. Far easier to blame someone else for your shortcomings, isn’t it?
The FRITLF phenomenon at play again. The far right do not and never have done self reflection. It’s always someone else’s fault. Even what they do themselves, even when they bring disaster upon themselves or the country by their own hands, it’s someone else’s fault. “She provoked me”. The abuser’s mentality.
It’s some else’s fault is a very persuasive argument for people with both little and little aspiration.
And that is both Farage’s target audience.
Another day
Another ‘let’s sneer at the underclass’ vibe on PB.
No wonder Reform exists. These people know they and their communities are despised. They have a vote. They will use it.
A fair point which deserves addressing.
But in return, what does Farage offer them other than grievance ? His only substantive policy - Brexit - has done nothing for them (and has very likely further impoverished poorer regions). Two third if the electorate now judge it a failure.
Immigration, his other rallying cry, rocketed post-Brexit under a government led by a Brexiteer. It's now falling substantially under a government he despises.
And his other great interest - crypto - is completely removed from the lives of those in Clacton. His constituency, which he barely deigns to visit.
YouTube comments section in “not very nice” shocker. Do you go around looking for enemies?
No need - plenty on here show utter contempt for the intellect of voters who support the right. Utterly pathetic and one reason why the likes of Reform thrive.
But they only have 7 MP's. Is that thriving?
Things have come on a bit since they won those MPs.
They are not inevitable winners, and frankly its getting boring how the response to criticism of them is brushed off as elites just not getting the people and plays into their hands - how is one meant to criticise them even if they warrant it then? - but it is the case that they are still the most popular party in the UK at the moment.
Clacton is a cesspit of low aspiration, low education and anger. Let’s not look in the mirror and reflect, let’s point the fingers. Far easier to blame someone else for your shortcomings, isn’t it?
The FRITLF phenomenon at play again. The far right do not and never have done self reflection. It’s always someone else’s fault. Even what they do themselves, even when they bring disaster upon themselves or the country by their own hands, it’s someone else’s fault. “She provoked me”. The abuser’s mentality.
It’s some else’s fault is a very persuasive argument for people with both little and little aspiration.
And that is both Farage’s target audience.
Another day
Another ‘let’s sneer at the underclass’ vibe on PB.
No wonder Reform exists. These people know they and their communities are despised. They have a vote. They will use it.
Agreed. Put most of us in a similar situation to a struggling family in Clacton and we'd express similar sentiments to those in that vox pop.
The country doesn't work for many. And when Labour and the Conservatives seem to have no answers and/or seem to be making it worse, the rational thing to do is to look for alternatives.
It is hardly the fault of the Clacton voter that the main alternative is a corrupt bin-fighter.
The whole ridiculous circus is entirely the fault of Farage, first for getting up to some decidedly unorthodox financial shenanigans, then for a vanity by-election stunt.
Yet somehow that’s all the fault of people “sneering at the underclass? No it’s not. Honestly, I’m tired of the populist tosh that criticising the (rich, establishment) strongman leader is somehow criticising the voters.
It’s what Trump did, it’s what every fascist from Mussolini to Mao has done through history, it’s simply a trope and I can’t believe intelligent people fall for it every time.
Clacton is a cesspit of low aspiration, low education and anger. Let’s not look in the mirror and reflect, let’s point the fingers. Far easier to blame someone else for your shortcomings, isn’t it?
The FRITLF phenomenon at play again. The far right do not and never have done self reflection. It’s always someone else’s fault. Even what they do themselves, even when they bring disaster upon themselves or the country by their own hands, it’s someone else’s fault. “She provoked me”. The abuser’s mentality.
It’s some else’s fault is a very persuasive argument for people with both little and little aspiration.
And that is both Farage’s target audience.
Another day
Another ‘let’s sneer at the underclass’ vibe on PB.
No wonder Reform exists. These people know they and their communities are despised. They have a vote. They will use it.
A fair point which deserves addressing.
But in return, what does Farage offer them other than grievance ? His only substantive policy - Brexit - has done nothing for them (and has very likely further impoverished poorer regions). Two third if the electorate now judge it a failure.
Immigration, his other rallying cry, rocketed post-Brexit under a government led by a Brexiteer. It's now falling substantially under a government he despises.
And his other great interest - crypto - is completely removed from the lives of those in Clacton. His constituency, which he barely deigns to visit.
Another major fire in old grand building here in Scotland. Princes Street again, I think in what used to be the Debenhams.
At least we can be fairly sure it wasn’t caused by a vape shop as the fur coat and nae knickers classes would never allow such a scummy thing on the street of Princes. They’ve allowed various other despoliations of course.
YouTube comments section in “not very nice” shocker. Do you go around looking for enemies?
No need - plenty on here show utter contempt for the intellect of voters who support the right. Utterly pathetic and one reason why the likes of Reform thrive.
But they only have 7 MP's. Is that thriving?
Let’s turn that around. Labour have a huge majority. Why are they changing leader if they are thriving?
Nice try. There have been 5 by-elections since the 2024 GE. Reform have won one of five- and by the tiniest of margins. Of course, Clacton will be two from six.
But the usual reminder that Reform do not have a ground game and rely on media stunts for their coverage. Perhaps we'll see more Reform MP's resign to stand again - if they feel they can carry their electorate.
Ok how about this one. Was the SDP-Liberal alliance thriving in 1981?
On voting intention measures the right is thriving. Whether that will transfer into actual MPs bums on green seats is a different question, but it’s silly to suggest that only having 7 MPs is the measure that counts when the party of government , with a huge majority, is throwing away its election winning leader largely because of the polls.
Money hasn't got anything to do with being either pro or anti-establishment, because Trump has a lot of money and he's very definitely anti-establishment in US terms.
In US terms, I'd say the movement led by a man born immensely rich, which controls the Presidency and Congress, has the slid support of the Supreme Court, and whose supporters control or own most of the nation's large media organisations, is hardly "anti-establishment".
It is a radical reactionary movement, determined on (ill defined) change, but it seems perverse to call it anti-establishment
Similarly with Farage. He's not exactly anti-establishment; he's a radical reactionary - but not yet in government.
Establishment is defined as 'people whose views I dislike'.
Not 'people who control the government'.
No.
It’s is perfectly possible to be anti-Establishment, without being a Democratic Anarchist (or some such).
Trump wants a *different* Establishment
Consider that he is smashing up a number of consensus positions. He is hounding out of public life, through intimidation and lawfare many public servants of notes. He is pushing out of power a number of those who previously held it. Especially among the permanent structures of government.
He is attempting to create a “New Establishment” - one whose primary characteristic is doing what he says without resistance.
They actually detailed it in Project 2025. They talk about replacing staff with those 'aligned to the President's priorities'
The Unitary theory in full flow. But the UK system is different (for the moment).
The political left has been doing the same for decades, the “long march through the insitutions” detailed by Yuri Bezmenov in the ‘80s, which is where all the critical theory stuff first started in the universities at the turn of the century.
Clacton is a cesspit of low aspiration, low education and anger. Let’s not look in the mirror and reflect, let’s point the fingers. Far easier to blame someone else for your shortcomings, isn’t it?
The FRITLF phenomenon at play again. The far right do not and never have done self reflection. It’s always someone else’s fault. Even what they do themselves, even when they bring disaster upon themselves or the country by their own hands, it’s someone else’s fault. “She provoked me”. The abuser’s mentality.
It’s some else’s fault is a very persuasive argument for people with both little and little aspiration.
And that is both Farage’s target audience.
Another day
Another ‘let’s sneer at the underclass’ vibe on PB.
No wonder Reform exists. These people know they and their communities are despised. They have a vote. They will use it.
Agreed. Put most of us in a similar situation to a struggling family in Clacton and we'd express similar sentiments to those in that vox pop.
The country doesn't work for many. And when Labour and the Conservatives seem to have no answers and/or seem to be making it worse, the rational thing to do is to look for alternatives.
It is hardly the fault of the Clacton voter that the main alternative is a corrupt bin-fighter.
OTOH, we should expect a degree of personal responsibility from grown adults to keep themselves informed, particularly if they’re going to vote.
Coddling the electorate even when they are simply wrong about something is deeply harmful to our politics; the reason the country increasingly feels like it’s ungovernable.
Clacton is a cesspit of low aspiration, low education and anger. Let’s not look in the mirror and reflect, let’s point the fingers. Far easier to blame someone else for your shortcomings, isn’t it?
The FRITLF phenomenon at play again. The far right do not and never have done self reflection. It’s always someone else’s fault. Even what they do themselves, even when they bring disaster upon themselves or the country by their own hands, it’s someone else’s fault. “She provoked me”. The abuser’s mentality.
It’s some else’s fault is a very persuasive argument for people with both little and little aspiration.
And that is both Farage’s target audience.
Another day
Another ‘let’s sneer at the underclass’ vibe on PB.
No wonder Reform exists. These people know they and their communities are despised. They have a vote. They will use it.
Agreed. Put most of us in a similar situation to a struggling family in Clacton and we'd express similar sentiments to those in that vox pop.
The country doesn't work for many. And when Labour and the Conservatives seem to have no answers and/or seem to be making it worse, the rational thing to do is to look for alternatives.
It is hardly the fault of the Clacton voter that the main alternative is a corrupt bin-fighter.
The whole ridiculous circus is entirely the fault of Farage, first for getting up to some decidedly unorthodox financial shenanigans, then for a vanity by-election stunt.
Yet somehow that’s all the fault of people “sneering at the underclass? No it’s not. Honestly, I’m tired of the populist tosh that criticising the (rich, establishment) strongman leader is somehow criticising the voters.
It’s what Trump did, it’s what every fascist from Mussolini to Mao has done through history, it’s simply a trope and I can’t believe intelligent people fall for it every time.
Yes, it is also why Populism tends so much to corruption. The Dear Leader's decisions on which of his mates gets financially favoured cannot be criticised and any checks or scrutiny are evidence of "The Blob". It is the cult of personality vs democracy.
Clacton is a cesspit of low aspiration, low education and anger. Let’s not look in the mirror and reflect, let’s point the fingers. Far easier to blame someone else for your shortcomings, isn’t it?
The FRITLF phenomenon at play again. The far right do not and never have done self reflection. It’s always someone else’s fault. Even what they do themselves, even when they bring disaster upon themselves or the country by their own hands, it’s someone else’s fault. “She provoked me”. The abuser’s mentality.
It’s some else’s fault is a very persuasive argument for people with both little and little aspiration.
And that is both Farage’s target audience.
Another day
Another ‘let’s sneer at the underclass’ vibe on PB.
No wonder Reform exists. These people know they and their communities are despised. They have a vote. They will use it.
Agreed. Put most of us in a similar situation to a struggling family in Clacton and we'd express similar sentiments to those in that vox pop.
The country doesn't work for many. And when Labour and the Conservatives seem to have no answers and/or seem to be making it worse, the rational thing to do is to look for alternatives.
It is hardly the fault of the Clacton voter that the main alternative is a corrupt bin-fighter.
The whole ridiculous circus is entirely the fault of Farage, first for getting up to some decidedly unorthodox financial shenanigans, then for a vanity by-election stunt.
Yet somehow that’s all the fault of people “sneering at the underclass? No it’s not. Honestly, I’m tired of the populist tosh that criticising the (rich, establishment) strongman leader is somehow criticising the voters.
It’s what Trump did, it’s what every fascist from Mussolini to Mao has done through history, it’s simply a trope and I can’t believe intelligent people fall for it every time.
Calling out the populist tosh isn't the issue.
Describing Clacton as a cesspit and badging the mass of Clacton voters as low aspiration is the issue here.
YouTube comments section in “not very nice” shocker. Do you go around looking for enemies?
No need - plenty on here show utter contempt for the intellect of voters who support the right. Utterly pathetic and one reason why the likes of Reform thrive.
But they only have 7 MP's. Is that thriving?
Let’s turn that around. Labour have a huge majority. Why are they changing leader if they are thriving?
Nice try. There have been 5 by-elections since the 2024 GE. Reform have won one of five- and by the tiniest of margins. Of course, Clacton will be two from six.
But the usual reminder that Reform do not have a ground game and rely on media stunts for their coverage. Perhaps we'll see more Reform MP's resign to stand again - if they feel they can carry their electorate.
