#starmer must go

[ivovynckier]

Does Keir Cromwell know how Jean-Paul Marat, leader of the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution, ended?

(Hint: he was stabbed to death. That's a knife crime!)

(Death of Marat, Jacques-Louis David, Museum of Fine Arts Brussels)

[plushri]

As promised, my post on the lobby yesterday

Over 3000 showed up to lobby their member of Parliament and urge them to vote for the Scottish National Party's motion for an immediate ceasefire, to replace the current government motion for a stop of humanitarian aid.

The motion did not pass, in fact it did not even get voted on. Which is what the MPs came there to do.

"As the war in Gaza continues to cause death, destruction, and terror, with over 30,000 people reported dead so far, British MPs couldn't even decide how to decide what they think about it"

The thousands of people who waited outside Parliament were left in the wind and rain with no explanation, as security let very few of us in. I was there 3 hours and got nowhere near the front, people AT the front said they did not get in. The MPs knew we came to lobby. We have a right to lobby and speak to our MPs. We organised and showed up in our thousands, but Parliament didn't accomplish anything. What is the state of democracy in this country?

People of the UK, KEEP SHOWING UP FOR PALESTINE. Make the national demonstration on Saturday 9th March the biggest so far. Spread the word of it everywhere, encourage people you know to show up.

Our government is pathetic and spineless and they are panicking under our pressure. ONE HUNDRED (!) Labour MPs were planning to rebel against their leader and vote for immediate ceasefire. Do not let up.

[sophiamcdougall]

UK people, after you vote, do this -- you have until the 11th of July, 2024 -- i.e a week from today, the day of the general election! It's a consultation on new guidelines for schools on sexuaility and gender and they are bigoted as fuck. Also just weird and stupid. We absolutely must try to stop 12-year-olds dying by suicide! Fuck under-12-year-olds, though, they're on their own. Mainly, though, it's about forcing teachers to misgender students and making it optional to admit same-sex couples exist. Yes, this was dreamed up by the Tories, but Starmer's Labour is too transphobic that we can trust they won't go through with this. Let the new government know you won't tolerate a new Section 28. There's advice on how to respond here, but be sure to use your own words!

[danielfuckingricciardo]

Begging you all to spare a thought for everyone in the U.K. right now and to keep talking about what’s going on here.

If you didn’t know, I can give a quick TLDR but three young girls were killed in a stabbing in Southport. Ten others were injured, including eight other children. The culprit was arrested following the attack. Social media alleged that the attacker was an immigrant and a Muslim (both of which have been debunked, he is a Christian and was born in Wales) and now the fascist right wingers have crawled out of their holes to riot across the country.

Hotels housing asylum seekers have been attacked, including those in Rotherham and Tamworth. Riots have taken place across the country, in 28 locations so far, and rioters continue to plan their attacks in these key locations.

They call it a protest, it isn’t, it’s a fucking riot. They’re harassing innocent people, causing damage to property, looting and causing harm. These cunts are bringing their children along, encouraging them to incite violence and continue this hate and vitriol and it’s just fucking sickening.

And to make it all fucking worse, scum of the earth Elon fucking Musk is throwing his two pence into the situation, claiming that ‘civil war is inevitable’ and trying to wage a Twitter war with PM Keir Starmer.

I’m scared to go to work tomorrow. Riots are planned to take place in my town for at least the next few days, including near my area of work. I’m white, I’m not a target, but my heart breaks for the POC who live in my area, for my friends whom I love who are terrified of being attacked or their families being attacked. I can’t even begin to imagine how scared they must feel.

To all my fellow U.K. friends, please stay safe. Normally I would encourage peaceful counter protest but these aren’t protests, they’re riots. You can’t counter protest a riot. Going would mean putting yourself at significant risk of being harmed by these spineless racist thugs. Please keep safe and keep us in your thoughts. Thanks.

[amorphousblobqueen]

I know that labour isn't exactly providing a radical left wing alternative right now, but right now I think it's important to keep two things in mind:

1. Labour need to be electable. It doesn't matter how good you might think their polcies are, if they can't appeal to the general public and capture the centre ground, they can't win. And if they don't win, the tories will.

