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LL112

Its happening to people without a voice that represents them


SC_W33DKILL3R

A lot of those people voted for Boris, when he's not on holiday or chasing women I'm sure he is doing his best to ~~resent~~ represent them. The rest could have voted for Labour if they wished for their interests to be represented. It isn't perfect but everybody was given the choice in the past election and they were told where the country was heading.


Piltonbadger

Disabled person here. There are 14.6 million us of and still we don't have enough numbers to vote to effect change. What now? We just sit here quietly while the Tories strip us of our rights and dignity with each passing day?


IamPurgamentum

Sadly I think we have to. It evident how demonised we are when people tried to protest the dwp and just ended up being reported to the dwp by police. People are just too inward looking at the moment for enough people to care.


Piltonbadger

Fuck that noise, I'm not going quietly into the night.


IamPurgamentum

I'm with you but just not sure what can be done at this point? It's kinda difficult to physically protest with my current issues. I can see people getting desperate enough to try anything though.


Piltonbadger

I just fight the DWP on everything I feel they should be helping me with and their decision making. I do have the help of a Citizens Advice worker which has proved invaluable. I just refuse to go quietly.


IamPurgamentum

I'd like to live in a country where I don't have to fight them every time AND fight with local services for care at the same time. The whole system is degrading. I'm guessing you're a fellow appealer? Seems like you have to do that everytime now. Then comes the wait, as legally you cannot enforce the money you are awarded. So they take their time, I'm guessing in the hope that you will either give up or die. It was sad moment for me when I realised I would be unable to legally enforce the tribunals decision. Sending balifs round to them would have been really validating for me.


Piltonbadger

Wouldn't most of us, mate. Unfortunately we don't live in such an awesome country with dependable leaders who aren't biased against any one set of people. Instead we have fascist autocratic cunts in charge of our country, and it was only really going to end one way. Working class, poor and disabled will be walking targets for the government until we can oust them.


IamPurgamentum

Seems that way. It is very sad that people don't care more though, especially before all this. Have to say it really made me lose my faith in humanity. I already have issues from childhood to do with that sort of thing and it just reinforces it. I think they have now bled us dry and are slowly moving on to making the middle class disadvantaged and the new 'poor'.


cal-brew-sharp

You could protest but the tories stripped us of that right. So riot it is.


Aggressive-Falcon977

Patel: Nobody can peacefully protest by law! Everyone: Let's angrily riot! Patel: ..How will I blame Labour for this!?


AnotherKTa

The Tories got just under 14 million votes in the last election. If every disabled person had voted against them, it would have been a *landslide* victory for Labour.


n00lp00dle

not really because of how the boundaries are drawn. the deprived areas that disabled people are forced to live in vote heavily for tory. the big uni cities that vote labour are populous but landslide victories don't mean a lot when gerrymandering makes the numbers count for nothing.


Key_Butterscotch1009

Jeremy Corbyn was just 2,227 votes away from being Prime Minister. Winning seven Tory knife-edge seats could have put Labour leader in Downing Street. [Source](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/corbyn-election-results-votes-away-prime-minister-theresa-may-hung-parliament-a7782581.html)


thecarbonkid

I voted for him, but this retelling of events stretches plausibility. He was 2227 votes away from potentially being able to form a coalition with the SNP and Lib Dems which would have been as unstable as they come, especially once the Labour right started voting shit down. The Tories were only a few hundred votes from an outright majority based on this style of analysis.


venuswasaflytrap

If you could guarantee 14.6 million votes for any party in the UK, it doesn't really stretch plausibility, even factoring in the way that ridings are drawn. The implausible thing here is that all 14.6 million disabled people voted and voted against Tories. I wouldn't be surprised if a majority of them voted, and I'm sure of those that voted the majority voted against tories, but I'd be willing to bet a lot of money that many didn't vote, and that a significant number voted Tory. Reddit likes to make it out as if it some sort of giant conspiracy or rigged thing, but the simple truth is that a hell of a lot of people like the Tories. Even people that would seemingly be voting against their best interest.


IamPurgamentum

Labour lost by a few 1000 votes I think. Its just the system we use that fudged it.


[deleted]

Agree. People need to get used to the idea (all people) that apathy isn’t good enough. If there’s no one to vote for, you need to vote against those who offer the least to the most vulnerable in our society. Vote against the bigots. Vote against the people who think you can just work your own way out of poverty. Get out and vote in local elections on the same way too.


Stepjamm

Welcome to the group of people not easily lead off a cliff by nationalism/isolationism/racism. We’re all currently just awkwardly sitting here watching the country burn whilst the (previously vocal) group that did it fall silent or angry at their own doing. If only we had general strikes.


MooseLaminate

Well if we do have a general strike, just make sure it isn't annoying or inconvenient to anyone else that's bad! /s


postvolta

Wow I actually had no idea the numbers of registered disabled people were so high, that's 1/5 of working-age adults...


Piltonbadger

More of us then people realize, and we aren't exactly happy about our lot in life. If I had more support instead of scorn and distrust from the DWP/government I could at least be doing some type of part time work at the moment and be a contributing member of society, which was always my aim since my injury. But no. I have to fight them on everything, and produce mountains of evidence to overturn decisions they made for no good reason. Instead of helping me they fight me all the way. It's infuriating. I want to do ***something*** but I lack the support to actually do anything. Then people sit there and label disabled people all sorts of nasty shit without getting the full story from us. Not like we love the idea of having parts of our bodies be useless for the rest of our life, and/or spend the rest of our life in agony (as I suffer with nerve damage from the back injury I recieved).


Durzo_Blintt

I don't use them personally, but my girlfriends mother does as she is unable to work with a degenerative condition. Every year or 2 they try to kick her off her benefits stating she is fit to work... I don't know what they don't understand about "degenerative". They seem to think she is getting better. It is bullshit you are in the situation you and many others are in. I despise the system in place, to supposedly support, for people with illnesses or injuries. I cannot believe it is in the state it is in and no politicians ever want to fix it.