Reform are thriving as compared to 2024. They just aren't sweeping all before them like their grandiose rhetoric would suggest they should because political spin always exaggerates.
I'm positive about their long term chances, so the stock dismissal that people are just sneering at the lower classes and ignoring Reform's appeal, is a load of old wank. It's more than possible to heartily dislike them and criticise them but still think things are looking good for them.
However, things are tighter than Reform pretend, and a small drop in support moves them from likely majority ir largest party to 'only' a hundred or so seats. Still a tremendous rise, but a small change would see a very different projected outcome.
Getting pretty bored with all the AI slop around, but this is quite good, gets the sword and hauberk vibe that is the staple of many a tv streaming platform just right.
Clacton is a cesspit of low aspiration, low education and anger. Let’s not look in the mirror and reflect, let’s point the fingers. Far easier to blame someone else for your shortcomings, isn’t it?
The FRITLF phenomenon at play again. The far right do not and never have done self reflection. It’s always someone else’s fault. Even what they do themselves, even when they bring disaster upon themselves or the country by their own hands, it’s someone else’s fault. “She provoked me”. The abuser’s mentality.
It’s some else’s fault is a very persuasive argument for people with both little and little aspiration.
And that is both Farage’s target audience.
Another day
Another ‘let’s sneer at the underclass’ vibe on PB.
No wonder Reform exists. These people know they and their communities are despised. They have a vote. They will use it.
Agreed. Put most of us in a similar situation to a struggling family in Clacton and we'd express similar sentiments to those in that vox pop.
The country doesn't work for many. And when Labour and the Conservatives seem to have no answers and/or seem to be making it worse, the rational thing to do is to look for alternatives.
It is hardly the fault of the Clacton voter that the main alternative is a corrupt bin-fighter.
The whole ridiculous circus is entirely the fault of Farage, first for getting up to some decidedly unorthodox financial shenanigans, then for a vanity by-election stunt.
Yet somehow that’s all the fault of people “sneering at the underclass? No it’s not. Honestly, I’m tired of the populist tosh that criticising the (rich, establishment) strongman leader is somehow criticising the voters.
It’s what Trump did, it’s what every fascist from Mussolini to Mao has done through history, it’s simply a trope and I can’t believe intelligent people fall for it every time.
Yes, it is also why Populism tends so much to corruption. The Dear Leader's decisions on which of his mates gets financially favoured cannot be criticised and any checks or scrutiny are evidence of "The Blob". It is the cult of personality vs democracy.
Are there any examples of a personally uncorruptable populist? The only one I can think of is Salazar of Portugal although in many respects he was an anti populist.
Clacton is a cesspit of low aspiration, low education and anger. Let’s not look in the mirror and reflect, let’s point the fingers. Far easier to blame someone else for your shortcomings, isn’t it?
The FRITLF phenomenon at play again. The far right do not and never have done self reflection. It’s always someone else’s fault. Even what they do themselves, even when they bring disaster upon themselves or the country by their own hands, it’s someone else’s fault. “She provoked me”. The abuser’s mentality.
It’s some else’s fault is a very persuasive argument for people with both little and little aspiration.
And that is both Farage’s target audience.
Another day
Another ‘let’s sneer at the underclass’ vibe on PB.
No wonder Reform exists. These people know they and their communities are despised. They have a vote. They will use it.
Agreed. Put most of us in a similar situation to a struggling family in Clacton and we'd express similar sentiments to those in that vox pop.
The country doesn't work for many. And when Labour and the Conservatives seem to have no answers and/or seem to be making it worse, the rational thing to do is to look for alternatives.
It is hardly the fault of the Clacton voter that the main alternative is a corrupt bin-fighter.
The whole ridiculous circus is entirely the fault of Farage, first for getting up to some decidedly unorthodox financial shenanigans, then for a vanity by-election stunt.
Yet somehow that’s all the fault of people “sneering at the underclass? No it’s not. Honestly, I’m tired of the populist tosh that criticising the (rich, establishment) strongman leader is somehow criticising the voters.
It’s what Trump did, it’s what every fascist from Mussolini to Mao has done through history, it’s simply a trope and I can’t believe intelligent people fall for it every time.
Besides, the actual underclass is a fairly minor part of the Reform alliance. Mostly it's older homeowners resenting/fearing change around them. And yes- change is traumatic. But preserving things as they were in your youth is a luxury belief. And complaining about the local stagnation whilst opposing things that might help is, sorry to say, unwise.
Another major fire in old grand building here in Scotland. Princes Street again, I think in what used to be the Debenhams.
At least we can be fairly sure it wasn’t caused by a vape shop as the fur coat and nae knickers classes would never allow such a scummy thing on the street of Princes. They’ve allowed various other despoliations of course.
Another major fire in old grand building here in Scotland. Princes Street again, I think in what used to be the Debenhams.
Have there been many? Your comment reads like @Sandpit 's updates.
There was a huge one in what used to be Jenners. And of course at Central Station in Glasgow. We are paying a price for these large empty buildings on our High Streets.
Clacton is a cesspit of low aspiration, low education and anger. Let’s not look in the mirror and reflect, let’s point the fingers. Far easier to blame someone else for your shortcomings, isn’t it?
The FRITLF phenomenon at play again. The far right do not and never have done self reflection. It’s always someone else’s fault. Even what they do themselves, even when they bring disaster upon themselves or the country by their own hands, it’s someone else’s fault. “She provoked me”. The abuser’s mentality.
It’s some else’s fault is a very persuasive argument for people with both little and little aspiration.
And that is both Farage’s target audience.
Another day
Another ‘let’s sneer at the underclass’ vibe on PB.
No wonder Reform exists. These people know they and their communities are despised. They have a vote. They will use it.
Agreed. Put most of us in a similar situation to a struggling family in Clacton and we'd express similar sentiments to those in that vox pop.
The country doesn't work for many. And when Labour and the Conservatives seem to have no answers and/or seem to be making it worse, the rational thing to do is to look for alternatives.
It is hardly the fault of the Clacton voter that the main alternative is a corrupt bin-fighter.
The whole ridiculous circus is entirely the fault of Farage, first for getting up to some decidedly unorthodox financial shenanigans, then for a vanity by-election stunt.
Yet somehow that’s all the fault of people “sneering at the underclass? No it’s not. Honestly, I’m tired of the populist tosh that criticising the (rich, establishment) strongman leader is somehow criticising the voters.
It’s what Trump did, it’s what every fascist from Mussolini to Mao has done through history, it’s simply a trope and I can’t believe intelligent people fall for it every time.
Calling out the populist tosh isn't the issue.
Describing Clacton as a cesspit and badging the mass of Clacton voters as low aspiration is the issue here.
“Basket of deplorables” as someone once said before losing an election.
It’s no surprise that people vote for Farage and Trump, when so many mainstream politicians appear not to care for an area and actively dispise those living there.
Now you can argue that Farage and Trump offer no solutions, but at least they present as listening to the left behind, rather than sneering at them.
Every Reform MP has entered the by election fray except one (SFAICS); Danny Kruger, the only Reform MP normal people generally think is a decent person.
During the Makerfield Vorderman row he produced a comment sounding like a hostage video. Over the Farage by election stunt he has been resolutely silent. What is his next move?
I get that people think the Binface stuff is unfunny and that in general the 'traditional' parties are not addressing concerns which leads people to back Reform.
I don't get why that translates to being a snowflake and getting genuinely offended on Reform's behalf that people are amused that their by-election stunt will mostly involve only the bin.
It was a stunt, they wouldn't deny that, and they are unhappy with the return stunt by others. Fine, but why pretend either stunt is some important political principle being at stake?
Clacton is a cesspit of low aspiration, low education and anger. Let’s not look in the mirror and reflect, let’s point the fingers. Far easier to blame someone else for your shortcomings, isn’t it?
The FRITLF phenomenon at play again. The far right do not and never have done self reflection. It’s always someone else’s fault. Even what they do themselves, even when they bring disaster upon themselves or the country by their own hands, it’s someone else’s fault. “She provoked me”. The abuser’s mentality.
It’s some else’s fault is a very persuasive argument for people with both little and little aspiration.
And that is both Farage’s target audience.
Another day
Another ‘let’s sneer at the underclass’ vibe on PB.
No wonder Reform exists. These people know they and their communities are despised. They have a vote. They will use it.
A fair point which deserves addressing.
But in return, what does Farage offer them other than grievance ? His only substantive policy - Brexit - has done nothing for them (and has very likely further impoverished poorer regions). Two third if the electorate now judge it a failure.
Immigration, his other rallying cry, rocketed post-Brexit under a government led by a Brexiteer. It's now falling substantially under a government he despises.
And his other great interest - crypto - is completely removed from the lives of those in Clacton. His constituency, which he barely deigns to visit.
The man is a charlatan.
I’m no fan of Farage.
Blaming the underclass for their position in life, when we don’t have equality of opportunity in this country, is extremely condescending.
Perhaps if people engaged with them and asked why the appeal instead of just sneering at them, then we’d find out.
The impression I get, and this is Micro not Macro, is Reform are the ones actually listening to these people and acknowledging their concerns.
That’s the first step.
And acknowledging concerns doesn’t mean agreeing with them.
Clacton is a cesspit of low aspiration, low education and anger. Let’s not look in the mirror and reflect, let’s point the fingers. Far easier to blame someone else for your shortcomings, isn’t it?
The FRITLF phenomenon at play again. The far right do not and never have done self reflection. It’s always someone else’s fault. Even what they do themselves, even when they bring disaster upon themselves or the country by their own hands, it’s someone else’s fault. “She provoked me”. The abuser’s mentality.
It’s some else’s fault is a very persuasive argument for people with both little and little aspiration.
And that is both Farage’s target audience.
Another day
Another ‘let’s sneer at the underclass’ vibe on PB.
No wonder Reform exists. These people know they and their communities are despised. They have a vote. They will use it.
Agreed. Put most of us in a similar situation to a struggling family in Clacton and we'd express similar sentiments to those in that vox pop.
The country doesn't work for many. And when Labour and the Conservatives seem to have no answers and/or seem to be making it worse, the rational thing to do is to look for alternatives.
It is hardly the fault of the Clacton voter that the main alternative is a corrupt bin-fighter.
The whole ridiculous circus is entirely the fault of Farage, first for getting up to some decidedly unorthodox financial shenanigans, then for a vanity by-election stunt.
Yet somehow that’s all the fault of people “sneering at the underclass? No it’s not. Honestly, I’m tired of the populist tosh that criticising the (rich, establishment) strongman leader is somehow criticising the voters.
It’s what Trump did, it’s what every fascist from Mussolini to Mao has done through history, it’s simply a trope and I can’t believe intelligent people fall for it every time.
Besides, the actual underclass is a fairly minor part of the Reform alliance. Mostly it's older homeowners resenting/fearing change around them. And yes- change is traumatic. But preserving things as they were in your youth is a luxury belief. And complaining about the local stagnation whilst opposing things that might help is, sorry to say, unwise.
Depends how you measure it. Across the UK, I think that’s true. It’s why you have a sizeable Reform support even in quite leafy areas.
But in the more deprived areas, where they are most likely to win seats, council house tenants are their most important cohort. And that’s why Farage is so careful in his rhetoric around welfare.
And older homeowners can still be very poor - owning a house in Clacton and surviving on State Pension makes you worse off than a 28-year grad working and renting in London, I’d suggest.
Clacton is a cesspit of low aspiration, low education and anger. Let’s not look in the mirror and reflect, let’s point the fingers. Far easier to blame someone else for your shortcomings, isn’t it?
The FRITLF phenomenon at play again. The far right do not and never have done self reflection. It’s always someone else’s fault. Even what they do themselves, even when they bring disaster upon themselves or the country by their own hands, it’s someone else’s fault. “She provoked me”. The abuser’s mentality.
It’s some else’s fault is a very persuasive argument for people with both little and little aspiration.
And that is both Farage’s target audience.
Another day
Another ‘let’s sneer at the underclass’ vibe on PB.
No wonder Reform exists. These people know they and their communities are despised. They have a vote. They will use it.