2. The main goal that we need to push for is getting the tories out, which requires us to vote tactically. The most reliable site for this is Stopthetories.vote (linked properly below). They are a non-partisan group focused on getting the tories out of power and, with a little more effort, out of second place, which would leave Ed Davey as the leader of the opposition preventing the Conservatives from setting the narrative and poisoning our politics. This is the only election where every tory seat is now vulnerable, so tactical voting is really important this time around. If that means voting for Labour in your seat, so be it. If that means voting Lib Dem, Green, SNP or Plaid, so be it. The tories must be punished. The second priority of Stopthetories.vote is to push for proportional representation after the election to make sure that tactical voting is never necessary again.

So please, if you want to end the tories then this is the best advice thatI can give you: go onto Stopthetories.vote, enter your postcode, you don't need to sign up, and find out who the tactical vote is in your area, hold your nose if you have to, and vote. They even have a list of the 80 most marginal seats which if flipped would sebd the tories into at least 3rd place, maybe even 4th place. If your seat isn't on that list, tactical voting is still a good idea because the more seats that we can flip the better. Post election, we can then light a firework under Kier Starmer's ass to do better. But right now, the tories have to go.

[mariacallous]

Britain is burning. The recent weeks of far-right riots have seen mobs assembling outside mosques and hotels housing asylum-seekers; the burning of public libraries; and an uptick in targeted racist violence and vandalism. Sparked by the tragic deadly stabbings of three young girls in the town of Southport, the incident has been sickeningly exploited by anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim groups, which have spread disinformation online and garnered support from prominent far-right figures.

Less than two months after a new Labour government took office, the issue of immigration has already taken center stage. Prime Minister Keir Starmer now faces the steep challenge of tackling the root causes of Britain’s toxic relationship with immigration.

For years now, the issue of immigration has been at the heart of the British predicament, and in the wake of Brexit, the normalization of far-right rhetoric has increasingly embedded itself in Britain’s media and political landscape.

The Labour Party must not be blown off course by the recent riots. It should instead capitalize on this moment—using it to carve out a new, humane immigration policy.

Even though Starmer’s government has pledged to increase the number of deportations of those who do not have the right to stay in the country, there have been some important changes to Britain’s immigration policies since Labour came into power.

Most prominently, on the first day of his premiership, Starmer scrapped the controversial Rwanda bill that entailed sending asylum-seekers from the United Kingdom to the East African nation. Introduced by former Prime Minister Boris Johnson in 2022, many considered the policy to be a cynical maneuver rather than a serious solution to address the country’s broken immigration system. New Home Secretary Yvette Cooper called it “a complete con,” which she told Parliament had cost the British taxpayers 700 million pounds (about $918.4 million)—a considerable sum of money given that no asylum-seeker ever set foot in Rwanda.

Perhaps the only enduring image of this failed Rwanda policy was a photo of the Conservative Party’s former Home Secretary Suella Braverman joyfully laughing in a center in Rwanda meant to house asylum-seekers. The daughter of immigrant parents who migrated to Britain from East Africa celebrating her “dream” of sending vulnerable asylum-seekers to one of the most repressive African countries was a stark symbol of the cruel and ineffective anti-migrant policies of the recent Tory era.

Last month, after Starmer spoke about “resetting” Britain’s approach to immigration in a way that respects international human rights standards, Labour also announced plans to permanently shut down the controversial Bibby Stockholm, a barge moored off the coast of Dorset that is used to hold asylum-seekers. In a surprise appointment, Starmer then chose Richard Hermer, a distinguished human rights lawyer who began his career at famed human rights firm Doughty Street Chambers, as his attorney general.

Another sign of change at the Home Office is that it now refers to migrants as “irregular” rather than “illegal,” a term routinely used under Tory governments that implied criminality and reinforced harmful stereotypes.

This is the sort of humane approach that Britain needs—only a much larger scale. Though these small changes were announced before the recent riots began, the question remains whether the Labour Party—even with its dark past—has the courage to transform Britain’s troubled relationship with immigration going forward. A lasting solution would address the spread of deceptive disinformation aimed at sowing hatred while also advocating for a truly compassionate and ethical immigration system.