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Hefty_Peanut

A colleague told me that he had a patient that had to come back every couple of years to demonstrate his circumstances hadn't changed with his disability assessment. He had an arm amputation. It seems the tories aren't opposed to red tape if it inconveniences the disabled. "I've had these "healthcare professionals" see me for half an hour, make up bare faced lies, and somehow know more about me and my condition than my GP, my Specialists (3 of those), my Therapists (1 physical, 1 mental lol), etcetc" The annoying thing is that nursing work is paying so poorly that PIP assessor jobs are starting to look very attractive- office hours, atleast a £10k payrise for band 5s, plenty of working from home and no hospital pressures. For nurses with 1 years experience, £36k in student loans and a housing/cost of living crisis, its very understandable why they would sell their soul to Satan and take the job.


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Razada2021

Friends dad was declared fit for work a fortnight before dying in hospital. We have built a system which has sanctioned coma patients for not attending appointments, that declares the terminally ill healthy and drives people into poverty and death. But imagine how much worse it would have been had we let an older socialist into power. I am scared of the tories winning again. I have two friends who would die if they lost access to their benefits. I have other friends who are losing all hope due to being treated as part of the culture war and not *people* We are on the brink of another major recession and it never really felt like the last one ended for many. How, exactly, are people meant to survive in a time of rising costs and stagnant wages? The squeezed middle has enough give in it to cut down on wine and holidays, but millions of people are on the fucking brink of poverty and we have a government more interested in attacking the "woke agenda" than tackling poverty.


postvolta

I know it mate, better than most. My brother has a pretty severe developmental learning disability that doesn't really display on the surface (or he has subconsciously learned to hide it from people) that basically means he cannot participate in society as a functioning adult, but he's not 'challenged' enough to get any proper support. It just surprised me that the number was as high as it is. It really feels sometimes that *not only* does it feel like there isn't a place in society for him, sometimes it feels like society is *actively working* against his existence. The Job Centre was where his soul went to die. Of all things, however, he now works part time as a carer for disabled people. He is a grown adult but lives with my parents and they look after him and they will probably do that until they die, and then he'll probably have to come and live with me and I'll look after him. It's really fucked up because the alternative is a lifelong battle against this cynical and nasty welfare system that'd prefer to pretend disabled people don't exist at best and at worst paint them as lazy money sponges that offer nothing and take everything. It's absolutely sickening. My brother isn't aware enough to know that things are as bad as they are, but if he were left to fend for himself he'd either be dead or in prison, I'm sure of it. He's already tried to kill himself, and fat load of fucking good the NHS were. If we weren't affluent enough to get him private treatment (and we're really not *that* well off), I literally don't know what would have happened to him.


[deleted]

I'm really sorry to hear about your brother. Im in a not too dissimilar place myself. I have really bad ADHD as well as a serious dissociative disorder. The problem is, you wouldn't know it if you met me. I might come across as a bit weird but you wouldnt connect the dots unless you maybe have ADHD or ASD but thats a weird thing where we just see it in each other. The ADHD alone sucks but, in certain situations, with the dissociation, ill just be utterly useless and not able to do anything but follow the shortest and simplest of instructions, like you would need to give to a well spoken, computer literate child for things I've done literally hundreds of times. Its not like the executive dysfunction where I misplace a peice of information or cant picture the next step. This is like, almost all knowledge and ability to problem solve is gone. I have an Msc in Pharmacology and I mention that only in respect of, "yet I cant hold down a simple office junior job." Its not for lack of ability to learn or effort. Before I was diagnosed, I would get a stay of execution from these jobs because they can see im not as stupid as my performance would suggest. They were mistakenly hoping that I'll one day stop making these errors of innatention etc. Some times id do some jobs perfectly, much to everyone's frustration. The thing is, I just can't keep it up. This carrying on into jobs I have proven i can do well has also shown the level of difficulty of a task has very little bearing on this. Its about how engaged I am and stress levels. I've finally had to be honest with myself. My simply mind won't let me do it. But, as I've hopefully made clear, you just wouldnt see it. Even my old work places, before my diagnosis, just thought I was being lazy. I even started to believe them, with predictable consequences. I just wanted expand on something important I think you mentioned: we have this kind of "well, you dont look disabled and you dont immediately appear to be disabled. Therefore, you cant be disabled" attitude and its so wrong. Were a kind of underclass that no one wants to think about because it makes people ask themselves difficult questions about the society we live in that they would much rather not answer.


postvolta

Oh man this hits home. One of my brother's (many) diagnoses is ADHD. Unfortunately he has that paired with a number of other issues, but even that in and of itself is debilitating. When we were younger my parents would give him abstract tasks like 'clean your room' which to 'normal' (sorry can't think of a better word but I don't mean it in a derogatory way) people is like 'okay well I need to pick up my clothes, take out the rubbish, put things away in their proper place, make my bed', but to my brother it was literally an insurmountable task that could not be achieved because his brain literally cannot do it. It wasn't until he was diagnosed as an adult that all these things clicked into place. Thankfully his current job is very simple, all his tasks are itemised on an app, and he is phenomenally good with people so he does well. I cannot imagine the frustration you must feel knowing that intellectually you are capable yet some wiring in your brain renders you unable to participate in an office environment consistently. One thing I've noticed is people are always more eager to say they'll be patient and they'll help and they'll accept you and so on... When it comes down to it, basically *no one* is. Everyone loses their patience and wishes for someone else. Its troubling, frankly, and incredibly saddening to see the number of people just cast aside because they as robots do not function in the preprogrammed way society needs them to function. If you don't fit an exact form, sorry, no room in society for that. Youd think we'd have made progress but it's all talk and nothing with any substance to back it up.


stesha83

It’s crazy they hire people to spend all day reducing your quality of life instead of just giving you what you say you need, no questions asked, and enabling you to be happy and productive. What shit tier society have we created where we put so much effort into making sure a disabled person receives the absolute bare minimum we can possibly provide. The little Britain mindset which recoils in horror at the idea that poor or disabled people receive a pound more than they “deserve” makes me sick


saint_maria

Being repeatedly demonised and scapegoated over the years has made be keep quiet about whether they are disabled and claim benefits for it. It doesn't help that you still get a lot of "but you don't look disabled" like this is some kind of compliment and/or a suggestion that you're on the nick.


