Mailwatch(ed) Forum

Abernathy wrote: ↑Sat Sep 27, 2025 9:15 pm

Tubby Isaacs wrote: ↑Sat Sep 27, 2025 8:19 pm
The example of Trump makes me wary too. We all thought (at least before the election was getting near) that people would “see through him” the second time.

Yeah, get that. Just as I had thought it inconceivable that the USA could elect President Trump 2.0, until they did, I find the very notion of Prime Minister Farage unconscionable. But opinion polling makes it seem as though the great British electorate does not share my revulsion. Which leads me to wondering how we can correct that apparent aberration. PM Starmer seems to share my view, correctly characterising Farage/Reform as “the enemy” and a real threat to the prosperity and well-being of our nation. I hope Sir Keir’s political strategy team have something uptheirsleeve.

Both Trump and Farage had a whole TV channel and a mass of social media cheerleading them daily.

This is the kind of thing we need :

How about reviving some variation of Danny Dyer’s “with his trotters up” for Farage? You give Brexit voters a bit of a pass, while still sticking it to Farage?

https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/poli ... VMctrL9olw

Support for Brexit drops to laughable low – with just 11% seeing it as a success

That is striking. I don't think even "didn't do it right" gets you all that high. Depends on what Reform would need to win the election, I suppose. I think there will be way more tactical voting than in the basic polling numbers.

Did Leave voters taken any responsibility for their own stupidity?

In a quick round of the blame game, Boris Johnson was blamed by 80% of respondents for Brexit being a failure, trailed by David Cameron – the PM who called for the referendum in 2016 – on 74%. However, Nigel Farage didn’t get off the hook that easily.

More than-two thirds of those surveyed (68%) hold him personally responsible for the misgivings of his own flagship policy.

Everyone's vote is equal / the people have spoken

I got no clue mate, have you? / wasn't us, we didn't say anything

Sadly though, that they have realised they were led up the garden path by Farage about Brexit, hasn't stopped them trotting off down it again regarding migrants.

No doubt last night's Panorama will be passed off as "BBC propaganda" by the flagshaggers. Sarah Pochin, Runcorn's Reform MP, without stating a source, said there was a link with a rise in crime and migrants in the community. The presenter (unfortunately not to her face) cited Cheshire Police stating crime has been in decline for the past three years. She wasn't in any way sympathetic or even mildly perturbed when he told her he had been racially abused conducting an interview (which was shown) earlier.

An advantage of being politically engaged with partizan views.

Folks like us spot there chancers early, recognise the same old playbook and don't waste time exploring the rabbithole.
The less engaged are more prone to getting sucked into the orbit.

Reform's doctrine will be happy to convert a mere 3% of those into full-on cultists.


Outside of raw politics you can see a similar process happening around Jordan Peterson.

Starts out as a public intellectual and a voice for lost young men.
There are few red flags that the engaged will recognise, but nothing to scare the generally disinterested.
Enjoys a surge in popularity before swerving right and with supporting psychobabble.
Probably gains as much support as he loses as the MAGA / Tommeh engaged find another "Wise man" to follow.

Craps out in a drug coma, which doesn't play well with the ones who are in for "Tidy your room, stand up straight".
Now plays to shrinking, incresingly hardcore audiences.
Surfs on the fringes of health conspiracies - through they have bigger, more medically adjacent figureheads.
Still gets an invite to Fox, and wacko social media channels.

AOB wrote: ↑Tue Sep 30, 2025 8:00 am Sadly though, that they have realised they were led up the garden path by Farage about Brexit, hasn't stopped them trotting off down it again regarding migrants.

No doubt last night's Panorama will be passed off as "BBC propaganda" by the flagshaggers. Sarah Pochin, Runcorn's Reform MP, without stating a source, said there was a link with a rise in crime and migrants in the community. The presenter (unfortunately not to her face) cited Cheshire Police stating crime has been in decline for the past three years. She wasn't in any way sympathetic or even mildly perturbed when he told her he had been racially abused conducting an interview (which was shown) earlier.