For instance, Starmer could officially repeal the Illegal Migration Act, which was passed in July last year by the Tory-led government. The law allowed the government to deny the right of asylum to migrants who had arrived in the U.K. irregularly. It stated that the government could instead detain and deport refugees to their home countries or “safe” third countries (such as Rwanda). The controversial law was criticized by several human rights groups as well as the United Nations, which described it as an “asylum ban” that penalized vulnerable refugees by effectively closing off safe and legal pathways for those escaping persecution, violence, or conflict. Although the International Rescue Committee reports that the Labour Party has “effectively ended” enforcement of the law, it remains on the books.

In addition to scrapping the Tory-era act, the Labour government should also look to tackle the backlog of asylum cases. According to the latest Home Office data, there are more than 118,000 people waiting for an initial decision on their asylum applications. To truly bring down these figures, Starmer will need to do a lot more to reform a broken system that leaves thousands of vulnerable people trapped in destitution.

His government can seek real improvements in the asylum process by expanding safe routes, ensuring fair hearings, and demonstrating compassion and humanity. To focus on longer-term solutions, Starmer should prioritize Britain’s efforts to address the root causes of the global conflicts that drive many people to make perilous journeys in the first place.

Beyond repairing the asylum system, the Labour government could also uphold the rights of Britons of migrant background by revoking the Nationality and Borders Act that was passed in 2022, which creates a two-tiered system of citizenship, making naturalized British citizens—such as myself—second-class citizens.

The act grants the state the power to strip Britons of citizenship without giving them notice. This extreme measure makes Britain an outlier among liberal democracies—and unfairly targets its own citizens, especially British Muslims, even if their families have been in the country for generations.

Citizenship-stripping powers are not new in the United Kingdom, having been weaponized by both Labour and Tory administrations post-9/11. In the past two decades, hundreds of Britons have been stripped of their citizenships.

As the historian Hannah Arendt famously said, “citizenship is the right to have rights,” and the British state has weaponized citizenship in the name of security. Starmer has a rare opportunity to fix this.

Finally, Labour’s immigration policies ought to focus on the most vulnerable and impacted group: unaccompanied children. A recent data investigation conducted by Lost in Europe, a cross-border journalism collective, found that across 13 European countries, including Germany and Italy, more than 50,000 unaccompanied child migrants went missing between 2021 and 2023.

Though the British Home Office is yet to release specific numbers regarding the United Kingdom (despite a pending Freedom of Information Act request), we know that unaccompanied minors migrating to Britain remain at increased risk of gang recruitment, workplace exploitation, and modern slavery.

Another report conducted by a group of nongovernmental organizations earlier this year showed that hundreds of child refugees who had experienced abuse and violence were often placed in adult prisons after the Home Office wrongly assessed their ages. To make matters worse, British tabloids often disregard or question the ages of migrant children—making a mockery of the country’s laws intended to safeguard the identities of minors, especially those in search of safety.

These depictions of migrants in Britain have dangerous consequences, and they often act as a precursor to discrimination and violence. Britain has been here before.

More than 24 years after the infamous Oldham riots of 2001, which saw a brief period of racial rioting in a town near Manchester that spurred on the country’s far right, Britain has yet to learn from its mistakes.

The easy talk of race and civil war—most recently invoked by Elon Musk—plays into standard far-right tropes about the country, but the reality is that Britain has absorbed migrants much more effectively than many of its European neighbors, and its capital is largely a tolerant and multiethnic place. This is a story that is rarely told by irresponsible media figures and politicians who have whipped up far-right extremists for far too long.

As a member of Parliament, Starmer represents the Holborn and St Pancras seat, one of the most diverse areas in inner-city London. My family arrived in this constituency as refugees from Somalia almost 30 years ago. I grew up on a council estate in Camden next to pretty, tree-lined Edwardian terraced houses worth millions. It was a place of poverty and friendship—a place where Irish, Bangladeshi, Kosovar, and Somali kids mixed together, speaking multicultural London English, listening to garage music, playing soccer, and drinking in local pubs.

There were tensions when I was growing up—for example, in Somers Town, where I went to school in the mid-1990s. The fascist, far-right British National Party (BNP) tried to capitalize on the tragic killing of Richard Everitt, a white boy, in 1994 by a group of Bangladeshi boys. At one point, a far-right mob firebombed halal butchers on a street lined with Asian shops. But the incident had no real long-term impact, and the community moved on.