Agreed. Put most of us in a similar situation to a struggling family in Clacton and we'd express similar sentiments to those in that vox pop.
The country doesn't work for many. And when Labour and the Conservatives seem to have no answers and/or seem to be making it worse, the rational thing to do is to look for alternatives.
It is hardly the fault of the Clacton voter that the main alternative is a corrupt bin-fighter.
OTOH, we should expect a degree of personal responsibility from grown adults to keep themselves informed, particularly if they’re going to vote.
Coddling the electorate even when they are simply wrong about something is deeply harmful to our politics; the reason the country increasingly feels like it’s ungovernable.
I don't know any Clacton voters, so this is pure speculation, but I wouldn't be surprised if plenty of them are reasonably well informed.
They know the mainstream parties are not getting the country working for them. They may diagnose the main issue wrongly (blaming immigration, say) but then I'd argue most of the electorate, and most of the political class, are likewise failing to adequately diagnose the issue right now.
Are the voters of Clacton any worse informed than the voters of Chingford and Woodford Green who will vote for anyone who promises they can keep both their two car household and the triple lock?
Getting pretty bored with all the AI slop around, but this is quite good, gets the sword and hauberk vibe that is the staple of many a tv streaming platform just right.
Clever. But it does have that videogame ‘sheen’ that gives it away. I've seen others where they’ve specified a camera type that feel rather more natural.
Clacton is a cesspit of low aspiration, low education and anger. Let’s not look in the mirror and reflect, let’s point the fingers. Far easier to blame someone else for your shortcomings, isn’t it?
The FRITLF phenomenon at play again. The far right do not and never have done self reflection. It’s always someone else’s fault. Even what they do themselves, even when they bring disaster upon themselves or the country by their own hands, it’s someone else’s fault. “She provoked me”. The abuser’s mentality.
It’s some else’s fault is a very persuasive argument for people with both little and little aspiration.
And that is both Farage’s target audience.
Another day
Another ‘let’s sneer at the underclass’ vibe on PB.
No wonder Reform exists. These people know they and their communities are despised. They have a vote. They will use it.
A fair point which deserves addressing.
But in return, what does Farage offer them other than grievance ? His only substantive policy - Brexit - has done nothing for them (and has very likely further impoverished poorer regions). Two third if the electorate now judge it a failure.
Immigration, his other rallying cry, rocketed post-Brexit under a government led by a Brexiteer. It's now falling substantially under a government he despises.
And his other great interest - crypto - is completely removed from the lives of those in Clacton. His constituency, which he barely deigns to visit.
The man is a charlatan.
I’m no fan of Farage.
Blaming the underclass for their position in life, when we don’t have equality of opportunity in this country, is extremely condescending.
Perhaps if people engaged with them and asked why the appeal instead of just sneering at them, then we’d find out.
The impression I get, and this is Micro not Macro, is Reform are the ones actually listening to these people and acknowledging their concerns.
That’s the first step.
And acknowledging concerns doesn’t mean agreeing with them.
I think Burnham is the first of our recent Prime Ministers to properly engage in the need for more geographically diverse growth.
He's got a much better chance of succeeding in that drive than a bunch of grifters who seek out scapegoats not solutions.
Clacton is a cesspit of low aspiration, low education and anger. Let’s not look in the mirror and reflect, let’s point the fingers. Far easier to blame someone else for your shortcomings, isn’t it?
The FRITLF phenomenon at play again. The far right do not and never have done self reflection. It’s always someone else’s fault. Even what they do themselves, even when they bring disaster upon themselves or the country by their own hands, it’s someone else’s fault. “She provoked me”. The abuser’s mentality.
It’s some else’s fault is a very persuasive argument for people with both little and little aspiration.
And that is both Farage’s target audience.
Another day
Another ‘let’s sneer at the underclass’ vibe on PB.
No wonder Reform exists. These people know they and their communities are despised. They have a vote. They will use it.
Agreed. Put most of us in a similar situation to a struggling family in Clacton and we'd express similar sentiments to those in that vox pop.
The country doesn't work for many. And when Labour and the Conservatives seem to have no answers and/or seem to be making it worse, the rational thing to do is to look for alternatives.
It is hardly the fault of the Clacton voter that the main alternative is a corrupt bin-fighter.
OTOH, we should expect a degree of personal responsibility from grown adults to keep themselves informed, particularly if they’re going to vote.
Coddling the electorate even when they are simply wrong about something is deeply harmful to our politics; the reason the country increasingly feels like it’s ungovernable.
I don't know any Clacton voters, so this is pure speculation, but I wouldn't be surprised if plenty of them are reasonably well informed.
They know the mainstream parties are not getting the country working for them. They may diagnose the main issue wrongly (blaming immigration, say) but then I'd argue most of the electorate, and most of the political class, are likewise failing to adequately diagnose the issue right now.
Are the voters of Clacton any worse informed than the voters of Chingford and Woodford Green who will vote for anyone who promises they can keep both their two car household and the triple lock?
It suits the left on here to portray their supported as dumb, racist Fu****s It obviates the need to interrogate their thoughts and hopes and reinforced theiru h loved sense of moral superiority. It's one reason the site is so boring these days
Getting pretty bored with all the AI slop around, but this is quite good, gets the sword and hauberk vibe that is the staple of many a tv streaming platform just right.
Clacton is a cesspit of low aspiration, low education and anger. Let’s not look in the mirror and reflect, let’s point the fingers. Far easier to blame someone else for your shortcomings, isn’t it?
The FRITLF phenomenon at play again. The far right do not and never have done self reflection. It’s always someone else’s fault. Even what they do themselves, even when they bring disaster upon themselves or the country by their own hands, it’s someone else’s fault. “She provoked me”. The abuser’s mentality.
It’s some else’s fault is a very persuasive argument for people with both little and little aspiration.
And that is both Farage’s target audience.
Another day
Another ‘let’s sneer at the underclass’ vibe on PB.
No wonder Reform exists. These people know they and their communities are despised. They have a vote. They will use it.
A fair point which deserves addressing.
But in return, what does Farage offer them other than grievance ? His only substantive policy - Brexit - has done nothing for them (and has very likely further impoverished poorer regions). Two third if the electorate now judge it a failure.
Immigration, his other rallying cry, rocketed post-Brexit under a government led by a Brexiteer. It's now falling substantially under a government he despises.
And his other great interest - crypto - is completely removed from the lives of those in Clacton. His constituency, which he barely deigns to visit.
The man is a charlatan.
I’m no fan of Farage.
Blaming the underclass for their position in life, when we don’t have equality of opportunity in this country, is extremely condescending.
Perhaps if people engaged with them and asked why the appeal instead of just sneering at them, then we’d find out.
The impression I get, and this is Micro not Macro, is Reform are the ones actually listening to these people and acknowledging their concerns.
That’s the first step.
And acknowledging concerns doesn’t mean agreeing with them.
Farage et al may well be listening to grievances, but they seem to prefer stoking them to resolving them.
I get that people think the Binface stuff is unfunny and that in general the 'traditional' parties are not addressing concerns which leads people to back Reform.
I don't get why that translates to being a snowflake and getting genuinely offended on Reform's behalf that people are amused that their by-election stunt will mostly involve only the bin.
It was a stunt, they wouldn't deny that, and they are unhappy with the return stunt by others. Fine, but why pretend either stunt is some important political principle being at stake?
At the risk of sounding even more pompous than usual the important political principle here is that the rule of law applies to all of our politicians, even Nigel Farage, and we do not live in a country like the USA where the chosen ones get to disregard the law and do what they feel like because they are so special.
Clacton is a cesspit of low aspiration, low education and anger. Let’s not look in the mirror and reflect, let’s point the fingers. Far easier to blame someone else for your shortcomings, isn’t it?
The FRITLF phenomenon at play again. The far right do not and never have done self reflection. It’s always someone else’s fault. Even what they do themselves, even when they bring disaster upon themselves or the country by their own hands, it’s someone else’s fault. “She provoked me”. The abuser’s mentality.
It’s some else’s fault is a very persuasive argument for people with both little and little aspiration.
And that is both Farage’s target audience.
Another day
Another ‘let’s sneer at the underclass’ vibe on PB.
No wonder Reform exists. These people know they and their communities are despised. They have a vote. They will use it.
Agreed. Put most of us in a similar situation to a struggling family in Clacton and we'd express similar sentiments to those in that vox pop.
The country doesn't work for many. And when Labour and the Conservatives seem to have no answers and/or seem to be making it worse, the rational thing to do is to look for alternatives.
It is hardly the fault of the Clacton voter that the main alternative is a corrupt bin-fighter.
OTOH, we should expect a degree of personal responsibility from grown adults to keep themselves informed, particularly if they’re going to vote.
Coddling the electorate even when they are simply wrong about something is deeply harmful to our politics; the reason the country increasingly feels like it’s ungovernable.
I don't know any Clacton voters, so this is pure speculation, but I wouldn't be surprised if plenty of them are reasonably well informed.
They know the mainstream parties are not getting the country working for them. They may diagnose the main issue wrongly (blaming immigration, say) but then I'd argue most of the electorate, and most of the political class, are likewise failing to adequately diagnose the issue right now.
Are the voters of Clacton any worse informed than the voters of Chingford and Woodford Green who will vote for anyone who promises they can keep both their two car household and the triple lock?
I’d suggest the people* of Chingford and Woodford Green much more opprobrium than those of Clacton. Informed naked self-interest is even worse.
Clacton is a cesspit of low aspiration, low education and anger. Let’s not look in the mirror and reflect, let’s point the fingers. Far easier to blame someone else for your shortcomings, isn’t it?
The FRITLF phenomenon at play again. The far right do not and never have done self reflection. It’s always someone else’s fault. Even what they do themselves, even when they bring disaster upon themselves or the country by their own hands, it’s someone else’s fault. “She provoked me”. The abuser’s mentality.
It’s some else’s fault is a very persuasive argument for people with both little and little aspiration.
And that is both Farage’s target audience.
Another day
Another ‘let’s sneer at the underclass’ vibe on PB.
No wonder Reform exists. These people know they and their communities are despised. They have a vote. They will use it.
Agreed. Put most of us in a similar situation to a struggling family in Clacton and we'd express similar sentiments to those in that vox pop.
The country doesn't work for many. And when Labour and the Conservatives seem to have no answers and/or seem to be making it worse, the rational thing to do is to look for alternatives.
It is hardly the fault of the Clacton voter that the main alternative is a corrupt bin-fighter.
The whole ridiculous circus is entirely the fault of Farage, first for getting up to some decidedly unorthodox financial shenanigans, then for a vanity by-election stunt.
Yet somehow that’s all the fault of people “sneering at the underclass? No it’s not. Honestly, I’m tired of the populist tosh that criticising the (rich, establishment) strongman leader is somehow criticising the voters.
It’s what Trump did, it’s what every fascist from Mussolini to Mao has done through history, it’s simply a trope and I can’t believe intelligent people fall for it every time.
Yes, it is also why Populism tends so much to corruption. The Dear Leader's decisions on which of his mates gets financially favoured cannot be criticised and any checks or scrutiny are evidence of "The Blob". It is the cult of personality vs democracy.
Are there any examples of a personally uncorruptable populist? The only one I can think of is Salazar of Portugal although in many respects he was an anti populist.
Getting pretty bored with all the AI slop around, but this is quite good, gets the sword and hauberk vibe that is the staple of many a tv streaming platform just right.
Clever. But it does have that videogame ‘sheen’ that gives it away. I've seen others where they’ve specified a camera type that feel rather more natural.
Definitely, but the particular genre involves quite a lot of suspension of disbelief so works a bit better with video game sheen. Anyway, it’s just a bit of fun rather than art. There used to be a PBer who went on endlessly about AI replacing man-made art, I wonder what happened to him, and all the hypothetical masterpieces?
Clacton is a cesspit of low aspiration, low education and anger. Let’s not look in the mirror and reflect, let’s point the fingers. Far easier to blame someone else for your shortcomings, isn’t it?
The FRITLF phenomenon at play again. The far right do not and never have done self reflection. It’s always someone else’s fault. Even what they do themselves, even when they bring disaster upon themselves or the country by their own hands, it’s someone else’s fault. “She provoked me”. The abuser’s mentality.
