like the queen this thread will never die: in which we ALL resign (ourselves to disgusting miseries to post-boris politics 2022)

Funniest possible outcome would be the Lib Dems in the kingmaker role but they can't agree to jump in with either side due to real or perceived extremism, resulting in an endless hung parliament with the only real option being some combination of clowns forming a coalition with a referendum-demanding SNP.

<q>there are plenty of ways in which a Starmer government with a comfortable majority could be worse than the current gov. </q>

I think this is nonsense tbh. Have you looked at the current government lately? I have no illusions about Kieth and his gang, but I would prefer absolutely anyone else in the UK as Home Secretary rather than Suella B.

this week Rachel Reeves criticized the government for being inefficient at deportations

the Blair government introduced ASBOs and the Yarl's Wood detention centre

https://www.crimeandjustice.org.uk/publications/cjm/article/toxic-legacy-new-labour

I know all this and I think Reeves is awful and I won't vote Labour at the next election - my vote is meaningless in my constituency which will always vote Tory. But I think the lesser of two evils cliche is exactly right! Nothing but love for the UKpol radge cru, but the idea that Starmer would be even worse than Truss is ILX doomerism at its worse imo.

tbf i said "in some ways" and that includes the idea of them having a majority that allows them to indulge their worst instincts. i did also say that not having a Tory government would be marginally less worse for the poorest, so yeah maybe a tiny bit of hyperbole but in general i think nu Lab are very good at stealth cruelty when they're empowered

it could only ever be better through a hell of a lot of pressure from the kind of mass movement which has yet to cohere in a sustainable form - even then no credit should go to the party (ever, for anything, 1945 included)

Lesser of two evils is a refusal to look at what's in front of you.

'surely you would rather...' type questions just sum up the shitness of the system and the prospects. no offence paolo but no-one should have to stoop to that here.

Starmer would nod along to this one:

It was reported last night that ministers plan to set up temporary, Nightingale-style courts that would be used to prosecute migrants crossing the Channel and entering Britain illegally

— Times Politics (@timespolitics) October 5, 2022

don't care at all who wins the general election no

do care about Diane Abbott remaining a MP so I'll be voting lab but if I lived somewhere with a less sound representative I don't think I would

I’ll definitely NOT be tactically giving Peter Kyle any more of my votes.

I won't vote Labour for reasons well documented (cf poster Calzino, passim).

However I also note the possibility that a hypothetical Labour government could do specific things, in specific sectors, that could be beneficial.

It is conceivable, say, that if you are a nurse or schoolteacher you would be better off under Labour - even while many other things might be bad.

That is hypothetical. I don't have evidence for it. My general point is that a government will make specific policies that will affect particular sectors (and people) in particular ways which may be distinct from their overall character.

The argument could be made that a compromised Labour government (like Blair's) just prepares the ground for the Tories to come roaring back in and finish the job of ruination they started. I could hardly see Starmer pivoting to the left if he became PM - more likely the opposite.

This is my official apology to every person in United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Come on by and I'll you all a scone. https://t.co/mq9lpoiCpS

— Rick Perlstein (@rickperlstein) October 6, 2022

Perlstein is embarrassed because Truss has declared herself a fan of his work (I doubt she has read any). One of her team was quoting the "invisible bridge" Khrushchev line he used for the title of his Reagan book, but obv thinking the book is saying Reaganomics are good!

Perlstein drowining his sorrows with M People.

I think telling people to GTTO by any means or they are enabling them is bullshit. It's all down to personal choice or how good your MP is if you are going to reluctantly drag yourself into the polling station. I won't be doing it ... ever again most likely. Wouldn't think less of someone for voting for Kieth as they are honest enough to say he's an evil racist small c conservative wanker!

as unless

there could be people in certain sectors who might be better off under a Labour govt, but you'd have to see what kind of a Tory party is going to grow from the ruins after the Truss bomb to be certain. I think Reeves could be just equally as dangerous as Kwarteng is for anyone dependant on benefits.