While these recent riots may hark back to those days, unlike the BNP of the 1990s, these disparate far-right groups have far more power today. They are bolstered by social media algorithms and support from online extremists, established media, and some of the billionaires who operate those very platforms. They systematically spread their hate.

It is these forces that seek to warp and destabilize British culture rather that the tiny minority of asylum-seekers and larger group of regular migrants who seek to make their lives in Britain. Labour must not fall into their trap and let British democracy be undermined.

[eaglesnick]

"If history teaches anything, it teaches that self-delusion in the face of unpleasant facts is folly" -  Ronald Reagan

In his first speech outside of No 10, Sir Keir Starmer said:

“Our country has voted, decisively… for change. . You have given us a clear mandate and we will use it to deliver change”

If only that were true!  The sad fact is Keir Starmer’s Labour Party has failed utterly to excite or convince voters that he is the man to save this country from the terminal decline inflicted on us by 14 years of Conservative government.

No Mr Starmer, the country has not given you a “clear mandate" for change. We do want change but our votes went not to your right-wing Labour Party but to lesser parties like the Liberal Democrats, the Greens and more importantly Reform UK.

Either he is delusional or he cannot face the simple truth that the Labour Party under him is LESS popular with the public than when Jeremy Corbyn was leader. In May this year Starmer asked this rhetorical question:

“They (the electorate) still have questions about us: has Labour changed enough? "Do I trust them with my money, our borders, our security? My answer is yes, you can, because I have changed this party permanently,"

But the answer the voters gave on July 5th was a simple NO, we don’t trust you.

Overall Starmer’s Labour won LESS votes than Jeremy Corbyn in the 2019 election. When Corbyn lost that election, Starmer and his right-wing cronies within the Party heaped scorn and scathing criticism on Corbyn

Wes Streeting: 

“Jeremy Corbyn led the Labour Party to this defeat. Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow cabinet led the Labour party to this defeat. Jeremy Corbyn’s manifesto led the Labour Party to this defeat."

And in May 2020 The Financial Times had this headline:

“Starmer blames Corbyn for Labour’s election defeat “ (07/05/2020)

Rachel Reeves went even further:

“Jeremy Corbyn not fit to be Labour candidate at election, Rachel Reeves says  (Express 17/05.24)

 Reeves (Starmer and Streeting) got their way. The expelled Corbyn was forced to stand as an Independent. Dianne Abbott, also on the left of the Party, nearly suffered the same fate but the bad publicity this caused for Starmer forced him to reinstate her as a Labour candidate.

It is telling that whereas both Corbyn and Abbott won their seats with comfortable majorities, Wes Streeting, the poster-boy of Starmer’s “new” right-wing Labour Party, only managed a majority of 528: so much for Labour's “clear mandate".

If Starmer were to apply the same arithmetic criticism to himself regarding the total number of votes cast for Labour  in 2024 when compared to those cast in the 2019 election, then he would do the honourable  thing and resign. But that isn’t going to happen. The first-past-the post electoral system in this country means despite having gained only one third of the vote Starmer has a huge majority in the House of Commons. This isn’t the first time a massive majority of Parliamentary seats has been won despite the vast majority of the electorate voting for someone else.

What I find really worrying though is the apparent belief among Starmer and his inner circle that they have been given a “clear mandate” and that the country ‘voted decisively’ in their favour.

If we truly are to have a government that puts “country first, party second” then we must have honesty and integrity. But if Starmer is unable to be honest about his failure to do any better at gaining public support than Jeremy Corbyn did in 2019, then his government is already operating under the shadow of self-delusion.

As JF Kennedy once said:

 “The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie, deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.”

[evan-buck]

this is going to be the nastiest most awful election, but i will be seated for every single minute of these horrible campaigns until the last constituency is called. i need a bingo card for how many times the tories call the police on angela rayner, how many curries keir starmer eats in durham even though it's not relevant, how many more sad, wet, pathetic speeches we'll have to pretend to listen to from rishi sunak, how many slogans and false promises on buses we must endure, how many pints we have to watch nigel farage pose with as he pretends he's running but he's not but he is but he's not but he might be (he's not), a wildcard option for whatever laurence fox is about to do to embarrass himself this time, and how many times rishi sunak or jeremy hunt or david cameron tell us about the bit of paper!! left behind from labour!! saying there's no money!! i'm going to have the time of my life.

