this post was submitted on 31 Mar 2024
198 points (97.6% liked)

UK Politics

2985 readers
63 users here now

General Discussion for politics in the UK.
Please don't post to both [email protected] and [email protected] .
Pick the most appropriate, and put it there.

Posts should be related to UK-centric politics, and should be either a link to a reputable news source for news, or a text post on this community.

Opinion pieces are also allowed, provided they are not misleading/misrepresented/drivel, and have proper sources.

If you think "reputable news source" needs some definition, by all means start a meta thread. (These things should be publicly discussed)

Posts should be manually submitted, not by bot. Link titles should not be editorialised.

Disappointing comments will generally be left to fester in ratio, outright horrible comments will be removed.
Message the mods if you feel something really should be removed, or if a user seems to have a pattern of awful comments.

[email protected] appears to have vanished! We can still see cached content from this link, but goodbye I guess! :'(

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 27 points 4 months ago (3 children)

Lol, no - the blue team are set for a poor election result, that doesn't mean conservatives nor their hold on power are at any risk whatsoever, since all 3 largest parties directly serve conservative, right winged interests.
The only thing a red team win will do is give blue team someone to blame the past 15 years on, so that they get back in power next time.
The fact that people still not only believe this charade, but are actually pinning their hopes on it is beyond depressing, but it also serves as living proof of the system working exactly as intended - to keep the powerful in power, and everyone else serving them.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 4 months ago (3 children)

I don't know anything about UK politics but it's common enough in any country to say "all parties are too conservative" while in fact one of them is clearly less-so than the others.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (3 children)

That's true but the labour party is far more conservative than ever before in its history, and is still squarely "conservative" even if less so than the others. They still want to privatise the NHS even more, for example, a.right wing position which will cause a lot of suffering and cost many lives. Just because they're not fully fascist doesn't mean you can't criticise them for being too conservative.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

That is absolutely not true what are you on about. Is absolutely no evidence they want to privatize the NHS unless of course you want to actually point to some evidence

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/jan/25/keir-starmers-private-prescription-for-the-nhs-is-dangerous

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/keir-starmer-nhs-pledge-privatisation-b2123849.html

https://www.thenational.scot/news/23236106.nhs-keir-starmer-defends-use-private-sector-despite-earlier-pledge/

And this is before the election even happens.

When a politician says "Let me be clear, we’re not talking about privatising the NHS, we’re talking about using the private sector effectively" (emphasis mine) they mean further privatisation, just like under Blair, Starmer's hero.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

That's not really how major parties work though?

This is incredibly reductive but suppose there was a single spectrum between progressive and conservative. Let's make progressive 0 and conservative 10.

Forgetting about parties for a moment, let's say the will of the general population is 7.

If you have two major parties they will arrange themselves as 6.5 and 7.5. Both parties appear "conservative", but really your progressive party needs to appear conservative to steal as many swing voters as possible.

If they won consecutive elections their policies would start to move back down the spectrum.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

This is known as the "Overton window" for anyone who wants to read into it further.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

Yeah right I had no idea it had a name. Thanks.

[–] [email protected] -5 points 4 months ago (1 children)

They still want to privatise the NHS even more, for example, a.right wing position which will cause a lot of suffering and cost many lives.

This proves that you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. Then again, very few people seem to know anything about healthcare provision, yet pontificate like experts.

Take a look at Europe for how we should do healthcare. Shock horror, it's a mix of public and private that isn't anything like America and is affordable for all. And that you can actually access. And doesn't waste all the billions we put into it.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

This proves that you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.

Wrong. 1) The Labour party do intend further privatisation and 2) the current creeping privatisation has been directly attributed, time and again, to worsening outcomes. A third point would be that capitalism and healthcare fundamentally do not mix, as one relies on quantitative feedback and metrics, while the other can only be measured subjectively.
The NHS model is not that of European healthcare systems, and further privatisation under this model will cause damage.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 4 months ago

Which is why we need to change to a European model.

The NHS model is outdated. When it was created, it was designed to be used to make people healthier, then demand would go down. They didn't envision a society where we would all lead healthier lives, live longer and then need healthcare in our later lives as a natural byproduct of aging.

The NHS hasn't moved with the times, so either we reform it or we stick with the current model, continuing to chuck money into a bottomless pit.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

People say that Labour are like the Tories but they're not at all like the Tories. People say this basically want the Labour Party to be the socialist workers party. There wouldn't be happy with anything else.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

If you're tired of people who are upset with their choices at the polls, consider working to pass electoral reform so they can shut the fuck up and get off the sidelines and show us how it's done!

The solution is more democracy, not vote shaming people into a false dichotomy merry go round.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

There's always been a strong dose of authoritarianism about the red team, they might purport to represent the working classes but they also seem to want to 'improve' them too. And as someone on the Alexei Sayle podcast pointed out, their Foreign Policy is always quite imperialistic.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (3 children)

and now we may have a blairite to look forward to, wish the working class would vote in theyre interest

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago

Blair took a few years to embrace authoritarianism. Starmer is doing it straight out of the gate.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

and now we may have a blairite to look forward to, wish the working class would vote in theyre interest

Exactly this. Starting with better education, schooling, and basic spelling competency. But instead we get Tory.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

wish the working class would vote in theyre interest

That's what I plan to do, while being well aware that playing within the rules they've set us won't actually change anything (but I refuse to vote for someone who doesn't represent me, and Labour now categorically don't), and aiming to abolish the establishment, rather than put any trust in it to look out for the working class, because it never will, no matter how we vote. By design.