It’s some else’s fault is a very persuasive argument for people with both little and little aspiration.
And that is both Farage’s target audience.
Another day
Another ‘let’s sneer at the underclass’ vibe on PB.
No wonder Reform exists. These people know they and their communities are despised. They have a vote. They will use it.
Agreed. Put most of us in a similar situation to a struggling family in Clacton and we'd express similar sentiments to those in that vox pop.
The country doesn't work for many. And when Labour and the Conservatives seem to have no answers and/or seem to be making it worse, the rational thing to do is to look for alternatives.
It is hardly the fault of the Clacton voter that the main alternative is a corrupt bin-fighter.
OTOH, we should expect a degree of personal responsibility from grown adults to keep themselves informed, particularly if they’re going to vote.
Coddling the electorate even when they are simply wrong about something is deeply harmful to our politics; the reason the country increasingly feels like it’s ungovernable.
I don't know any Clacton voters, so this is pure speculation, but I wouldn't be surprised if plenty of them are reasonably well informed.
They know the mainstream parties are not getting the country working for them. They may diagnose the main issue wrongly (blaming immigration, say) but then I'd argue most of the electorate, and most of the political class, are likewise failing to adequately diagnose the issue right now.
Are the voters of Clacton any worse informed than the voters of Chingford and Woodford Green who will vote for anyone who promises they can keep both their two car household and the triple lock?
It suits the left on here to portray their supported as dumb, racist Fu****s It obviates the need to interrogate their thoughts and hopes and reinforced theiru h loved sense of moral superiority. It's one reason the site is so boring these days
I don't agree about the site, but I do think in the countty as a whole there has been something of a capture of the left by what I'd describe as the 'comfortable left' (of which I am very much a part).
The left badly needs an economically coherent narrative that addresses the concerns of financially insecure voters.
I suspect the narrative is there, but I don't hear anyone making it.
Money hasn't got anything to do with being either pro or anti-establishment, because Trump has a lot of money and he's very definitely anti-establishment in US terms.
We need to get away from the idea that Trump is ideological in any way. He is opportunistic and transcational (though he never upholds his side of the transaction if it doesn't suit him).
Trump is against some parts of the establishment, but more than happy to work with others when it suits his purposes, which is to aggrandise and glorify Donald Trump. Thus, he is delighted with the Supreme Court - perhaps the most Establishment institution in Washington - when it does what he wants, and furious when it doesn't.
We also need to realise that, even for an American politician, he is spectacularly stupid. He doesn't understand a whole list of things that even a averagely smart 15-year-old gets: abstract concepts, foreign countries, simple economics, etc. etc. He doesn't realise that the world has moved on from the 1960s and 1970s, when his world view was formed. Battleships are just drone magnets these days; heavy manufacturing isn't America's most important sector any more; and Russia is much less powerful than the Soviet Union was. Michael Wolff said that Trump's foreign policy analysis goes no further than looking at a map, seeing that Russia and China are big and that countries in the free world generally aren't, and therefore saying "I need to get along with Russia and China but can bully my allies". I would dismiss that as TDS, but Wolff has spent a lot of time with Trump and it explains better than anything else why he fawns on Russia and China and is so nasty to his allies.
So I think looking for a consistent ideological stance in Trump, pro- or anti-Establishment or whatever, beyond a very few prejudices formed decades ago, is a hiding to nothing.
Clacton is a cesspit of low aspiration, low education and anger. Let’s not look in the mirror and reflect, let’s point the fingers. Far easier to blame someone else for your shortcomings, isn’t it?
The FRITLF phenomenon at play again. The far right do not and never have done self reflection. It’s always someone else’s fault. Even what they do themselves, even when they bring disaster upon themselves or the country by their own hands, it’s someone else’s fault. “She provoked me”. The abuser’s mentality.
It’s some else’s fault is a very persuasive argument for people with both little and little aspiration.
And that is both Farage’s target audience.
Another day
Another ‘let’s sneer at the underclass’ vibe on PB.
No wonder Reform exists. These people know they and their communities are despised. They have a vote. They will use it.
A fair point which deserves addressing.
But in return, what does Farage offer them other than grievance ? His only substantive policy - Brexit - has done nothing for them (and has very likely further impoverished poorer regions). Two third if the electorate now judge it a failure.
Immigration, his other rallying cry, rocketed post-Brexit under a government led by a Brexiteer. It's now falling substantially under a government he despises.
And his other great interest - crypto - is completely removed from the lives of those in Clacton. His constituency, which he barely deigns to visit.
The man is a charlatan.
I’m no fan of Farage.
Blaming the underclass for their position in life, when we don’t have equality of opportunity in this country, is extremely condescending.
Perhaps if people engaged with them and asked why the appeal instead of just sneering at them, then we’d find out.
The impression I get, and this is Micro not Macro, is Reform are the ones actually listening to these people and acknowledging their concerns.
That’s the first step.
And acknowledging concerns doesn’t mean agreeing with them.
You can also observe the vacuum on the the posh middle classes, who have the benefit of university education to look down on people not as gifted or as articulate as themselves and who have no experience of the tougher end of life.
The left have become the class snobs they used to criticise.
Getting pretty bored with all the AI slop around, but this is quite good, gets the sword and hauberk vibe that is the staple of many a tv streaming platform just right.
Clever. But it does have that videogame ‘sheen’ that gives it away. I've seen others where they’ve specified a camera type that feel rather more natural.
Definitely, but the particular genre involves quite a lot of suspension of disbelief so works a bit better with video game sheen. Anyway, it’s just a bit of fun rather than art. There used to be a PBer who went on endlessly about AI replacing man-made art, I wonder what happened to him, and all the hypothetical masterpieces?
Speaking of which, Meta's new AI slop feature will let anyone modify your photos unless you have opted out, because why not opt everyone in by default?
Clacton is a cesspit of low aspiration, low education and anger. Let’s not look in the mirror and reflect, let’s point the fingers. Far easier to blame someone else for your shortcomings, isn’t it?
The FRITLF phenomenon at play again. The far right do not and never have done self reflection. It’s always someone else’s fault. Even what they do themselves, even when they bring disaster upon themselves or the country by their own hands, it’s someone else’s fault. “She provoked me”. The abuser’s mentality.
It’s some else’s fault is a very persuasive argument for people with both little and little aspiration.
And that is both Farage’s target audience.
Another day
Another ‘let’s sneer at the underclass’ vibe on PB.
No wonder Reform exists. These people know they and their communities are despised. They have a vote. They will use it.
The sneering is from you calling them an underclass - they aren't.
I've learnt over the decades that a lot of people are very happy in their own small world and their aspirations are really just a house, a car and enough money to do their hobbies... And the modern world has often taken that simply world away from them..
Now one of the big stories on the last series of Clarkson's farm was Kaleb going abroad for the first time. There are millions of people who really have no interest in doing so, heck I know some people who have never left Peterlee..
Clacton is a cesspit of low aspiration, low education and anger. Let’s not look in the mirror and reflect, let’s point the fingers. Far easier to blame someone else for your shortcomings, isn’t it?
The FRITLF phenomenon at play again. The far right do not and never have done self reflection. It’s always someone else’s fault. Even what they do themselves, even when they bring disaster upon themselves or the country by their own hands, it’s someone else’s fault. “She provoked me”. The abuser’s mentality.
It’s some else’s fault is a very persuasive argument for people with both little and little aspiration.
And that is both Farage’s target audience.
Another day
Another ‘let’s sneer at the underclass’ vibe on PB.
No wonder Reform exists. These people know they and their communities are despised. They have a vote. They will use it.
The sneering is from you calling them an underclass - they aren't.
I've learnt over the decades that a lot of people are very happy in their own small world and their aspirations are really just a house, a car and enough money to do their hobbies... And the modern world has often taken that simply world away from them..
Clacton is a cesspit of low aspiration, low education and anger. Let’s not look in the mirror and reflect, let’s point the fingers. Far easier to blame someone else for your shortcomings, isn’t it?
The FRITLF phenomenon at play again. The far right do not and never have done self reflection. It’s always someone else’s fault. Even what they do themselves, even when they bring disaster upon themselves or the country by their own hands, it’s someone else’s fault. “She provoked me”. The abuser’s mentality.
It’s some else’s fault is a very persuasive argument for people with both little and little aspiration.
And that is both Farage’s target audience.
Another day
Another ‘let’s sneer at the underclass’ vibe on PB.
No wonder Reform exists. These people know they and their communities are despised. They have a vote. They will use it.
Agreed. Put most of us in a similar situation to a struggling family in Clacton and we'd express similar sentiments to those in that vox pop.
The country doesn't work for many. And when Labour and the Conservatives seem to have no answers and/or seem to be making it worse, the rational thing to do is to look for alternatives.
It is hardly the fault of the Clacton voter that the main alternative is a corrupt bin-fighter.
The whole ridiculous circus is entirely the fault of Farage, first for getting up to some decidedly unorthodox financial shenanigans, then for a vanity by-election stunt.
Yet somehow that’s all the fault of people “sneering at the underclass? No it’s not. Honestly, I’m tired of the populist tosh that criticising the (rich, establishment) strongman leader is somehow criticising the voters.
It’s what Trump did, it’s what every fascist from Mussolini to Mao has done through history, it’s simply a trope and I can’t believe intelligent people fall for it every time.
Calling out the populist tosh isn't the issue.
Describing Clacton as a cesspit and badging the mass of Clacton voters as low aspiration is the issue here.
Which is, what, maybe one poster, two at most? The only person on here who regularly snarks about Reform voters (when he’s not being snarky about Ukrainians), because he’s trying to be an edgelord, is Dura.
Now count all the times that right wing posters on here have decried lazy benefits scroungers, talked about how we need to slash and burn the entitlements system, compared refugees to an invasion or an infestation, written off the entirety of the public sector as midwit layabouts (I expect a decent proportion of Clacton voters work in the public sector).
But no - that doesn’t count. Malcolm says something infinitely more insulting than anything this morning and that’s just a LOL. They can be as rude and sneery as they like, because they are entitled.
Clacton is a cesspit of low aspiration, low education and anger. Let’s not look in the mirror and reflect, let’s point the fingers. Far easier to blame someone else for your shortcomings, isn’t it?
The FRITLF phenomenon at play again. The far right do not and never have done self reflection. It’s always someone else’s fault. Even what they do themselves, even when they bring disaster upon themselves or the country by their own hands, it’s someone else’s fault. “She provoked me”. The abuser’s mentality.
It’s some else’s fault is a very persuasive argument for people with both little and little aspiration.
And that is both Farage’s target audience.
Another day
Another ‘let’s sneer at the underclass’ vibe on PB.
No wonder Reform exists. These people know they and their communities are despised. They have a vote. They will use it.
A fair point which deserves addressing.
But in return, what does Farage offer them other than grievance ? His only substantive policy - Brexit - has done nothing for them (and has very likely further impoverished poorer regions). Two third if the electorate now judge it a failure.
Immigration, his other rallying cry, rocketed post-Brexit under a government led by a Brexiteer. It's now falling substantially under a government he despises.
And his other great interest - crypto - is completely removed from the lives of those in Clacton. His constituency, which he barely deigns to visit.
The man is a charlatan.
I’m no fan of Farage.
Blaming the underclass for their position in life, when we don’t have equality of opportunity in this country, is extremely condescending.
Perhaps if people engaged with them and asked why the appeal instead of just sneering at them, then we’d find out.
The impression I get, and this is Micro not Macro, is Reform are the ones actually listening to these people and acknowledging their concerns.
That’s the first step.
And acknowledging concerns doesn’t mean agreeing with them.
You can also observe the vacuum on the the posh middle classes, who have the benefit of university education to look down on people not as gifted or as articulate as themselves and who have no experience of the tougher end of life.
The left have become the class snobs they used to criticise.
Twas ever thus
Orwell wrote extensively on intellectual snobbery on the Left. He actually recognised it in himself - his travels in the world of the "underclass" were about educating himself, as much as writing about it for the education of others.
Money hasn't got anything to do with being either pro or anti-establishment, because Trump has a lot of money and he's very definitely anti-establishment in US terms.
We need to get away from the idea that Trump is ideological in any way. He is opportunistic and transcational (though he never upholds his side of the transaction if it doesn't suit him).