I could imagine Reeves being worse than any Tory in a bid to appear tough.

gonna need confirmation on how rick perlstein pronounces 'scone' before lending him my support

I'm wondering if Truss did actually read Nixonland and took his prose style accounts of racist cops going out in mobs to murder black people during riots as an endorsement of fascist state violence. It would be better if she was bullshitting and hadn't read a word of it!

Did we do Conor Burns already? Been busy today...

At this point you have to wonder if they are for some reason deliberately pissing off their base

Exclusive: Govt has scrapped offer of free train travel for military to attend remembrance services this November.

It was seen as “too great a loss to the taxpayer”

But ministers said not to have signed off on decision and are urgently reviewing ithttps://t.co/k7Gsd1gsEe

— Aubrey Allegretti (@breeallegretti) October 7, 2022

probably need some tier system here, only those that can prove they've committed the most serious war crimes get free travel, the rest get discount.

What has seemed strange to me about the UK is that its immigration policy seems so tolerant but that its socio-economic class structure seems so strongly defined. I had thought this might have to do with being an island nation. I think one strain of the left in the US favors race blind class sensitive policies as most effective.

Why is Labour so out of touch (if that is the implication)? Why should the working classes in the UK be slower to adapt (if that is actually true)?

(Just want to say that some of us Americans DO intend to just lurk in these threads, and not try to make it about uh "race blind class sensitive" US "leftists".)

Worth googling “windrush” and “hostile environment” for a start - the latter is exactly what it sounds like ie the opposite of a tolerant immigration policy, and the person behind the former scandal went on to be PM

“I would love to have a front page of The Telegraph with a plane [full of immigrants] taking off to Rwanda, that’s my dream, it’s my obsession,” Ms Braverman said.

that's from this week, from the minister responsible, and is the very opposite of tolerant

I seem to have a knack for making myself open to attack.

What I mean is that when I traveled to the UK in the past, it seemed that there were many recent immigrants working there and not being hassled. But maybe this in itself does not signify much or is no longer true.

not try to make it about uh "race blind class sensitive" US "leftists"

Any more detailed explication of what was a cause for insult or ridicule would be much appreciated. But I get the sense that ILX is hostile.

youn i hope people have tried to give reasonable answers to your questions in this thread, tho it's impossible to cover all the history and details in a quick post. you should realise that most of the regular posters to this thread are extremely sceptical about the main political parties in the UK, we don't tend to think about them as honest actors with differences of opinion about what's best for the nation as a whole, some of us are not particularly wedded to the concept of nation states in general, and that's why you'll see people for whom questions of specific policy or adjustments to the broad political status quo are an irrelevance, i guess.

also there is a documented history of successive governments's attacks on immigrants in the UK, as wins suggested upthread you can read about the "hostile environment" which has been an explicit policy goal of recent administrations - here's a link to a primer

https://www.jcwi.org.uk/the-hostile-environment-explained

Over the last six years I have been through the process of getting Indefinite Leave to Remain* for my wife, it has cost us upwards of £10,000 and a huge amount of personal stress, we have been married since early 2010 and have two children who are both British nationals, so you can imagine what it's like for refugees here. Just to give you a flavour of how welcoming the UK is, as in "not fucking welcoming at all" - sorry if this question rubbed people up the wrong way, but it's a personal thing for a lot of us here. There's a good chance you were in London, which is very multicultural, however it's not representative of the UK in general, and certainly doesn't represent current immigration policy, which has become incrementally cruel over the last 20 years.

*the change from "permanent" to "indefinite" is just one of the ways the government show us that "this is still not your home"

it seemed that there were many recent immigrants working there and not being hassled

How do you tell if someone is a recent immigrant? You'd have to ask them, maybe you did. Also there's a lot more of the UK than London - though it's sometimes hard to believe there is if you follow the UK media.

(xp)

I don’t think any of us were being (ha) hostile, just providing context when asked for it?

wrt labour their appealing to this mindset is to an extent a cynical attempt to win votes (Ed Miliband immigration mug another good Google, if depressing) but frankly it’s clear many of them are just committed to the racism because it’s what they genuinely believe in. Hence this moment of all moments they are going out of their way to announce that the offer is “racist mugs again but sports direct size”. It’s beyond depressing, fuck them

Dalia Gebrial said this on Novara Media this week.