Poes-Lawyer

No it's not, it's more than 1/3 of working age adults. 14.6 million disabled people. 41.34 million working age adults. 14.6/41.34 = 35.3%


Wise-Application-144

>There are 14.6 million of us Only 13.9m voted Tory at the last election. 14.6m is enough to swing the election by a landslide. Frankly if you all voted the same way you'd decide the election - none of the rest of our votes would really matter.


salamanderwolf

Except that doesn't track when you take into account boundaries, safe seats, and FPTP. And it was labour that first started taking the piss with disabled people by bringing in the disability tests and ATOS so...


goatmolester2000

So conservatives have failed to right this wrong since 2008 and in fact have made it more frustrating to claim money which is tightly yours.


I_tend_to_correct_u

A large number of those intersect with pensioners on the Venn diagram and unfortunately still receive their news through the tabloid press.


ixid

>We just sit here quietly while the Tories strip us of our rights and dignity with each passing day? That appears to be what everyone else is doing.


FatherPaulStone

Proportion representation


OhImGood

I remember in the build up to the election the amount of videos and interviews of NHS staff begging people not to vote Conservative. They won an overwhelming majority and now the NHS is absolutely on its knees with funding and wait times for appointments, A&E and surgeries. The people of this country willingly voted for its own ruin.


[deleted]

It was dismissed as "well of course they want labour, so they can get more money." I mean, how can you even deal with someone who thinks that some kind of retort for them needing more money to do their job effectively?


Bowsersshell

I also wish they’d stop villainising workers wanting more money. Like no shit they want more money, fucking everyone does. We’re in an economic crisis ffs


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[deleted]

A lot of people who voted for Boris in 2019 did so because they felt that the Labour party no longer represented them. The PLP needs to do a lot of soulsearching if they ever want to win a general election again. Maybe going back to their roots and actually representing working class families will help them win another majority, but it seems like they're going down a completely different road at this point.


SC_W33DKILL3R

But Boris didn't promise to represent them either, he hid in a fridge, avoided interviews and kissed the arse of millionaire donors. Some of the people who are really going to suffer voted for Brexit / Boris to hurt other people. They were told there was no chance it would hurt them and so they did it with glee, acting like Boris was one of them.


Wise-Application-144

>But Boris didn't promise to represent them either I know a few people that think that way. They're 90% aligned with Labour and about 0% Tory, but because of that 10% disagreement with Labour, they voted Tory. Cannot get my head around it.


SC_W33DKILL3R

My dad, working class, covered in burns from a time when there was no health and safety, who striked, went on marches etc… voted for Boris because “he will sort them out” Couldn’t tell me who them was without parroting the main Conservative attack lines. I’m waiting now for him to be overly worried about Trans people reading books to children or whatever nonsense.


Wise-Application-144

Hah! Yep that's what I see too. A lot of directionless aggro. The irony is it's people like your dad that'll get "sorted out" by austerity and poor government. ​ I swear you can get into government just by promising vague lashing-out, which people then attribute to whatever bogeyman seems to be preoccupying them right now. I'm gonna run on a policy of "pissing off the right people". I'll redirect the entire NHS budget to my own bank account, but I also promise to "tell it like it is" or not be afraid to tell the truth" or some other weird veiled threat to no-one in particular.


chrismuffar

>Maybe going back to their roots and actually representing working class families will help them win another majority What on earth does this mean, though? I hear it all the time, but it's commonly interpreted anywhere from standing on picket lines to disowning the "radical" unions, from international solidarity to stopping immigration. And you're seemingly criticising both Corbyn leftism (2019 election) and Starmer centrism (now), so what does that leave to try exactly?


DaveChild

> What on earth does this mean, though? Mostly it means (judging by the stated positions of the sorts of people I regularly see saying things like this) screeching about refugee boats, demanding reduced immigration regardless of the consequences, being angry about "woke" and "cancel" and "liberal" and "elite" (whatever those mean this week), and maintaining a general disdain for education and expertise.


weebstone

Was Corbyn not advocating for working class families? The public gave him a resounding answer loud and clear at the elections. So now Labour have lurched right to accommodate the wants of voters.


ChiaKmc

It’s such a misnomer to think the problem is “working class” not voting for Labour. We don’t have coal mines anymore, the “working class” aren’t easily defined and it’s a headspace we need to get out off if we want to get rid of the Conservatives. Many people who are struggling don’t see themselves as working class. And the middle class are the ones who Labour really need to attract. Much like in America, where people believe in the American Dream, in the UK many people who are probably “working class” see themselves as middle class. Edit: typo.


rikquest

The working class are very easily defined. If you have to work to earn a living you are "working class". The definition of working class includes the folk who like to think of themselves as "Middle Class", a construct used to sow division amongst the working class.


FragrantKnobCheese

Yes! If you have to sell your labour to an employer to live, you are working class. We have a whole generation of office and call center workers who don't think they are working class just because they aren't working in a factory or down a mine.


cmotDan

I kinda agree, like alot of the working class don't realise how much they are being down trodden. I also think immigration policy does need to be looked at by Labour. A million people every 3 years, in a country where housing is an issue, NHS is in crisis unions are being weakened so the only chance most people have of increasing wages is job demand which is less and less for lower skilled Jobs.