Trump is against some parts of the establishment, but more than happy to work with others when it suits his purposes, which is to aggrandise and glorify Donald Trump. Thus, he is delighted with the Supreme Court - perhaps the most Establishment institution in Washington - when it does what he wants, and furious when it doesn't.
We also need to realise that, even for an American politician, he is spectacularly stupid. He doesn't understand a whole list of things that even a averagely smart 15-year-old gets: abstract concepts, foreign countries, simple economics, etc. etc. He doesn't realise that the world has moved on from the 1960s and 1970s, when his world view was formed. Battleships are just drone magnets these days; heavy manufacturing isn't America's most important sector any more; and Russia is much less powerful than the Soviet Union was. Michael Wolff said that Trump's foreign policy analysis goes no further than looking at a map, seeing that Russia and China are big and that countries in the free world generally aren't, and therefore saying "I need to get along with Russia and China but can bully my allies". I would dismiss that as TDS, but Wolff has spent a lot of time with Trump and it explains better than anything else why he fawns on Russia and China and is so nasty to his allies.
So I think looking for a consistent ideological stance in Trump, pro- or anti-Establishment or whatever, beyond a very few prejudices formed decades ago, is a hiding to nothing.
Clacton is a cesspit of low aspiration, low education and anger. Let’s not look in the mirror and reflect, let’s point the fingers. Far easier to blame someone else for your shortcomings, isn’t it?
The FRITLF phenomenon at play again. The far right do not and never have done self reflection. It’s always someone else’s fault. Even what they do themselves, even when they bring disaster upon themselves or the country by their own hands, it’s someone else’s fault. “She provoked me”. The abuser’s mentality.
It’s some else’s fault is a very persuasive argument for people with both little and little aspiration.
And that is both Farage’s target audience.
Another day
Another ‘let’s sneer at the underclass’ vibe on PB.
No wonder Reform exists. These people know they and their communities are despised. They have a vote. They will use it.
A fair point which deserves addressing.
But in return, what does Farage offer them other than grievance ? His only substantive policy - Brexit - has done nothing for them (and has very likely further impoverished poorer regions). Two third if the electorate now judge it a failure.
Immigration, his other rallying cry, rocketed post-Brexit under a government led by a Brexiteer. It's now falling substantially under a government he despises.
And his other great interest - crypto - is completely removed from the lives of those in Clacton. His constituency, which he barely deigns to visit.
The man is a charlatan.
I’m no fan of Farage.
Blaming the underclass for their position in life, when we don’t have equality of opportunity in this country, is extremely condescending.
Perhaps if people engaged with them and asked why the appeal instead of just sneering at them, then we’d find out.
The impression I get, and this is Micro not Macro, is Reform are the ones actually listening to these people and acknowledging their concerns.
That’s the first step.
And acknowledging concerns doesn’t mean agreeing with them.
You can also observe the vacuum on the the posh middle classes, who have the benefit of university education to look down on people not as gifted or as articulate as themselves and who have no experience of the tougher end of life.
The left have become the class snobs they used to criticise.
Another major fire in old grand building here in Scotland. Princes Street again, I think in what used to be the Debenhams.
Have there been many? Your comment reads like @Sandpit 's updates.
There was a huge one in what used to be Jenners. And of course at Central Station in Glasgow. We are paying a price for these large empty buildings on our High Streets.
I Liked that, but as a Thank you, not because I'm in favour of fires.
Clacton is a cesspit of low aspiration, low education and anger. Let’s not look in the mirror and reflect, let’s point the fingers. Far easier to blame someone else for your shortcomings, isn’t it?
The FRITLF phenomenon at play again. The far right do not and never have done self reflection. It’s always someone else’s fault. Even what they do themselves, even when they bring disaster upon themselves or the country by their own hands, it’s someone else’s fault. “She provoked me”. The abuser’s mentality.
It’s some else’s fault is a very persuasive argument for people with both little and little aspiration.
And that is both Farage’s target audience.
Another day
Another ‘let’s sneer at the underclass’ vibe on PB.
No wonder Reform exists. These people know they and their communities are despised. They have a vote. They will use it.
The sneering is from you calling them an underclass - they aren't.
I've learnt over the decades that a lot of people are very happy in their own small world and their aspirations are really just a house, a car and enough money to do their hobbies... And the modern world has often taken that simply world away from them..
you fking need to get out more
I know billionaires and people who rarely leave the council estate they were born in (because they don't want to). Not everyone has grand desires for a great live, some people really do just want the world they knew as they grew up to still exist..
Clacton is a cesspit of low aspiration, low education and anger. Let’s not look in the mirror and reflect, let’s point the fingers. Far easier to blame someone else for your shortcomings, isn’t it?
The FRITLF phenomenon at play again. The far right do not and never have done self reflection. It’s always someone else’s fault. Even what they do themselves, even when they bring disaster upon themselves or the country by their own hands, it’s someone else’s fault. “She provoked me”. The abuser’s mentality.
It’s some else’s fault is a very persuasive argument for people with both little and little aspiration.
And that is both Farage’s target audience.
Another day
Another ‘let’s sneer at the underclass’ vibe on PB.
No wonder Reform exists. These people know they and their communities are despised. They have a vote. They will use it.
Agreed. Put most of us in a similar situation to a struggling family in Clacton and we'd express similar sentiments to those in that vox pop.
The country doesn't work for many. And when Labour and the Conservatives seem to have no answers and/or seem to be making it worse, the rational thing to do is to look for alternatives.
It is hardly the fault of the Clacton voter that the main alternative is a corrupt bin-fighter.
The whole ridiculous circus is entirely the fault of Farage, first for getting up to some decidedly unorthodox financial shenanigans, then for a vanity by-election stunt.
Yet somehow that’s all the fault of people “sneering at the underclass? No it’s not. Honestly, I’m tired of the populist tosh that criticising the (rich, establishment) strongman leader is somehow criticising the voters.
It’s what Trump did, it’s what every fascist from Mussolini to Mao has done through history, it’s simply a trope and I can’t believe intelligent people fall for it every time.
Yes, it is also why Populism tends so much to corruption. The Dear Leader's decisions on which of his mates gets financially favoured cannot be criticised and any checks or scrutiny are evidence of "The Blob". It is the cult of personality vs democracy.
Are there any examples of a personally uncorruptable populist? The only one I can think of is Salazar of Portugal although in many respects he was an anti populist.
Lenin would be another.
It's very easy to live in poverty, in a palace. When anything you want is bought to you. And you have no expectation of ever leaving said palace.
Clacton is a cesspit of low aspiration, low education and anger. Let’s not look in the mirror and reflect, let’s point the fingers. Far easier to blame someone else for your shortcomings, isn’t it?
The FRITLF phenomenon at play again. The far right do not and never have done self reflection. It’s always someone else’s fault. Even what they do themselves, even when they bring disaster upon themselves or the country by their own hands, it’s someone else’s fault. “She provoked me”. The abuser’s mentality.
It’s some else’s fault is a very persuasive argument for people with both little and little aspiration.
And that is both Farage’s target audience.
Another day
Another ‘let’s sneer at the underclass’ vibe on PB.
No wonder Reform exists. These people know they and their communities are despised. They have a vote. They will use it.
A fair point which deserves addressing.
But in return, what does Farage offer them other than grievance ? His only substantive policy - Brexit - has done nothing for them (and has very likely further impoverished poorer regions). Two third if the electorate now judge it a failure.
Immigration, his other rallying cry, rocketed post-Brexit under a government led by a Brexiteer. It's now falling substantially under a government he despises.
And his other great interest - crypto - is completely removed from the lives of those in Clacton. His constituency, which he barely deigns to visit.
The man is a charlatan.
I’m no fan of Farage.
Blaming the underclass for their position in life, when we don’t have equality of opportunity in this country, is extremely condescending.
Perhaps if people engaged with them and asked why the appeal instead of just sneering at them, then we’d find out.
The impression I get, and this is Micro not Macro, is Reform are the ones actually listening to these people and acknowledging their concerns.
That’s the first step.
And acknowledging concerns doesn’t mean agreeing with them.
Farage et al may well be listening to grievances, but they seem to prefer stoking them to resolving them.
If he resolves them he's out of a job.
And Farage cares above all about himself and his own prosperity.
(And don't quote the European Parliament to me. He never expected to win that one. Even on the night, he was demanding a second referendum as the polls closed.)
Clacton is a cesspit of low aspiration, low education and anger. Let’s not look in the mirror and reflect, let’s point the fingers. Far easier to blame someone else for your shortcomings, isn’t it?
The FRITLF phenomenon at play again. The far right do not and never have done self reflection. It’s always someone else’s fault. Even what they do themselves, even when they bring disaster upon themselves or the country by their own hands, it’s someone else’s fault. “She provoked me”. The abuser’s mentality.
It’s some else’s fault is a very persuasive argument for people with both little and little aspiration.
And that is both Farage’s target audience.
Another day
Another ‘let’s sneer at the underclass’ vibe on PB.
No wonder Reform exists. These people know they and their communities are despised. They have a vote. They will use it.
Agreed. Put most of us in a similar situation to a struggling family in Clacton and we'd express similar sentiments to those in that vox pop.
The country doesn't work for many. And when Labour and the Conservatives seem to have no answers and/or seem to be making it worse, the rational thing to do is to look for alternatives.
It is hardly the fault of the Clacton voter that the main alternative is a corrupt bin-fighter.
The whole ridiculous circus is entirely the fault of Farage, first for getting up to some decidedly unorthodox financial shenanigans, then for a vanity by-election stunt.
Yet somehow that’s all the fault of people “sneering at the underclass? No it’s not. Honestly, I’m tired of the populist tosh that criticising the (rich, establishment) strongman leader is somehow criticising the voters.
It’s what Trump did, it’s what every fascist from Mussolini to Mao has done through history, it’s simply a trope and I can’t believe intelligent people fall for it every time.
Calling out the populist tosh isn't the issue.
Describing Clacton as a cesspit and badging the mass of Clacton voters as low aspiration is the issue here.
Which is, what, maybe one poster, two at most? The only person on here who regularly snarks about Reform voters (when he’s not being snarky about Ukrainians), because he’s trying to be an edgelord, is Dura.
Now count all the times that right wing posters on here have decried lazy benefits scroungers, talked about how we need to slash and burn the entitlements system, compared refugees to an invasion or an infestation, written off the entirety of the public sector as midwit layabouts (I expect a decent proportion of Clacton voters work in the public sector).
But no - that doesn’t count. Malcolm says something infinitely more insulting than anything this morning and that’s just a LOL. They can be as rude and sneery as they like, because they are entitled.
Agreed, but we are just talking across one another at this point.
I get that people think the Binface stuff is unfunny and that in general the 'traditional' parties are not addressing concerns which leads people to back Reform.
I don't get why that translates to being a snowflake and getting genuinely offended on Reform's behalf that people are amused that their by-election stunt will mostly involve only the bin.
It was a stunt, they wouldn't deny that, and they are unhappy with the return stunt by others. Fine, but why pretend either stunt is some important political principle being at stake?
At the risk of sounding even more pompous than usual the important political principle here is that the rule of law applies to all of our politicians, even Nigel Farage, and we do not live in a country like the USA where the chosen ones get to disregard the law and do what they feel like because they are so special.
It all depends upon what you mean by "the rule of law". The Rule of Law was a pretty big thing both in Soviet USSR and Nazi Germany. Sadly too many people but not you David trot out "the rule of law" when they mean the rule of the laws which suit me. That was Blair's intellectual void.
Another major fire in old grand building here in Scotland. Princes Street again, I think in what used to be the Debenhams.
Have there been many? Your comment reads like @Sandpit 's updates.
There was a huge one in what used to be Jenners. And of course at Central Station in Glasgow. We are paying a price for these large empty buildings on our High Streets.
I Liked that, but as a Thank you, not because I'm in favour of fires.
Central Station wasn't empty, it was a vape shop with multiple dodgy plug extensions that seems to have caused it.
Clacton is a cesspit of low aspiration, low education and anger. Let’s not look in the mirror and reflect, let’s point the fingers. Far easier to blame someone else for your shortcomings, isn’t it?