[ech0-1409]

i usually don't post too much about this but rishi sunak has called a general election for 4th July

this is our chance to get the fucking tories out so please check that you have valid voter ID

please check that you're registered to vote

and if you've changed your name recently, the name on your ID must match the electoral register, if it doesn't you will need to register to vote again with your new details. (link same as above)

have social anxiety and can't face going to a polling station? totally understand! i do too. just register for a postal vote and you don't have to leave the house!

unable to leave the house or vote due to being away, being an overseas voter, having a medical issue or disability, or not being able to vote in person due to work? look into voting by proxy where someone else votes on your behalf

voting turnout for people aged 18-24 and 25-34 has historically been one of the lowest age group turnouts. so if you're tired of a underfunded NHS, transphobic legislation, rising inflation and cost of living with nothing being done etc, please please vote in the general election.

listen i don't like kier starmer either, but hes the lesser of two evils for me. i will be voting labour bc i believe they're in with a real chance.

however, if your principles mean you can't vote labour, please vote literally anyone else but tory. greens? sure! lib dems? ok! snp? absolutely!

as a last resort, if you really can't bring yourself to vote for any party, spoil the ballot! staying at home and not voting won't do anything, but if you go to a polling station and spoil the ballot (meaning putting too many x's on candidates, drawing whatever, scribbling all over the ballot, whatever you want) means you'll still be counted in the voter turnout

but please do vote! we need to show the tories that we're unhappy with them in power and they can't keep getting away with running our NHS into the ground whilst food prices and bills soar.

if for whatever reason you can't vote, you can still make a difference! talk to your friends about the election, make sure people in your social circle know about voter ID and what they need to bring, encourage them to check they're registered to vote under the correct details! and if they do struggle with leaving the house (maybe they're socially anxious, maybe they aren't physically able to get to a polling station) look into postal voting or voting by proxy!

we can absolutely do this but we need all of us to do what we're able! i know we're sick and tired of politics, i know that its exhausting, i completely get it! but please do not let that stop you from casting your vote and making a difference!

also if you're not from the UK, if you could reblog this post so it gets to as many people as possible, I would be very grateful!

[beardedmrbean]

Aug. 5 (UPI) -- Bangladesh's embattled prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, resigned Monday and fled the country after protesters stormed her official residence in the capital amid a growing revolt that began over quotas for government jobs in which hundreds of mostly protesters have died.

The announcement from the head of the army, Gen. Waker-uz-Zaman, came after security forces were overwhelmed by thousands of people incensed by a violent government crackdown descending on the Sher-e-Bangla Nagar area of Dhaka, setting cars and offices ablaze.

Footage circulating online shows protesters celebrating inside Hasina's residence, removing furniture and elsewhere in the city trying to tear down a statue of her father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, former prime minister and leader of the country's independence movement, who was assassinated in 1975.

Promising the formation of an interim government, Zaman pleaded with demonstrators to call off their protests.

"Whatever demands you have, we will fulfil and bring back peace to the nation, please help us in this, stay away from violence," said Zaman who promised the military would also back off.

"The military will not fire at anyone, the police will not fire at anyone, I have given orders."

Hasina arrived by helicopter in India at a military airbase 17 miles east of Delhi on Monday evening with the BBC reporting that she may be en route to London, citing unconfirmed reports.

A spokesman for British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Monday that he wanted to see urgent action to "ensure democracy" won out -- but made no mention of Hasina coming to Britain or any discussions regarding where she might go into exile.

"The right to peaceful protest must be protected and never subjected to violence, and we call on the authorities to release all peaceful protesters and ensure due process is followed for those charged and prosecuted," he added.

"I hope that swift action is taken to ensure that democracy prevails and accelerate the process towards peace and security to people in Bangladesh."

Hasina's son, Sajeeb Wazed Joy, said she had been considering resigning for the past 24 hours and had left the country for her own safety at the insistence of her family.

He rejected the accusations leveled at the 76-year-old of outstaying her welcome after four terms totaling more than two decades during which she gradually morphed from the democratic icon catapulted into office in a people power uprising into an authoritarian leader amid crackdowns on dissent and allegations of graft.