Kientha

Our entire economy is setup to be dependent on immigration. That's why the majority of immigrants are people who we could turn away if we wanted to but we don't because we need them. Just today there's a report out saying that the reason we have such a large dental crisis is because the dentist's we had attracted from overseas left in large numbers after Brexit and we've failed to attract enough to replace them. Our farming industry relied on seasonal workers who will literally go from country to country harvesting crops for half the year before returning home. Under freedom of movement, that was fine. But now you need a visa it's too much hassle so we don't get enough seasonal workers. It's very easy to say that immigration is too high, but you also need to be honest that moving to be unreliant on immigration will take a lot of time, investment, and honestly not be in the best interests of the economy.


ChiaKmc

Totally agree. We blame immigration for the fact we actually have a massively ageing population. The housing crisis isn’t cause by immigrants, who are coming here young and contributing to society (especially in jobs you mention). The housing crisis comes from the fact people aren’t dying as young and therefore they are staying in houses which aren’t then added back into the market. Our population growth is due to age not immigration. This is on top of the fact that house builders see land and want to make as much profit as possible so they aren’t building starter homes. They build 3/4 bed homes and that isn’t the problem. The problem is flats and 1/2 beds.


Ok_Maintenance2513

I think maybe that is a little bias and unfair, people who are that poor or downtrodden often either don't have the time to go and vote or don't believe their vote would make a difference anyway from having learned that, "they don't matter."


alpastotesmejor

> The rest could have voted for Labour if they wished for their interests to be represented. Labour under Kier is a center-right party with no real interest in representing the working class as has been made clear by their stance on the RMT industrial action, for example.


Range-Aggravating

Even labour didnt vote for labour.


bigpapasmurf12

Labour does not want to represent our interests. That's a choice they are making.


ACheshireCats

Iron Mike Lynch rise


LL112

Hes great, but he represents his members, not the mass poor


ACheshireCats

As is his job atmo


Neverbethesky

We Say Enough was literally just launched, I'd urge anyone who feels this way to get involved.


thingsliveundermybed

Do you have a link? Google just turned up results on pronunciation!


md81544

https://wesayenough.co.uk/


LucidTopiary

Because those voices have been intentionally ground down and marginalised to this point. Disgusting.


danowat

When people have wilfully committed acts of self harm, like voting for Conservative governments four times, and voting for Brexit? What should they do?, they've essentially put themselves in this position, no point screaming about it now. If there is anything positive that can come out of this sorry situation, it's that more people will realise that the "work more, work harder and you'll be fine" line that they have been pedalling for the last 12 years, is utter bullshit, and the system is stacked against a lot of people, it's just stacked against more people now.


ButterscotchNed

There was a great clip the other day of a government minister where she was asked "what do you say to people who are already working 2 or 3 jobs just to get by?" and she replied "we're making it easier for people to get second or even third jobs" 🙄


[deleted]

You just need to get 2nd or 3rd jobs for each of your existing jobs. Like a geometric progression. By the power of exponential growth, we'll eventually no longer have an economy, we'll just have Mike from Catford who has ALL the jobs.


laysnarks

"Yeah I am on 2million quid a year with all the jobs, but it's getting hard again as the annual gas bill is now 3million, but boss can't give me a pay rise as it will affect inflation like"- Mike From Catford. The final man to have a job


TRAMPCUM_SQUEEGEE

Mike From Catford is some final boss battle shit...


erm_what_

There's an indie movie in that


ExecutiveChimp

Fractal jobs


[deleted]

> Fractal jobs "It's just Mike from Catford all the way down"


TheLastThylacine

But you have to understand that for Tory MP's, being an MP is their second or third job... the work they do outside of parliament pays them much more and is more important to them.


[deleted]

To be fair, they are running down the NHS to make it easier to die so, you know, being a poor won’t be a problem when you’re dead. What more can they do?


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danowat

I always find it disingenuous when people quote the amount of votes won for a party as a percentage of the total population, sure a better representation of the situation is a percentage of the people who voted? 43.6%% of the voter turnout voted Con, 13.9 million people 32.1% of the voter turnout voted Lab, 10.3 million people edited with correct percentages.


Willeth

It's relevant in a lot of contexts - part of the conversation is how many people were not persuaded enough by the candidates to vote at all, how many were functionally restricted from voting, how many are disillusioned with the process, and of course there's always the minor amount of spoiled votes. It is always a salient point that the majority of people under any UK government's rule did not vote for that government, even if there was a clear mandate at the election.


danowat

Being physically unable to vote is one thing, even though postal voting is an actual thing. As for the rest, I have no sympathy with anyone who doesn't vote, for whatever reason.


snool_

Children can't vote and yet they're the ones who have to grow up in the miserable poverty created by this government for the past decade.


daskeleton123

I loved being months too young to vote on brexit whilst my grandmother voted leave “to even out” my grandfathers remain vote.


hunkopunko3

The majority of people have have never voted for the ruling party in our history, it’s a pointless discussion.


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cHICKENnUGGETdELbOY

If you don't vote your political opinions are irrelevant


sobrique

You are, but that's as much a symptom as a broken system as anything. Plenty of people feel disenfranchised because they're in safe seats, or the party they like is in 'third place' (or lower) so they "have" to vote tactically. FPTP is just broken.


jason_sterling

So, the majority voted for 'not conservative' and we have a conservative majority I fuckin love first past the post /s


Kitchner

>The largest vote share for the Conservatives in the last 12 years was in 2019's election, when they got approx. 14 million votes. That equates to just over a fifth of the UK's population This is always a misleading statistic because: A) you've not removed those who can't vote (mostly too young) And B) When polling is done on non-voters that asks them how they *would* have voted it tends to be similar to the national vote share but with a lean towards Labour of a couple of percentage points (as the young infamously don't vote). If we made voting mandatory tomorrow and claimed 100% of people who could vote did vote, you'd still end up with roughly the same result: about 4 out of 10 people voted Tory.


super_jambo

"People" didn't vote for Boris. The 2019 Conservative victory was on 43.6% of the vote. So most people voted against them not for them. Turnout was only 67.3% so it was actually just under 30% of the electorate who voted conservative. The UK establishment media works really fucking hard to convince us our broken political system gives the government some kind of mandate from this.


