“I take my responsibilities seriously. I did not lie” - UK politics June 23 on

I am so fucked off about the media framing discussions about Gaza as an argument between Muslims and Jews. All the Labour MPs shown advocating for ceasefire on the BBC news last night were Muslim; other ceasefire advocates are available!

There's different outliers (Labour doesn't have a Suella Braverman, the Tories don't have a Diane Abbott) but the two parties are largely overlapping bell curves.

I am a moderate right wing authoritarian and I hope to see Kieth Starmer in number 10

tbh I'm totally shocked that REDACTED doesn't give a fuck about REDACTED

I think we can all agree that James Cleverly trying to convince people he didn't say something and, in the course of the denial, convincing everyone he did, is pretty amusing.

https://x.com/BBCBreakfast/status/1725062267752919254?t=iFWhqCrBijLWn3QzZmFuPw&s=19

I am a bastion of respectability politics and nothing gets my vote like a white man in a suit making a load of sad noises about how he’d love to vote against war BUT

i know a few labour-moderate soi-disant-centre-left types who don't like starmer one bit but are willing to bite the bullet. speaking for myself, much as i violently despise the tories i really don't want to vote for labour either. one problem is that there are vast acres of space between the odious starmerite position and full tankie, a huge segment of the political spectrum which is essentially homeless rn, arguably save for the greens but they're as usual refusing to jump on the wide-open opportunity to make some ground. it's a pleasing fantasy to imagine the labour left defecting greenwards (well, for me at least, i know there are a few green haters itt, hello there) but also on the cusp of labour almost definitely winning an election by a long way, for many of these mps political expedience will trump principle, they are uk politicians after all. it's a shame layla moran (whose voting record is to the left of almost every current labour mp) didn't become lib dem leader or i'd be rather annoyingly rooting for them rn. on second thoughts maybe it's a good thing

"biting the bullet" = voting for genocide enablers, transphobes, friends of business

well yeah, this is why i don't want to vote for them, but a lot of decent if underinformed (or purblind) people are able to let that become background noise

if it's background noise then you're not decent, sorry i don't make the rules

full tankie

Morons on ilx learning and misusing the intraleft insult tankie 😑 will we ever be free

at this point I'm kinda disappointed Abbott hasn't been expelled from the party so I could vote for her without giving labour a vote

a huge segment of the political spectrum which is essentially homeless rn

tapping the "this is a horrible metaphor when there is a growing segment of the population that is actually homeless" sign

god it's good to be back :D

but yeah, point taken daniel, make that 'politically unrepresented'

and amend the jocular 'full tankie' to the fucking serious 'hard communism' idk

can almost hear alphie concocting some withering post rn

full tankies have traditionally tended to kill hard communists but sure

my actual you'd have thought uncontroversial point being that most of the political spectrum exists left of starmer's labour, so it's surprising that no major or even semi-major party (yes party politics is bad and hated yes) is making moves to claim any position substantially within that space

it's almost as if the major political parties are undemocratic cliques run for the benefit of a few MPs and patronage-seekers

it's almost like the UK is an oligarchy and not a true democracy hmmm.jpg

xp haha

lol snap

with the accompanying speculation that present events are surely providing as much of a breaking-point as could feasibly exist, so if not now etc

who ARE the greens run for, is something that as a green member for the past decade I've not been able to work out tbf

anagram look at what you've done

the merest whiff of an opportunity to triangulate lol

imago thought you were going to go full XR and spend time posting from jail?

i'm more useful on the outside, got some big plans

I had a greens sign in my garden last council elections, partially because my neighbour was standing for them (and won!) and he's a decent person, but mostly because the labour party (who I had quit YEARS before, and asked many times to stop emailing me) sent out a bulk email saying "send us photos of the signs in your front gardens!" and sending them a photo of it finally (& suddenly) managed to get me removed from all of their mailing lists.

Sad thing about all of this is that by the time of the election people (bar Muslims, which is why Jess Phillips had to vote against) will have long forgotten as you think there will be a ceasefire. That's ofc good, but people shouldn't forget how these scum vote at this time.

The reality is the people who will "bite the bullet" don't care about any of this. They will always perform their politics and "bite the bullet". At least Tories are capitalist racists, no pretence to "labour-moderate soi-disant-centre-left" word salad.

The "labour-moderate soi-disant-centre-left" like my MP will talk and 'debate' progressive wordings and then vote for racism no problem. Its even worse than an EDL supporter because they lied to people to get there and put in that vote.

The "labour-moderate soi-disant-centre-left"

I'd just like a white coffee please mate

No way I could vote for the Greens, their longtime local candidate is married to the incompetent freeloader who is CEO where I work.

... who got a knighthood from Boris.

Tbf Tom iirc you have an easy non-Labour option.

I can't deny it.

Tom D. and I are vastly different people, 'tis true, the only time I ever remember being in the same room as him I was far too scared to speak with him, but I find it hard to imagine ever using this criterion to determine where to plant my 'X' at the ballot box. You can't choose who you fall in love with. Once Cupid fires his little arrow, ain't a thing you can do about it!

I don't think love is just a power that randomly matches you to a person without values or worldview playing any part in it

more importantly though, spite towards your boss should absolutely take precedence over electoral concerns

btw I have talked to Tom D on several occasions and lived to tell the tale

that's what you think. we are all actually ghosts

Kieth is pro ghost-creation tbf

the state of that Kim Leadbeater video. Basically: "I support a ceasefire but am going to abstain because I don't want to vote with the SNP". She's extremely dumb and will deservedly lose her seat next year.

Can confirm Tom D is a darling

I don't think love is just a power that randomly matches you to a person without values or worldview playing any part in it
Interesting. I *do* think that; maybe I am just some sort of hopeless romantic.

Iirc the occasion that I was in the same room as Tom D. was 'ILX Has a Festival' at the Windmill in Brixton in 2007/8. He looked a mean f*cker who was going to kick my effing head in, but fair play, gyac, books/covers &c.

Well I think love demands kindness, empathy, understanding and other qualities that can't actually be neatly divorced from a person's worldview.

"Would smash" can be divorced from it, I'll give you that.

Daniel, don’t you know any Labour-wife Tory-husband (and vice versa) couples? I sure do.

I don't no, but there's surely a huge gap between "sometimes members of the two most mainstream political parties in the UK fall in love" and "falling in love is totally random and unrelated to one's values entirely"?

irrational but not random

the couple of labour/tory marriages I've known have been a nightmare and any pretence of keeping politics and personal life separate went out the window whenever there was a fight

maybe some people make it work but it's hard to imagine their values are particularly divergent in such cases

My in laws are complete political opposites. I myself couldn’t do it.

Multiple Xps!!!

This is all tricky. My missus & I met in an Oxford nightclub after being abandoned by our respective friends & being wallflowers on the edge of the dancefloor thinking "wtf do I do now?", got talking/dancing/snogging, so went from the "smash that" scenario Daniel describes to being husband & wife 3.5 years later. Political compatibility? Who the f*ck knows; her formilative years were spent in martial-law era Gdansk, mine in Thatcherite London, so she has a knee-jerk dislike of anything "tankie" and considers a lot of UK socialists to be somewhat naive. She is a Tusk supporter as are most of her (huge) family; she hates Jarosław Kaczyński and queued up around the block to vote the arsehole out at an Oxford community centre co-opted as a temporary Polish polling station Ridiculously early on a Sunday morning!