The FRITLF phenomenon at play again. The far right do not and never have done self reflection. It’s always someone else’s fault. Even what they do themselves, even when they bring disaster upon themselves or the country by their own hands, it’s someone else’s fault. “She provoked me”. The abuser’s mentality.
It’s some else’s fault is a very persuasive argument for people with both little and little aspiration.
And that is both Farage’s target audience.
Another day
Another ‘let’s sneer at the underclass’ vibe on PB.
No wonder Reform exists. These people know they and their communities are despised. They have a vote. They will use it.
A fair point which deserves addressing.
But in return, what does Farage offer them other than grievance ? His only substantive policy - Brexit - has done nothing for them (and has very likely further impoverished poorer regions). Two third if the electorate now judge it a failure.
Immigration, his other rallying cry, rocketed post-Brexit under a government led by a Brexiteer. It's now falling substantially under a government he despises.
And his other great interest - crypto - is completely removed from the lives of those in Clacton. His constituency, which he barely deigns to visit.
The man is a charlatan.
I’m no fan of Farage.
Blaming the underclass for their position in life, when we don’t have equality of opportunity in this country, is extremely condescending.
Perhaps if people engaged with them and asked why the appeal instead of just sneering at them, then we’d find out.
The impression I get, and this is Micro not Macro, is Reform are the ones actually listening to these people and acknowledging their concerns.
That’s the first step.
And acknowledging concerns doesn’t mean agreeing with them.
You can also observe the vacuum on the the posh middle classes, who have the benefit of university education to look down on people not as gifted or as articulate as themselves and who have no experience of the tougher end of life.
The left have become the class snobs they used to criticise.
This is hardly a new development, Orwell was writing about this in the 1940s (and sounding quite sneering himself in the process, as is always the risk with these sorts of things of course). I've probably come across a broader range of people than many have, I've done menial jobs for sub minimum wage, I've lived on a council estate, I've spent 8 years living abroad, I've lived in Scotland, the North East and London, I know billionaires and people on benefits. It takes all sorts, everyone has lived a different life and brings those experiences to bear when they look at the world. I try not to judge people but I do value certain things like being kind and interested in other people and I am bored by ignorance. Unkindness and ignorance can be found everywhere and I won't apologise for calling it out wherever I see it. I don't consider myself so far removed from anyone else in this country that I can't criticise them for fear of being perceived as a snob.
Clacton is a cesspit of low aspiration, low education and anger. Let’s not look in the mirror and reflect, let’s point the fingers. Far easier to blame someone else for your shortcomings, isn’t it?
The FRITLF phenomenon at play again. The far right do not and never have done self reflection. It’s always someone else’s fault. Even what they do themselves, even when they bring disaster upon themselves or the country by their own hands, it’s someone else’s fault. “She provoked me”. The abuser’s mentality.
It’s some else’s fault is a very persuasive argument for people with both little and little aspiration.
And that is both Farage’s target audience.
Another day
Another ‘let’s sneer at the underclass’ vibe on PB.
No wonder Reform exists. These people know they and their communities are despised. They have a vote. They will use it.
Agreed. Put most of us in a similar situation to a struggling family in Clacton and we'd express similar sentiments to those in that vox pop.
The country doesn't work for many. And when Labour and the Conservatives seem to have no answers and/or seem to be making it worse, the rational thing to do is to look for alternatives.
It is hardly the fault of the Clacton voter that the main alternative is a corrupt bin-fighter.
The whole ridiculous circus is entirely the fault of Farage, first for getting up to some decidedly unorthodox financial shenanigans, then for a vanity by-election stunt.
Yet somehow that’s all the fault of people “sneering at the underclass? No it’s not. Honestly, I’m tired of the populist tosh that criticising the (rich, establishment) strongman leader is somehow criticising the voters.
It’s what Trump did, it’s what every fascist from Mussolini to Mao has done through history, it’s simply a trope and I can’t believe intelligent people fall for it every time.
Calling out the populist tosh isn't the issue.
Describing Clacton as a cesspit and badging the mass of Clacton voters as low aspiration is the issue here.
“Basket of deplorables” as someone once said before losing an election.
It’s no surprise that people vote for Farage and Trump, when so many mainstream politicians appear not to care for an area and actively dispise those living there.
Now you can argue that Farage and Trump offer no solutions, but at least they present as listening to the left behind, rather than sneering at them.
They may present as listening to the "left behind", but do their policies actually reflect that?
For example Trump's cuts have resulted in closures of rural hospitals in order to fund tax cuts for multi-billionaires. Gutting of environmental protections puts industrial waste into the waterways that they fish in, etc.
It is the same with Reform. What policies do Reform have to improve education and upskill young people in "left behind towns" like Clacton? Compare that to Farage's intrrest in deregulating Crypto.
The Dems need to ditch him and bring in a candidate that can win the seat.
If he'd been a GOP candidate Planter's alleged misdeeds would barely have raised an eyebrow and he'd have easily gone on to win a Republican primary like Paxton in Texas
The Dems need to ditch him and bring in a candidate that can win the seat.
If he'd been a GOP candidate Planter's alleged misdeeds would barely have raised an eyebrow and he'd have easily gone on to win a Republican primary like Paxton in Texas
As with Biden, they’re going to ditch Platner now at the last minute, having spent months ignoring all of his very obvious flaws through the primary that he won, because the polling says they’ll lose if they stick with him.
Clacton is a cesspit of low aspiration, low education and anger. Let’s not look in the mirror and reflect, let’s point the fingers. Far easier to blame someone else for your shortcomings, isn’t it?
The FRITLF phenomenon at play again. The far right do not and never have done self reflection. It’s always someone else’s fault. Even what they do themselves, even when they bring disaster upon themselves or the country by their own hands, it’s someone else’s fault. “She provoked me”. The abuser’s mentality.
It’s some else’s fault is a very persuasive argument for people with both little and little aspiration.
And that is both Farage’s target audience.
Another day
Another ‘let’s sneer at the underclass’ vibe on PB.
No wonder Reform exists. These people know they and their communities are despised. They have a vote. They will use it.
The sneering is from you calling them an underclass - they aren't.
I've learnt over the decades that a lot of people are very happy in their own small world and their aspirations are really just a house, a car and enough money to do their hobbies... And the modern world has often taken that simply world away from them..
you fking need to get out more
I know billionaires and people who rarely leave the council estate they were born in (because they don't want to). Not everyone has grand desires for a great live, some people really do just want the world they knew as they grew up to still exist..
Not just that- it's an incredibly human thing to want. It is not something to despise. As animals in clothes, we're mostly not really set up to be Anywheres. (Whose theory of Brexit was that?)
Trouble is that the prosperity we crave depends on distant connectedness and mobility. And that's a really hard contradiction to resolve. (It does explain the Golf Club Bore wing of Reform; they are prosperous enough to care about higher things.)
Clacton is a cesspit of low aspiration, low education and anger. Let’s not look in the mirror and reflect, let’s point the fingers. Far easier to blame someone else for your shortcomings, isn’t it?
The FRITLF phenomenon at play again. The far right do not and never have done self reflection. It’s always someone else’s fault. Even what they do themselves, even when they bring disaster upon themselves or the country by their own hands, it’s someone else’s fault. “She provoked me”. The abuser’s mentality.
It’s some else’s fault is a very persuasive argument for people with both little and little aspiration.
And that is both Farage’s target audience.
Another day
Another ‘let’s sneer at the underclass’ vibe on PB.
No wonder Reform exists. These people know they and their communities are despised. They have a vote. They will use it.
A fair point which deserves addressing.
But in return, what does Farage offer them other than grievance ? His only substantive policy - Brexit - has done nothing for them (and has very likely further impoverished poorer regions). Two third if the electorate now judge it a failure.
Immigration, his other rallying cry, rocketed post-Brexit under a government led by a Brexiteer. It's now falling substantially under a government he despises.
And his other great interest - crypto - is completely removed from the lives of those in Clacton. His constituency, which he barely deigns to visit.
The man is a charlatan.
I’m no fan of Farage.
Blaming the underclass for their position in life, when we don’t have equality of opportunity in this country, is extremely condescending.
Perhaps if people engaged with them and asked why the appeal instead of just sneering at them, then we’d find out.
The impression I get, and this is Micro not Macro, is Reform are the ones actually listening to these people and acknowledging their concerns.
That’s the first step.
And acknowledging concerns doesn’t mean agreeing with them.
You can also observe the vacuum on the the posh middle classes, who have the benefit of university education to look down on people not as gifted or as articulate as themselves and who have no experience of the tougher end of life.
The left have become the class snobs they used to criticise.
This is hardly a new development, Orwell was writing about this in the 1940s (and sounding quite sneering himself in the process, as is always the risk with these sorts of things of course). I've probably come across a broader range of people than many have, I've done menial jobs for sub minimum wage, I've lived on a council estate, I've spent 8 years living abroad, I've lived in Scotland, the North East and London, I know billionaires and people on benefits. It takes all sorts, everyone has lived a different life and brings those experiences to bear when they look at the world. I try not to judge people but I do value certain things like being kind and interested in other people and I am bored by ignorance. Unkindness and ignorance can be found everywhere and I won't apologise for calling it out wherever I see it. I don't consider myself so far removed from anyone else in this country that I can't criticise them for fear of being perceived as a snob.
Well I could let this descend into the 4 Yorkshiremen but I'll simply say that you appear to have lost any empathy for those you have left behind. The sign of a successful society is it lifts everyone one up rather than a handful of snobs.
Clacton is a cesspit of low aspiration, low education and anger. Let’s not look in the mirror and reflect, let’s point the fingers. Far easier to blame someone else for your shortcomings, isn’t it?
The FRITLF phenomenon at play again. The far right do not and never have done self reflection. It’s always someone else’s fault. Even what they do themselves, even when they bring disaster upon themselves or the country by their own hands, it’s someone else’s fault. “She provoked me”. The abuser’s mentality.
It’s some else’s fault is a very persuasive argument for people with both little and little aspiration.
And that is both Farage’s target audience.
Another day
Another ‘let’s sneer at the underclass’ vibe on PB.
No wonder Reform exists. These people know they and their communities are despised. They have a vote. They will use it.
The sneering is from you calling them an underclass - they aren't.
I've learnt over the decades that a lot of people are very happy in their own small world and their aspirations are really just a house, a car and enough money to do their hobbies... And the modern world has often taken that simply world away from them..
you fking need to get out more
I know billionaires and people who rarely leave the council estate they were born in (because they don't want to). Not everyone has grand desires for a great live, some people really do just want the world they knew as they grew up to still exist..
Not just that- it's an incredibly human thing to want. It is not something to despise. As animals in clothes, we're mostly not really set up to be Anywheres. (Whose theory of Brexit was that?)
Trouble is that the prosperity we crave depends on distant connectedness and mobility. And that's a really hard contradiction to resolve. (It does explain the Gold Club Bore wing of Reform; they are prosperous enough to care about higher things.)
Reform wouldnt exist if the Tories and Labour were doing their job right. They have created a huge vacuum in society and left it for Farage.
Clacton is a cesspit of low aspiration, low education and anger. Let’s not look in the mirror and reflect, let’s point the fingers. Far easier to blame someone else for your shortcomings, isn’t it?
The FRITLF phenomenon at play again. The far right do not and never have done self reflection. It’s always someone else’s fault. Even what they do themselves, even when they bring disaster upon themselves or the country by their own hands, it’s someone else’s fault. “She provoked me”. The abuser’s mentality.
It’s some else’s fault is a very persuasive argument for people with both little and little aspiration.
And that is both Farage’s target audience.
Another day
Another ‘let’s sneer at the underclass’ vibe on PB.
No wonder Reform exists. These people know they and their communities are despised. They have a vote. They will use it.
The sneering is from you calling them an underclass - they aren't.
I've learnt over the decades that a lot of people are very happy in their own small world and their aspirations are really just a house, a car and enough money to do their hobbies... And the modern world has often taken that simply world away from them..
you fking need to get out more
I know billionaires and people who rarely leave the council estate they were born in (because they don't want to). Not everyone has grand desires for a great live, some people really do just want the world they knew as they grew up to still exist..