Source is "Trust me, Bro". She did this before with a particular road, where the residents pointed out she was talking rubbish.

AOB wrote: ↑Tue Sep 30, 2025 8:00 am Sadly though, that they have realised they were led up the garden path by Farage about Brexit, hasn't stopped them trotting off down it again regarding migrants.

This, and precisely this, is what leads (rational)people like you and I to commit that cardinal political sin of wondering whether these voters really do have rancid luncheon meat for brains. And/or whether they are actual racists - which is more or less the same thing.

And yet.... Their default in any debate is to say you're calling them thick.

Which will really win them over, coming from who they see as the "metropolitan liberal elite".

This name-calling is all getting very Trumpian.

You’ve missed the point again. I think we all know it’s not a sensible idea to dismiss thick racists explicitly as thick racists, and your endless reiteration of that does precisely nothing to cement that knowledge.

My point was about what leads people to draw that conclusion and be tempted into the cardinal political sin. Sometimes the evidence is irrefutable.

Sometimes people are, just, fucking thick.

I completely include myself in that, in terms of ignorance, skills, understanding. Take me out of my area of expertise and I'll have a go, but otherwise no fucking idea mate. That applies to voting to no small degree. I am equipped to try and problem solve but I'll rapidly hit a wall if not in the nice comfy space society has allowed/designed/enabled me to have. Even beyond that, I can do and have done some really, really dumb things. Born of hormones, emotions, idiotic thought patterns. It happens all the bloody time, to everyone.

Then there are people who are just fucking thick, even within an area of skills and understanding - it's just likely a smaller area than others.

Nobody doubts this in 'every day world'. We rely on it as an offhand judgement too often, I warrant.

The moment politics comes in, it's anathema. I know why. I get why. It's important, in many ways, that this is the case.

But it doesn't change reality. It doesn't change 'common sense' understandings of human interaction. This is one of the classic populist elisions/equivocations. They are utterly happy to be blinded to reality so long as it suits them, same as anyone else.

Abernathy wrote: ↑Tue Sep 30, 2025 2:14 pm You’ve missed the point again. I think we all know it’s not a sensible idea to dismiss thick racists explicitly as thick racists, and your endless reiteration of that does precisely nothing to cement that knowledge.

Says the bloke who never shuts up about rejoining the EU.

I see that Farage has reacted to Starmer’s speech by claiming that Starmer is “unfit to be Prime Minister” and, ridiculously, also claiming that Starmer was inciting violence against Reform supporters. He also lied again that Labour is saying that anybody that is concerned about immigration or supports Farage is a racist, something that Nobody in Labour has ever said.

Pot, kettle, black , etc etc etc.


Again, I draw a little hope from recent history, in this case French history. In 2002, the racist ethno-fascist Jean-Marie Le Pen unexpectedly made it into the final run-off in that year’s presidential election. A horrified French electorate, appalled at the real prospect of a fascist President Le Pen, gritted their collective teeth and overwhelmingly voted in Jacques Chirac in their droves in the final round.

I’d rather like to think that the UK electorate in 2028/9 will show the same pragmatic wisdom as the French in 2002.

"Vote for the crook so the fascist doesn't get in", I believe.

Yeah, I think Reform would have a lot of tactical voting against them. I wouldn't be entirely surprised if the Tories get closer to the Reform vote share before the next election, by looking more like they can count. That's assuming they still exist as a separate party then.

Tubby Isaacs wrote: ↑Tue Sep 30, 2025 6:01 pm Yeah, I think Reform would have a lot of tactical voting against them. I wouldn't be entirely surprised if the Tories get closer to the Reform vote share before the next election, by looking more like they can count. That's assuming they still exist as a separate party then.

Unlike France, UK elections don't have run-offs.

There's no opportunity for the UK electorate to stare reality in the face and step back.
Our "one round first past the post" system also makes tactical voting against ... progressively harder as the runners and riders increase in number.