Rather than seeing Reeves as saying these things for politic and tactical reasons, we should take her at face value and assume that she believes it.

Is there a good place to read about why poc like Patel, braverman etc. seem so angry and active in fighting migrants, who are presumably also poc?

Like I know it’s a pretty big minefield to walk into but I presume there has been some decent journalism on the peculiar way people seemingly will fight against their own. And I know your own identity shouldn’t just be determined by singular things like race, sexuality etc. but it’s still something I really don’t understand.

Sarc aside I wouldn't expect much in the way of decent political journalism from UK pundits

Immigration can be theoretically separated from race, I suppose, tho it very much isn't. Straightforward answer is that people's political identities can always be at odds with other aspects of who they are, the intersections are real

Is there a good place to read about why poc like Patel, braverman etc. seem so angry and active in fighting migrants, who are presumably also poc?

Are the POC were Indians, middle class and Hindu?

Strike that "were".

there is of course a "pull the ladder up" mentality among many second generation immigrants, people often side with bullies in order to not be the victim, it isn't really a mystery- but with Patel & Braverman it isn't so much why they have the extreme version of these values (because they are both garbage human beings, that's about it) but why they have been placed in positions of power by racists who are very keen not to be seen as racist.

it's not a direct answer to youn's question but despite covering events from more than 200 yrs ago it contains a *lot* of material that moves towards an answer: read c.l.r.james's the black jacobins and pay close attention to the shifting political and miltary allegiances on haiti before during and after the revolution of the mulattoes and the free blacks (and if it comes to that to rival currents in revolutionary paris at the same time, in relation to the status of this colony as it was reaching towards independence)

I think that poster a hoy hoy is right. There does seem to be a phenomenon here.

There is surely some kind of "Nixon in China" aspect -- the most useful and plausible person for enacting (let's suppose they are) "racist policies" is someone from a racial minority who can say "this can't be a racist policy, look who's enacting it".

And these individuals seem to embrace that role.

I'd imagine Patel would view her family as more valuable immigrants than say some poorer S Asian/African/Caribbean ones who came to Britain before her parents did to work in the textiles industry, drive buses etc. And I find it easy to imagine with this mindset that she will have even less empathy with asylum seekers in this era. And perhaps a lot of posh Indian POC of Patel's generation have parents who were very much influenced by caste system prejudices from the empire days. I know her parents were from Uganda but the British tried to impose it there as well, maybe with less success than in India.

this week Rachel Reeves criticized the government for being inefficient at deportations

― saigo no ice cream (Noodle Vague), Friday, 7 October 2022 10:44 (yesterday)

Sure, but this week the Home Secretary expressed a wish to get immigration down to the ten-thousands, revealed the dream mentioned by koogs above, announced an intention to leave the ECHR, announced legislation to create a “blanket ban” on anyone who enters the UK illegally, including by small boats, from claiming refuge.

I absolutely take your point that the Tory party are at least incoherent - I think I heard today that Braverman had stepped back from some of these because Liz Truss reined her in. A Labour party with higher discipline might be more of a danger, but I don't think the discipline will survive power, certainly not to the extent that that list of ideas, if proposed, would have any chance.

(An interesting point is why we're heading from the Shadow Chancellor on this when Yvette Cooper is the Shadow Home Secretary)

Is it kind of "look look I think the same thing, so vote for me" mindset?

I wonder if it's worth pointing out that neither Patel nor Braverman are 'direct' immigrants, both from families who emigrated from India to Uganda in the one case and Keyna / Mauritius in the other - no difference according to their own racist immigration system, but they may have arrived here separated in both class and community from the majority of immigrants. I've no idea if this is a factor in the bizarre spectacle this week of Braverman railing against the recent India-UK trade deal because Indian immigrants make up the largest number of visa overstayers in the UK (and then apparently being told to zip it by Truss).