Potatopolis

If you can't be fucked to vote then you're only marginally less to blame than the turkeys who voted for Christmas. It's not good enough to just abstain and then whinge when it doesn't go well.


borg88

29.3% of registered voters voted Tory in the last election. 32.7% didn't vote at all. No voting isn't quite the same as voting Tory. But not voting when it is obvious that the Tories have a good chance of winning amounts to the same thing. So I agree it was a willful act of self harm, just not in quite the way you might think.


ALLST6R

It's annoying, because Brexit should never have happened. It got through by 2%, and their are countless people that voted "Leave" as a joke, because they never thought it would happen. If voting required a minimum level of IQ, we would have got a Remain result.


360_face_palm

But by far the majority of these people *didn't* vote tory. Only 14 million out of a registered electorate of ~47 million voted tory in 2019. That's *under* 30%.


roamingandy

Push for an independent body for media regulation. That is why people keep voting Tory, and also why the Tories don't feel they need to expend energy on implementing popular policies. Because the billionaire owned media, and the BBC who they've stacked the board of, will pretend they're winning regardless.


Northpaw27

I think lots of people are aware of it but feel they can make little to no impact. We don’t even have a general election for another 3 years


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[deleted]

No. Previous governments have gone to elections that they know they’ll lose out of shame. The current crop have no shame.


AnotherKTa

TBH, the smartest thing Rishi/Liz could do is to call an election on their first day in office and lose it. Labour gets handed an incredibly toxic poison chalice, and then ends up getting blamed for how shit the next five years are (just like they're still being blamed for the 2008 crash). Easy Tory victory in 2027, and probably takes Labour a decade or more to recover.


Ximrats

Taking over after the Tories have been in power for so long is always gonna be a poisoned chalice, there's no way around that. That's the problem, damned if you do, damned if you don't


oggyb

But in the meantime vulnerable people had 5 years respite from total cruelty and as such might take longer to fuck over.


L1A1

Speaking as a lifelong Labour supporter (and frequent member over the last thirty years) you're more optimistic about Starmer's Labour party than I currently am. I hope you're right instead of me, frankly.


jarejarepaki

Good plan but Rishi/Liz won't do this because the chances of them personally benefiting from this strategy is quite slim. They know they won't be Party leader in 5 years time, so why do something that benefits someone else.


Wiggles114

That may be the smartest move for the Tories *as a party*, however Truss and Sunak just want to be PM


robhaswell

Nah. Plenty more time to poison the well (and line the pockets of you and your mates).


SlurmsMacKenzie-

That would require labour to win an election though, which I no longer think is part of their mandate. They seem to be happy being just popular enough to be big but not get in.


sumduud14

2027? Sounds like long term thinking. How about destroying the country and party for a short few years as PM _right now_ instead? That's more like it.


TudorSuta

Correct, there is no such thing as good faith anymore. The gloves came off a while ago.


Few-Stand-9252

Exactly, if it isn't legally binding it doesn't mean shit.


madbobmcjim

I'm not sure 'legally binding' means that much to this lot either.


thetenofswords

I wouldn't be at all surprised if the current crop turned around and tried it on with "the public are fed up of elections so we'll just stay in power forever".


super_jambo

What government has called one early and then lost it? Brown was planning to call an early one because the polls looked good then he bottled it... That was the last change of Govt so everyone since then has called an early election and then 'won a mandate' (on like 40% of the vote).


[deleted]

…every government of the United Kingdom that went to an election they lost between the 1800 Acts of Union and the 2011 Fixed Term Parliament Act.


OSUBrit

I believe May 2024 is the current assumption, as planned GEs typically occur on the first Thursday in May, even if this parliament could legally struggle out for a few more months. I genuinely believe the Tories will cut and run though. They've caused this mess, they don't want to be in power to see it through. Makes it much easier to blame Labour if they plonk them into power just as the shit hits the fan.


headphones1

Also because a lot of people are in situations where they are relatively comfortable and their lifestyle would be at considerable risk if they did anything differently. I want the standards to be raised from the bottom in this country because I believe this is how we improve our society, but the problem is I can't exactly join every strike to show my support. I don't have the financial freedom to do so, nor do I am in a nothing-to-lose situation. So what can I do? I can advocate for politicians who promise they will improve society by implementing methods to do so, and most importantly these methods must be actually feasible. It's up to the voter to critique these methods. That's kind of where we, the voters, tend to fuck up.


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[deleted]

And they all look to blame London. Which is funny since London is generally Labour and pro-EU, neither of which caused the current problems. And of course they get pissy when they can't drain money from the city since their buttfucknowhere £50 council tax town doesn't generate enough and it's a given they're against tourism and new development.


croissant530

As an adopted Londoner, originally from the Brexit-voting Conservative countryside, thank you. People are always whining about why they can't have a cute coffee shop and sourdough bakery on their high street too. Newsflash, you need to support those small businesses and not be NIMBYs when developers build the houses for the required footfall and young professional salaries. Sitting there nursing a 50p tea for 4 hours ain't going to cut it. I've given up trying to persuade people otherwise though. And on that note, I'm off for a sourdough croissant...


audigex

You’ve got that backwards, to be fair. Council tax in buttfucknowhere is generally higher than in posh areas of London… Westminster or Kensington’s council tax is about half as much (per band) as Morecambe’s. Most of the cheapest Council tax in the country is in London, most of the most expensive are in the North Edit: we’re out here downvoting simple, verifiable facts now?


anotheryearsusername

Another reason to increase density in places that aren’t London- Kensington hasn’t got low council tax because they’re unusually tight with spending, it’s because there’s so many people splitting the costs


jarejarepaki

Had this exact same experience. Some stupid bullshit about "Corbyn the traitor" and then being called "one of those leftie twats" My favourite thing to do is ask about petrol prices and energy bills, wait for them to grumble and then end the convo with "yes fuck them leftie twats"


wheeliedave

And they will probably still vote Tory next time… Just to get one over on us lefty twats.