Not just that- it's an incredibly human thing to want. It is not something to despise. As animals in clothes, we're mostly not really set up to be Anywheres. (Whose theory of Brexit was that?)
Trouble is that the prosperity we crave depends on distant connectedness and mobility. And that's a really hard contradiction to resolve. (It does explain the Gold Club Bore wing of Reform; they are prosperous enough to care about higher things.)
Reform wouldnt exist if the Tories and Labour were doing their job right. They have created a huge vacuum in society and left it for Farage.
I’m not sure what your point is. That is literally democracy.
Clacton is a cesspit of low aspiration, low education and anger. Let’s not look in the mirror and reflect, let’s point the fingers. Far easier to blame someone else for your shortcomings, isn’t it?
The FRITLF phenomenon at play again. The far right do not and never have done self reflection. It’s always someone else’s fault. Even what they do themselves, even when they bring disaster upon themselves or the country by their own hands, it’s someone else’s fault. “She provoked me”. The abuser’s mentality.
It’s some else’s fault is a very persuasive argument for people with both little and little aspiration.
And that is both Farage’s target audience.
Another day
Another ‘let’s sneer at the underclass’ vibe on PB.
No wonder Reform exists. These people know they and their communities are despised. They have a vote. They will use it.
A fair point which deserves addressing.
But in return, what does Farage offer them other than grievance ? His only substantive policy - Brexit - has done nothing for them (and has very likely further impoverished poorer regions). Two third if the electorate now judge it a failure.
Immigration, his other rallying cry, rocketed post-Brexit under a government led by a Brexiteer. It's now falling substantially under a government he despises.
And his other great interest - crypto - is completely removed from the lives of those in Clacton. His constituency, which he barely deigns to visit.
The man is a charlatan.
I’m no fan of Farage.
Blaming the underclass for their position in life, when we don’t have equality of opportunity in this country, is extremely condescending.
Perhaps if people engaged with them and asked why the appeal instead of just sneering at them, then we’d find out.
The impression I get, and this is Micro not Macro, is Reform are the ones actually listening to these people and acknowledging their concerns.
That’s the first step.
And acknowledging concerns doesn’t mean agreeing with them.
You can also observe the vacuum on the the posh middle classes, who have the benefit of university education to look down on people not as gifted or as articulate as themselves and who have no experience of the tougher end of life.
The left have become the class snobs they used to criticise.
This is hardly a new development, Orwell was writing about this in the 1940s (and sounding quite sneering himself in the process, as is always the risk with these sorts of things of course). I've probably come across a broader range of people than many have, I've done menial jobs for sub minimum wage, I've lived on a council estate, I've spent 8 years living abroad, I've lived in Scotland, the North East and London, I know billionaires and people on benefits. It takes all sorts, everyone has lived a different life and brings those experiences to bear when they look at the world. I try not to judge people but I do value certain things like being kind and interested in other people and I am bored by ignorance. Unkindness and ignorance can be found everywhere and I won't apologise for calling it out wherever I see it. I don't consider myself so far removed from anyone else in this country that I can't criticise them for fear of being perceived as a snob.
Well I could let this descend into the 4 Yorkshiremen but I'll simply say that you appear to have lost any empathy for those you have left behind. The sign of a successful society is it lifts everyone one up rather than a handful of snobs.
Clacton is a cesspit of low aspiration, low education and anger. Let’s not look in the mirror and reflect, let’s point the fingers. Far easier to blame someone else for your shortcomings, isn’t it?
The FRITLF phenomenon at play again. The far right do not and never have done self reflection. It’s always someone else’s fault. Even what they do themselves, even when they bring disaster upon themselves or the country by their own hands, it’s someone else’s fault. “She provoked me”. The abuser’s mentality.
It’s some else’s fault is a very persuasive argument for people with both little and little aspiration.
And that is both Farage’s target audience.
Another day
Another ‘let’s sneer at the underclass’ vibe on PB.
No wonder Reform exists. These people know they and their communities are despised. They have a vote. They will use it.
The sneering is from you calling them an underclass - they aren't.
I've learnt over the decades that a lot of people are very happy in their own small world and their aspirations are really just a house, a car and enough money to do their hobbies... And the modern world has often taken that simply world away from them..
you fking need to get out more
I know billionaires and people who rarely leave the council estate they were born in (because they don't want to). Not everyone has grand desires for a great live, some people really do just want the world they knew as they grew up to still exist..
Not just that- it's an incredibly human thing to want. It is not something to despise. As animals in clothes, we're mostly not really set up to be Anywheres. (Whose theory of Brexit was that?)
Trouble is that the prosperity we crave depends on distant connectedness and mobility. And that's a really hard contradiction to resolve. (It does explain the Gold Club Bore wing of Reform; they are prosperous enough to care about higher things.)
Reform wouldnt exist if the Tories and Labour were doing their job right. They have created a huge vacuum in society and left it for Farage.
I’m not sure what your point is. That is literally democracy.
The point is quite simple. There's no point the posh parties moaning about Farage when they have been ignoring those who vote for him for years. And yes that is democracy.
Clacton is a cesspit of low aspiration, low education and anger. Let’s not look in the mirror and reflect, let’s point the fingers. Far easier to blame someone else for your shortcomings, isn’t it?
The FRITLF phenomenon at play again. The far right do not and never have done self reflection. It’s always someone else’s fault. Even what they do themselves, even when they bring disaster upon themselves or the country by their own hands, it’s someone else’s fault. “She provoked me”. The abuser’s mentality.
It’s some else’s fault is a very persuasive argument for people with both little and little aspiration.
And that is both Farage’s target audience.
Another day
Another ‘let’s sneer at the underclass’ vibe on PB.
No wonder Reform exists. These people know they and their communities are despised. They have a vote. They will use it.
The sneering is from you calling them an underclass - they aren't.
I've learnt over the decades that a lot of people are very happy in their own small world and their aspirations are really just a house, a car and enough money to do their hobbies... And the modern world has often taken that simply world away from them..
you fking need to get out more
I know billionaires and people who rarely leave the council estate they were born in (because they don't want to). Not everyone has grand desires for a great live, some people really do just want the world they knew as they grew up to still exist..
Not just that- it's an incredibly human thing to want. It is not something to despise. As animals in clothes, we're mostly not really set up to be Anywheres. (Whose theory of Brexit was that?)
Trouble is that the prosperity we crave depends on distant connectedness and mobility. And that's a really hard contradiction to resolve. (It does explain the Gold Club Bore wing of Reform; they are prosperous enough to care about higher things.)
Reform wouldnt exist if the Tories and Labour were doing their job right. They have created a huge vacuum in society and left it for Farage.
I’m not sure what your point is. That is literally democracy.
The point is quite simple. There's no point the posh parties moaning about Farage when they have been ignoring those who vote for him for years. And yes that is democracy.
Labour reduced pensioner poverty from over 50% to about 15% from 1997 to 2005. Yet it’s these low income households that are now voting for Reform.
Clacton is a cesspit of low aspiration, low education and anger. Let’s not look in the mirror and reflect, let’s point the fingers. Far easier to blame someone else for your shortcomings, isn’t it?
The FRITLF phenomenon at play again. The far right do not and never have done self reflection. It’s always someone else’s fault. Even what they do themselves, even when they bring disaster upon themselves or the country by their own hands, it’s someone else’s fault. “She provoked me”. The abuser’s mentality.
It’s some else’s fault is a very persuasive argument for people with both little and little aspiration.
And that is both Farage’s target audience.
Another day
Another ‘let’s sneer at the underclass’ vibe on PB.
No wonder Reform exists. These people know they and their communities are despised. They have a vote. They will use it.
Agreed. Put most of us in a similar situation to a struggling family in Clacton and we'd express similar sentiments to those in that vox pop.
The country doesn't work for many. And when Labour and the Conservatives seem to have no answers and/or seem to be making it worse, the rational thing to do is to look for alternatives.
It is hardly the fault of the Clacton voter that the main alternative is a corrupt bin-fighter.
The whole ridiculous circus is entirely the fault of Farage, first for getting up to some decidedly unorthodox financial shenanigans, then for a vanity by-election stunt.
Yet somehow that’s all the fault of people “sneering at the underclass? No it’s not. Honestly, I’m tired of the populist tosh that criticising the (rich, establishment) strongman leader is somehow criticising the voters.
It’s what Trump did, it’s what every fascist from Mussolini to Mao has done through history, it’s simply a trope and I can’t believe intelligent people fall for it every time.
Calling out the populist tosh isn't the issue.
Describing Clacton as a cesspit and badging the mass of Clacton voters as low aspiration is the issue here.
I'm not the person who thinks low aspirations is a disability - what many people want is just the life they imagined as a kid.
And for many people that's just a house round the corner from their mum, a couple of happy kids and job that gives them enough money to do what they want.
"Why anti-migrant tensions are rising in South Africa
Thousands of citizens from Malawi, Zimbabwe, Mozambique and other African countries have fled South Africa in recent weeks, after a deadline for foreigners to leave the country, set by groups opposed to illegal migration."
"Why anti-migrant tensions are rising in South Africa
Thousands of citizens from Malawi, Zimbabwe, Mozambique and other African countries have fled South Africa in recent weeks, after a deadline for foreigners to leave the country, set by groups opposed to illegal migration."
If the WWC voters in struggling places like Clacton were to abandon the reactionary right wing populism that doesn't threaten financial elites in favour of its left wing 'eat the rich' equivalent, then see who starts doing the demonising of them. It'll be pretty much the same people who are complaining about it now.
That Joe 'n' Lowe show. 'One murder'. What is it with right wing dingbats and downplaying mass school shootings? At least Rupe hasn't suggested they were crisis actors. Yet.
Hazel Appleyard @HazelAppleyard Tell me I did not just hear Rupert Lowe downplay Dunblane as “one murder” on the Joe Rogan podcast????
Clacton is a cesspit of low aspiration, low education and anger. Let’s not look in the mirror and reflect, let’s point the fingers. Far easier to blame someone else for your shortcomings, isn’t it?
The FRITLF phenomenon at play again. The far right do not and never have done self reflection. It’s always someone else’s fault. Even what they do themselves, even when they bring disaster upon themselves or the country by their own hands, it’s someone else’s fault. “She provoked me”. The abuser’s mentality.
It’s some else’s fault is a very persuasive argument for people with both little and little aspiration.
And that is both Farage’s target audience.
Another day
Another ‘let’s sneer at the underclass’ vibe on PB.
No wonder Reform exists. These people know they and their communities are despised. They have a vote. They will use it.
The sneering is from you calling them an underclass - they aren't.
I've learnt over the decades that a lot of people are very happy in their own small world and their aspirations are really just a house, a car and enough money to do their hobbies... And the modern world has often taken that simply world away from them..
you fking need to get out more
I know billionaires and people who rarely leave the council estate they were born in (because they don't want to). Not everyone has grand desires for a great live, some people really do just want the world they knew as they grew up to still exist..
Not just that- it's an incredibly human thing to want. It is not something to despise. As animals in clothes, we're mostly not really set up to be Anywheres. (Whose theory of Brexit was that?)
Trouble is that the prosperity we crave depends on distant connectedness and mobility. And that's a really hard contradiction to resolve. (It does explain the Gold Club Bore wing of Reform; they are prosperous enough to care about higher things.)
Reform wouldnt exist if the Tories and Labour were doing their job right. They have created a huge vacuum in society and left it for Farage.
I’m not sure what your point is. That is literally democracy.
The point is quite simple. There's no point the posh parties moaning about Farage when they have been ignoring those who vote for him for years. And yes that is democracy.
Why shouldn’t they moan about Farage if they disagree with him? Posh views and opinions are still valid views and opinions.
Another major fire in old grand building here in Scotland. Princes Street again, I think in what used to be the Debenhams.
Have there been many? Your comment reads like @Sandpit 's updates.
There was a huge one in what used to be Jenners. And of course at Central Station in Glasgow. We are paying a price for these large empty buildings on our High Streets.
I Liked that, but as a Thank you, not because I'm in favour of fires.
Central Station wasn't empty, it was a vape shop with multiple dodgy plug extensions that seems to have caused it.
North side of the station still sealed off as of last week.