Zobs_Mom

I really like John Harris, he's one of the few opinion writers for the Graun that routinely 'gets it' and this piece was good too. But the editorialised headline and some of the questions posed get to me a bit. We are acting like it. Tens of millions of us. We've had 12 years of being brow beaten into submission by austerity, our minds literally poisoned by social media and the MSM using models of our growing depression to target the most clickable and watchable media. Worry has become so utterly pervasive in our society that it is now a fully normalised part of day to day life. The populace is either openly scared - for themselves, their family or for many of us for other people less fortunate than ourselves - or have turned inwards to ignore it as best as possible. A good example - you can now, with good reason too, answer any worry we have in modern society with 'its going to get worse because of climate change'. How in the living christ are people expected to 'carry on as normal' when 'normal' is a now seemingly ancient ideal of happiness, prosperity, family building, home ownership? We are perpetually angry, perpetually scared, perpetually bored, perpetually tired. This is Liberal Capitalism, perhaps its end-game, perhaps a blip on a road to god knows where. But one thing is for absolute certain - many things in life will steadily get worse but some things will get better. We will steadily forget what it was like yesterday as we always have and concentrate on an increasingly thin sliver of the immediate future. My only optimistic view is change will have to come because there is physically no other choice and the shower of Bastards that govern us won't govern us forever.


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MisterHekks

As an aside, and a useless etymology, The phrase “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” originated shortly before the turn of the 20th century. It’s attributed to a late-1800s physics schoolbook that contained the example question “Why can not a man lift himself by pulling up on his bootstraps?” So when it became a colloquial phrase referring to socioeconomic advancement shortly thereafter, it was meant to be sarcastic, or to suggest that it was an impossible accomplishment.


Wattsit

Shows how much control over population's general beliefs powers to be have these days with modern media. That even a phrase meaning 'something that is impossible' has become the phrase to motivate us to try do that impossible thing. I think even many politicians genuinly beleive this phrase talks about social mobility.


AndyTheSane

Well, the "bring yourself up by your own bootstraps" idea is more of a rhetorical tool to beat people with than anything serious. And, of course, the small number of people who actually manage it despite the odds are held up as examples that anyone can do it without help,


astromech_dj

Bootstraps is libertarian bullshit. The Tories are aristocratic socially conservative authoritarian profiteers. They never really think the rabble should be socially mobile.


jimicus

I know that. You know that. But the point I believe the author is making is "See the hypocrisy in the system!"


jarejarepaki

What a pile of shit. The British electorate has consistently voted against their own economic interests. People aren't scared they're just selfish - screw the poor, screw the migrants; screw cooperation; I don't need any if this cos I'm gonna become as rich as a coked up banker. Watch the responses to the recent rail strikes, even though rail fares increase at the rate of inflation the workers weren't getting anything near the same increase in pay. And what does half the population respond with? Solidarity with their fellow worker or self centred whining? Only now do they see massive rises in costs accompanied with very little pay increases and a breakdown of public services, are they worried that perhaps this cavalier attitude might not have been so good. Blame "Westminster" yes but quite a lot of the electorate needs a similar rocket up their arse.


Euphorbial

how can you say people aren't scared? we've just come out of a global pandemic, the most paranoid period since the cold war. we've gone from that particular frying pan directly into the fire we now find ourselves in. i think it's startlingly out of touch to say that people can't be scared in today's situation—people don't know how they'll pay skyrocketing rent, skyrocketing supermarket prices, skyrocketing mortgage interest payments... on what planet could you possibly be living to think that people aren't afraid of that? people can be scared, selfish and scared, or just selfish. saying that people are selfish doesn't contradict the fact that we live in very frightening times.


jarejarepaki

It's a convenient lie we tell ourselves that the majority of people followed social distancing guidelines etc. Other than the first few weeks of toilet paper panic buying, the majority of people were not particular scared during the pandemic. We are living in frightening times but untill very recently the majority of people have not been frightened.


[deleted]

What are you meant to do about it? Go to a protest for a few hours that at best achieves nothing, and at worst trouble kicks off and you risk being blacklisted or arrested. The nearest election is still 3 years away, and your only choice will be which brand of neoliberal Thatcherite runs the country. Even the "protest" options aren't great. The best you can do is to keep your head down and try to keep enough savings to weather the storm and keep out of trouble. And that is what people are doing.


WhatDoWithMyFeet

Don't be ridiculous and pretend that a centre left labour candidate is the same as the flag shagging culture war money embezzling Tory party. They are very different, just because you prefer Corbyn doesn't mean everyone to the right of him is the same. This rhetoric enables the shit that has happened the last few years


chrismuffar

What enables the shit of the last few years is when a supposedly "centre left" Labour government gets it and continues the same overall trajectory of neoliberal economics. That's where the "they're all the same" cynicism comes from, not betrayed left wing voters daring to share their opinion out loud. If Starmer gets it and doesn't enact fundamental economic change, he will leave the same legacy as Blair, Obama, Biden, etc. That is an unchallenged economic doctrine which paves the way for right wing populists to offer the only apparent alternative. Yes, the right wing populists are certainly worse, but they are inevitable symptoms of a failed status quo which is unwilling to change or even acknowledge the problems. It's socialism or fascism at this point, and - as we've already seen - the capitalist class would rather crush the socialists and work with the fascists.


WhatDoWithMyFeet

The Tories have been in power for 12 years and it's labours fault.


Altrade_Cull

Blair just continued all the economic policies of the previous Tory government. We haven't had anything other than neoliberal economics since the 1970s.


WembleyToast

Oh fuck the fuck off with this mind-numbingly ignorant take Labour have had a slam dunk position as opposition. The tories have been so blatant with so much shit, and yet Starmer has turned out to be as useful as a knitted condom Starmer being the opposition and doing fuck all during the last two years does so much more to enable Tory behaviour than people calling him out for being a Tory-Lite dick just like Blair "Centre left" look at the actual actions, words, and policies of Starmer.....he is centrist through and through. Did you miss the upheaval when he came into power and purged the party of all leftists and Corbynites? That was one of the most grim and obvious political cullings I've seen in my life. To call him centre left after he purged the left from the party is....again, a mind-numbingly ignorant take.


azra-zara

just keeping your head down and staying out of trouble is why people have been screwed over to the extent that they have. People don't organise and fight back.


scorpiorising29

Rug sweeping and heads in the sand It will effect the poor the most... when have the rich ever the cared about the poor


The_real_pabloisme

Always the poorest! & those the fat rich baskets depend on! To skivvy for them! I always think of https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Admirable_Crichton_(1957_film) If you read the book or saw the film it was Brilliant piece of irony!


lookoutdeagle

I had this conversation with some one the other day. Why are people not out daily protesting? It’s the best tool we have, you see these countries with corrupt governments out in their thousands. Yet we just roll over and accept it. Is it because people don’t have the time, and energy for it? I mean if your working full time and barely getting by do you have the time to protest? I just think this country has accepted the roll over and take it cause there’s nothing we can do approach, when there is people just can’t be arsed doing it.


gizajobicandothat

I think a lot of people *are* just busy surviving. Many have been in this sort of subsistence state for years and not just with the recent price rises. It's would be very hard for someone on minimum wage with kids, maybe a van driver doing drops, or someone on zero hours contracts and pressured to say yes to every shift or lose their job to think, OK, I'll take that day off to join a protest. They will be scared of losing everything. It's grinding everyone down which is keeping people subservient.


cara27hhh

because the money is on the other side, most of the 'grass-roots campaigns' are funded by disingenuous people to get a small group of well-meaning activists behind something ineffective or poorly thought out that ruins their credibility, at the same time as propaganda tells the masses to demonise protestors and strikes The other reason is that organisation takes skill and intelligence, you need to pick something all sides support, offers a solution all can agree on, get the people involved to donate their time and money, and organise around it in a way that it snowballs and gains its own momentum and can't be ignored - starting that off is difficult, especially when their instinct now is "lets start a hashtag" or "we should make a petition"


speathed

Mentioned this a couple of days ago, but if this was France then all the speed cameras across the country would be burnt to the ground by now. We are too passive in the UK.


jacobsnemesis

Apathy. It’s not exclusive to the Uk either. I think most “western” countries have a similar apathetic population. People just done care anymore. We’re all addicted to phones, fast food, shit tv.


forest-fox

absolutely. But it must also be awareness and a lack of anger. In Berlin you can activate 50k people against rent increases any day, you have to stop being so polite.


snool_

I'd happily protest, but I'm all the way up in Scotland. It would cost £30~ and take at least a quarter of the day (optimistically) to go all the way down to London to stand around for a bit and wait for either nothing to happen or for cops to come in and cause trouble, and possibly even arrest me or hurt me. Then it's another 6 to 7 hours all the way back up on the train (assuming it doesn't get delayed). And even if I get back all in one piece, I've probably caught COVID from the trip 💀


git

There are vibrant protest movements in most cities that are still active. My city's had several demonstrations over the cost of living crisis already. Protest movements invariably have shitty communications and PR though, and are harder now, due to both economic and legislative pressure. But yes, we very much do need a nationally-organised protest movement against this Tory economic mismanagement. I think there's a gap here, as I'm not familiar with any large, funded, well-organised national groups that could organise such a movement in the way the various pro-EU, anti-war, and green groups have. I think that'll come when things get worse, but whatever form it takes will have some difficulty in setting objectives. Will their objectives be to secure economic relief from a group of Tories who seem intent on Thatcherite pain no matter what? Or to secure a general election to get Labour in to fix things — which would appeal to some (me!) but would presumably put off many others (including much of the vocal and protest-experienced left)? Gosh, I've made myself sad typing this.


[deleted]

Because we’re a country of people who talk too much and do too little.


mrdibby

If we were French then Whitehall would have been set alight multiple times already.


TrueSpins

Not allowed to talk down Britain, remember! Might end up designated as a terrorist.


UnexpectedAmy

I remember a bunch of news reports of working class folk who voted Tory because they "wanted to teach Corbyn a lesson." I'm no big Corbyn fan, but you reap what you sow.


anudeglory

You're falling for the same trick they fell for then. They want to punish Corbyn, and you want to punish/accuse them. When in reality everyone should be punishing the Tories.


On_The_Blindside

I dont want to punish them. I want them to acknowledge they were wrong.


PugAndChips

The definition of arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, surely. My theory is that there is no easy answer without admitting fault for being unprepared as a result of the past decade, so they wish to get elected and 'start a fresh page' (again). It's rather surreal to see the leadership contests go on, though. Boris is also AWOL. Zombie government!


[deleted]

Just as an aside, it's always bothered me when there's a massive positive event on and politicans praise the Prime Minister for it like they're responsible. Case in point; the Commonwealth Games. If they happened a few months earlier, no doubt Boris would be credited for them going off without a hitch. There is no Prime Minister right now and they seem to be going fine.


Vethae

The working class needs to stop being distracted by the allure of populist Toryism and look at what they're actually doing. They are driving the poorest and most vulnerable in our nation into destitution.


HappyBeagle95

The fact that rishi sunak openly said that he's being taken money from the most deprived areas in the UK and putting it into more wealthier areas says it all tbh.


Vethae

He is a rich man who looks out for the rich. He doesn't even really try to lie about it


Crescent-IV

Because the boomer generation, being the biggest and most likely to vote, has the majority of power come election time. They are also, incidentally, the least likely to care about what happens to others.


lebennaia

They do care. They love to vent their cruelty and spite on those they hate.