Clacton is a cesspit of low aspiration, low education and anger. Let’s not look in the mirror and reflect, let’s point the fingers. Far easier to blame someone else for your shortcomings, isn’t it?
The FRITLF phenomenon at play again. The far right do not and never have done self reflection. It’s always someone else’s fault. Even what they do themselves, even when they bring disaster upon themselves or the country by their own hands, it’s someone else’s fault. “She provoked me”. The abuser’s mentality.
It’s some else’s fault is a very persuasive argument for people with both little and little aspiration.
And that is both Farage’s target audience.
Another day
Another ‘let’s sneer at the underclass’ vibe on PB.
No wonder Reform exists. These people know they and their communities are despised. They have a vote. They will use it.
The sneering is from you calling them an underclass - they aren't.
I've learnt over the decades that a lot of people are very happy in their own small world and their aspirations are really just a house, a car and enough money to do their hobbies... And the modern world has often taken that simply world away from them..
you fking need to get out more
I know billionaires and people who rarely leave the council estate they were born in (because they don't want to). Not everyone has grand desires for a great live, some people really do just want the world they knew as they grew up to still exist..
Not just that- it's an incredibly human thing to want. It is not something to despise. As animals in clothes, we're mostly not really set up to be Anywheres. (Whose theory of Brexit was that?)
Trouble is that the prosperity we crave depends on distant connectedness and mobility. And that's a really hard contradiction to resolve. (It does explain the Gold Club Bore wing of Reform; they are prosperous enough to care about higher things.)
Comments
The Unitary theory in full flow. But the UK system is different (for the moment).
https://static.heritage.org/project2025/2025_MandateForLeadership_FULL.pdf
It's always been the case that vox pops, letters to the editor or phone-in calls have been selected to be interesting, not statistically representative. Most digital media are the same or much worse.
As the Iranians are finding out.
And this follows on from the long term project on the extreme right, in the US, to get “their” guys into the institutions. See judges and lower level officials - such as election officials.
Every Reform MP has entered the by election fray except one (SFAICS); Danny Kruger, the only Reform MP normal people generally think is a decent person.
During the Makerfield Vorderman row he produced a comment sounding like a hostage video. Over the Farage by election stunt he has been resolutely silent. What is his next move?
The country doesn't work for many. And when Labour and the Conservatives seem to have no answers and/or seem to be making it worse, the rational thing to do is to look for alternatives.
It is hardly the fault of the Clacton voter that the main alternative is a corrupt bin-fighter.
By th’ mass and ’tis, like a camel indeed.
Methinks it is like a weasel.
It is back’d like a weasel.
Or like a whale.
Very like a whale.
Most people just stay at home rather than actively vote for a protest candidate.
But the usual reminder that Reform do not have a ground game and rely on media stunts for their coverage. Perhaps we'll see more Reform MP's resign to stand again - if they feel they can carry their electorate.
https://www.parliament.uk/about/how/elections-and-voting/by-elections/by-elections-since-the-2024-general-election/
But in return, what does Farage offer them other than grievance ? His only substantive policy - Brexit - has done nothing for them (and has very likely further impoverished poorer regions).
Two third if the electorate now judge it a failure.
Immigration, his other rallying cry, rocketed post-Brexit under a government led by a Brexiteer. It's now falling substantially under a government he despises.
And his other great interest - crypto - is completely removed from the lives of those in Clacton. His constituency, which he barely deigns to visit.
The man is a charlatan.
They are not inevitable winners, and frankly its getting boring how the response to criticism of them is brushed off as elites just not getting the people and plays into their hands - how is one meant to criticise them even if they warrant it then? - but it is the case that they are still the most popular party in the UK at the moment.
Yet somehow that’s all the fault of people “sneering at the underclass? No it’s not. Honestly, I’m tired of the populist tosh that criticising the (rich, establishment) strongman leader is somehow criticising the voters.
It’s what Trump did, it’s what every fascist from Mussolini to Mao has done through history, it’s simply a trope and I can’t believe intelligent people fall for it every time.
On voting intention measures the right is thriving. Whether that will transfer into actual MPs bums on green seats is a different question, but it’s silly to suggest that only having 7 MPs is the measure that counts when the party of government , with a huge majority, is throwing away its election winning leader largely because of the polls.
So that’s two sets of neo-Nazis, one fascist and a bloke with a bin on his head.
Poor Clacton.
Coddling the electorate even when they are simply wrong about something is deeply harmful to our politics; the reason the country increasingly feels like it’s ungovernable.
Describing Clacton as a cesspit and badging the mass of Clacton voters as low aspiration is the issue here.
I'm positive about their long term chances, so the stock dismissal that people are just sneering at the lower classes and ignoring Reform's appeal, is a load of old wank. It's more than possible to heartily dislike them and criticise them but still think things are looking good for them.
However, things are tighter than Reform pretend, and a small drop in support moves them from likely majority ir largest party to 'only' a hundred or so seats. Still a tremendous rise, but a small change would see a very different projected outcome.
https://x.com/nocontextepl/status/2074838407679713543?s=61&t=LYVEHh2mqFy1oUJAdCfe-Q
I am aware of the Count's manifesto but surely his true Manifesto is 5 words: I am not Nigel Farage.
Could be the most popular one for a long time.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgev4jq4jngo
It’s no surprise that people vote for Farage and Trump, when so many mainstream politicians appear not to care for an area and actively dispise those living there.
Now you can argue that Farage and Trump offer no solutions, but at least they present as listening to the left behind, rather than sneering at them.
Tim Stanley: “Well you didn’t.”
https://x.com/KevinASchofield/status/2074908384894013666
I don't get why that translates to being a snowflake and getting genuinely offended on Reform's behalf that people are amused that their by-election stunt will mostly involve only the bin.
It was a stunt, they wouldn't deny that, and they are unhappy with the return stunt by others. Fine, but why pretend either stunt is some important political principle being at stake?
Blaming the underclass for their position in life, when we don’t have equality of opportunity in this country, is extremely condescending.
Perhaps if people engaged with them and asked why the appeal instead of just sneering at them, then we’d find out.
The impression I get, and this is Micro not Macro, is Reform are the ones actually listening to these people and acknowledging their concerns.
That’s the first step.
And acknowledging concerns doesn’t mean agreeing with them.
But in the more deprived areas, where they are most likely to win seats, council house tenants are their most important cohort. And that’s why Farage is so careful in his rhetoric around welfare.
And older homeowners can still be very poor - owning a house in Clacton and surviving on State Pension makes you worse off than a 28-year grad working and renting in London, I’d suggest.
They know the mainstream parties are not getting the country working for them. They may diagnose the main issue wrongly (blaming immigration, say) but then I'd argue most of the electorate, and most of the political class, are likewise failing to adequately diagnose the issue right now.
Are the voters of Clacton any worse informed than the voters of Chingford and Woodford Green who will vote for anyone who promises they can keep both their two car household and the triple lock?
He's got a much better chance of succeeding in that drive than a bunch of grifters who seek out scapegoats not solutions.
It obviates the need to interrogate their thoughts and hopes and reinforced theiru h loved sense of moral superiority. It's one reason the site is so boring these days
*I'm sure there are many fine people there
Joe Rogan vs Rupert Lowe MP
https://open.spotify.com/episode/1f6tXaeR1XNYwSF0tqpEDT?si=LN8i5y47S6qlau-jg8FTIg&utm_source=copy-link
2 hours long, so will listen when in the car later. One can guess the main subject of discussion is the one we don’t talk about on here.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2026/07/08/burnham-bounce-puts-labour-ahead-of-reform
There used to be a PBer who went on endlessly about AI replacing man-made art, I wonder what happened to him, and all the hypothetical masterpieces?
The left badly needs an economically coherent narrative that addresses the concerns of financially insecure voters.
I suspect the narrative is there, but I don't hear anyone making it.
Trump is against some parts of the establishment, but more than happy to work with others when it suits his purposes, which is to aggrandise and glorify Donald Trump. Thus, he is delighted with the Supreme Court - perhaps the most Establishment institution in Washington - when it does what he wants, and furious when it doesn't.
We also need to realise that, even for an American politician, he is spectacularly stupid. He doesn't understand a whole list of things that even a averagely smart 15-year-old gets: abstract concepts, foreign countries, simple economics, etc. etc. He doesn't realise that the world has moved on from the 1960s and 1970s, when his world view was formed. Battleships are just drone magnets these days; heavy manufacturing isn't America's most important sector any more; and Russia is much less powerful than the Soviet Union was. Michael Wolff said that Trump's foreign policy analysis goes no further than looking at a map, seeing that Russia and China are big and that countries in the free world generally aren't, and therefore saying "I need to get along with Russia and China but can bully my allies". I would dismiss that as TDS, but Wolff has spent a lot of time with Trump and it explains better than anything else why he fawns on Russia and China and is so nasty to his allies.
So I think looking for a consistent ideological stance in Trump, pro- or anti-Establishment or whatever, beyond a very few prejudices formed decades ago, is a hiding to nothing.
The left have become the class snobs they used to criticise.
I've learnt over the decades that a lot of people are very happy in their own small world and their aspirations are really just a house, a car and enough money to do their hobbies... And the modern world has often taken that simply world away from them..
Now one of the big stories on the last series of Clarkson's farm was Kaleb going abroad for the first time. There are millions of people who really have no interest in doing so, heck I know some people who have never left Peterlee..
Now count all the times that right wing posters on here have decried lazy benefits scroungers, talked about how we need to slash and burn the entitlements system, compared refugees to an invasion or an infestation, written off the entirety of the public sector as midwit layabouts (I expect a decent proportion of Clacton voters work in the public sector).
But no - that doesn’t count. Malcolm says something infinitely more insulting than anything this morning and that’s just a LOL. They can be as rude and sneery as they like, because they are entitled.
Orwell wrote extensively on intellectual snobbery on the Left. He actually recognised it in himself - his travels in the world of the "underclass" were about educating himself, as much as writing about it for the education of others.
And Farage cares above all about himself and his own prosperity.
(And don't quote the European Parliament to me. He never expected to win that one. Even on the night, he was demanding a second referendum as the polls closed.)
I've probably come across a broader range of people than many have, I've done menial jobs for sub minimum wage, I've lived on a council estate, I've spent 8 years living abroad, I've lived in Scotland, the North East and London, I know billionaires and people on benefits. It takes all sorts, everyone has lived a different life and brings those experiences to bear when they look at the world. I try not to judge people but I do value certain things like being kind and interested in other people and I am bored by ignorance. Unkindness and ignorance can be found everywhere and I won't apologise for calling it out wherever I see it. I don't consider myself so far removed from anyone else in this country that I can't criticise them for fear of being perceived as a snob.
For example Trump's cuts have resulted in closures of rural hospitals in order to fund tax cuts for multi-billionaires. Gutting of environmental protections puts industrial waste into the waterways that they fish in, etc.
It is the same with Reform. What policies do Reform have to improve education and upskill young people in "left behind towns" like Clacton? Compare that to Farage's intrrest in deregulating Crypto.
If he'd been a GOP candidate Planter's alleged misdeeds would barely have raised an eyebrow and he'd have easily gone on to win a Republican primary like Paxton in Texas
Trouble is that the prosperity we crave depends on distant connectedness and mobility. And that's a really hard contradiction to resolve. (It does explain the Golf Club Bore wing of Reform; they are prosperous enough to care about higher things.)
The sign of a successful society is it lifts everyone one up rather than a handful of snobs.
And for many people that's just a house round the corner from their mum, a couple of happy kids and job that gives them enough money to do what they want.
Thousands of citizens from Malawi, Zimbabwe, Mozambique and other African countries have fled South Africa in recent weeks, after a deadline for foreigners to leave the country, set by groups opposed to illegal migration."
https://news.sky.com/video/is-mob-justice-returning-to-south-africa-13561764
What is it with right wing dingbats and downplaying mass school shootings? At least Rupe hasn't suggested they were crisis actors. Yet.
Hazel Appleyard
@HazelAppleyard
Tell me I did not just hear Rupert Lowe downplay Dunblane as “one murder” on the Joe Rogan podcast????
Sixteen 5-6 year old children and their teacher??
https://x.com/HazelAppleyard/status/2074918949012054054?s=20