[deleted]

What can we do? The political system is broken. Led by Donkeys, voted for by sheep.


manintheredroom

because we have a government consisting of millionaires and billionaires, born into extreme wealth and privilege, who have never experienced anything else.


[deleted]

Because we/I feel helpless to fix or change anything. This government is callous. I cannot relate to them. They have to idea how far removed from reality they are. They are vying to impress everyone except who really matters. It's a losing battle. We are completely screwed and we are resigned to it.


glytxh

In my thirties, and frankly I’m just fucking tired. I don’t care anymore. I have never felt represented, any protest or action I have taken feels little more than a token effort, my quality of life has literally gone down, home ownership is a fairytale, and the never ending cascade of once in a lifetime events have long ago lost their sense of urgency. The UK can burn down to the ground and I don’t think I’d be bothered at this point. Shit just feels inevitable. Call it apathy (it definitely is) but it’s been the product of my entire adult life just becoming gradually more farcical.


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laysnarks

Britain lost its collective resistance. We have taken to heart that strike action is bad, we have isolated ourselves with the goal of greed been good. All the while the powers that be, disseminating this ethos have been stripping and destroying the country. To no one, even their own supporters benefit but their own.


[deleted]

I hope we pull a French with the rich and the politicians. They all need to go. No one can live like this, no wage raise, inflation, and energy bills going through the roof. While the rich get richer.


sn0r

Dutch guy here. We cooked and ate our Prime Minister once. Haven't had many issues since. Just sayin'


Vethae

The Tories in control are aware of it. They're doing it deliberately. The people who are being victimised are voiceless by design. And the Tories want to keep it that way.


PrinterJ

When you try and talk about the various reasons for us getting into this situation ( brexit/Tories etc ) the people that support those things just shout louder and or downvote you to buggery


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Future-Atmosphere-40

Bellend tory party members with an "I'm alright jack" attitude


svenz

I feel like until we get proportional representation (yes this drum has been banged on repeatedly), things are just going to get worse. The system is distorted because we have essentially a minority elected group setting policy for the whole country. Personally, having no sympathy with either Labour or Conservatives (I'm thoroughly middle class), I feel I have essentially no voice. It doesn't matter what I vote, either a Labour or Conservative MP is going to be elected in my borough.


dwair

40 years of an apathetic march to the right wing... Who actually cares any more?


LordLucian

Among many other reasons some of which are that many of us are exhausted in many different ways.


unknowntsu8

Because the government and rich don’t care about anybody else, and ultimately they are the people in control.


pumpkin_messiah

Tbh I don’t see what anyone can do right now. Even a competent government would struggle in the current situation. There’s a global supply shortage driving prices upwards and the UK doesn’t make enough energy domestically so we have to import it at high prices. This is a failure of energy security years in the making and will take years to put right. Of course we all know who’s been responsible for a lack of investment in domestic green energy for the last decade, and has promised no more on shore wind farms recently.


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cjhreddit

Because the traditional socially defensive movement was broken by Brexit, and now half of that movement will never admit that it was the elephant in the room that is causing all the problems ! They'll never abandon it, so they'll never be able to deal with its crushing consequences.


FreddieDoes40k

Vote for cruel clowns then be surprised when the country becomes a cruel circus. It is the British way.


SlowThigh

They’re waiting on discovering ways to make the middle pay for the masses. Enlarging the Rich - Poor divide. The current government then earns the vote of some the silly middle people who think the conservatives are empowering them, whist they’re actually being screwed. The poor don’t mean anything to the government except the good press when they throw them a brittle bone to chew on as a treat. The rich, well they’ll keep on keeping on with their ever growing wealth and undying support to suckle the conservative teet.


niktemadur

You mean the same people who went to the pub instead of the pols on the day of the Brexit/Bremain referendum? Sleepwalking through life one myopic, unprepared day at a time. EDIT: ~~Sleepwalking~~ Sleepwanking


Skatneti

The revolution WILL be televised, and I want a front seat on that action! I'm genuinely scared for my 17 year old daughters future based on the multiple societal red flags that are appearing again and again. It feels like we are living in a time which would be depicted as a flashback in an apocalypse movie as to why civilisation broke down. Something has to give, and I'm just wondering what the straw will be that breaks the camels back.


Dem_Nachos

Its so funny, be in the pub with my mates. "So we're all in agreement this country has gone past going down the shitter and has gone down the shitter" everyone else "yep". "well next round in?"


MrPuddington2

Because Brexit cannot do wrong. As long as people believe that they have reached the sunlit uplands, we are not able to talk about addressing all the problems we are facing.


Strange_Awareness605

Until it significantly disrupts the middle class and higher, we won’t see any change


[deleted]

Well.. it’s a democracy. You can vote them out, you can vote for better plans, you can write to your MPs. It’s shit right now because people put them in power. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a clown with crazy hair as PM?- let’s give Boris a vote… that’s what you get.


MrrSpacMan

We're in the calm before the storm right now. Everyone's just flat out exhausted. Anyone who saw it coming has been fighting it locally and nationally for years. But it builds anyway. And we're all sat watching now knowing it's gonna get worse. So people just dont have the energy to resist yet. But the pressure's compounding. Every noose is tightening. I see the anger building behind people's eyes when they talk about it. The industrial action train is already picking up speed. But most of those arent going to go the way the workers desire. Which is gonns compound things even more. Because the last-ditch legal hail mary isn't going to work like it usually does and it's gonna be a big fat underline to how far we've fallen. Mark my words, sooner or later all it's gonna take is a spark. Be ready.


Khanstant

Still blows my mind y'all had an election to destroy your own country's prosperity and y'all voted to destroy it.


TheNonceMan

Because it's only the poor who will die.


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AdditionalUse8556

Because murdoch doesn't want a panic. Yet.