"She has turned Bangladesh around. When she took over power it was considered a failing state. It was a poor country. Until today it was considered one of the rising tigers of Asia. She's very disappointed."

In Dhaka, demonstrators ignored an evening curfew as unrest and looting continued into the night with demonstrators breaching the gates and damaging the residence of Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan in the Dhanmondi area of the capital where smoke was seen coming from the building.

Protesters torched the city's Mujibur museum.

Northeast of Dhaka, 150 miles away in Sylhet, the offices of the deputy commissioner and superintendent of police and the homes of several councilors were attacked.

Hasina's resignation came a day after more than 90 people were killed Sunday during clashes between anti-government protesters and police -- 13 of whom were among those killed after thousands of people attacked a police station in the northwestern district of Sirajganj.

Sunday's casualties brought the death toll to 280 since early July when student protests over the partial reinstatement by the courts of civil service recruitment quotas -- where sought-after government jobs were reserved for supporters of Hasina's ruling Awami League -- erupted into wider, and violent, anti-government unrest.

Government crackdown efforts escalated from tear gas and rubber bullets to live fire, curfews and Internet blackouts bringing hundreds of thousands more people onto the streets demanding change and ultimately Hasina's resignation.

Student organizers had called Sunday for a national non-cooperation government boycott under which people would refuse to pay taxes and utility bills.

[ivovynckier]

Is there still a Tony Benn in the Labour Party? Didn't think so...

[nicklloydnow]

“With Trump’s victory, the left reached its zero point.

Before we plunge into platitudes about “Trump’s triumph,” we should note some important details. First, that Trump didn’t get more votes than he did in the 2020 election—it was Kamala Harris who lost some 10 million votes compared to Joe Biden last time around. So it isn’t so much that “Trump won big” as it is Harris who lost big. It follows that all leftist critics of Trump should begin with radical self-criticism.

We must dispense with the racial-essentialist cant that came to dominate progressivism in recent decades. Trump’s victory should leave little room for the tendency to valorize certain groups based on their skin color. Among the points to be noted here, there is the unpleasant fact that immigrants, especially from Latin countries, are almost inherently conservative: They come to the United States not to change it, but to succeed in the system. Or as Todd McGowan has put it: “They want to create a better life for themselves and their family, not to better their social order.”

By the same token, we must reject the notion that Harris lost because she is a nonwhite woman. No, Harris lost because Trump stood for politics and political contestation, while she stood for nonpolitics or antipolitics. She took many progressive stances, on health care, abortion, and more. However, Trump and his partisans repeatedly made clear, “extreme” statements, while Harris exceeded in avoiding difficult choices, offering empty rhetoric. In this respect, Harris is similar to Britain’s Keir Starmer, who just happened to have the great good fortune of going up against an unpopular incumbent party that had been in power for a decade and a half. Like Starmer, Harris avoided taking a clear stance on the Gaza war, thus losing support not only from hard-line Zionists, but also Muslim imams and community leaders.

What Democrats failed to learn from Trump is that, in a political battle, “extremism” works. In her concession speech, Harris said: “To the young people who are watching, it is OK to feel sad and disappointed, but please know it’s going to be OK.” No, everything is not going to be OK. We should not trust that future history will somehow restore balance or harmony. With Trump’s victory, the trend that elevated the new populist right in many European countries reaches its climax.

(…)

Here again, we should begin with a critique of Trump’s opponents. The philosopher Boris Buden rejects the predominant interpretation that sees the rise of the new right-populism as a regression to quasi-religious fanaticism caused by the failure of modernization. For Buden, religion as a political force is instead an effect of the post-political disintegration of society, of the dissolution of traditional mechanisms that guaranteed stable communal links: Fundamentalist religion—of the kind that fuels part of Trump’s base (even as he abandons its social-conservative commitments)—is not only political, it is politics itself, i.e., it sustains the space for politics.

Even more poignantly, it is no longer just a social phenomenon, but the very texture of society, so that in a way society itself becomes a religious phenomenon. It is thus no longer possible to distinguish the purely spiritual aspect of religion from its politicization: In a post-political universe, religion is the predominant space in which antagonistic passions return. What happened recently in the guise of religious fundamentalism is thus not the return of religion in politics, but simply the return of the political as such. So the true question is: Why did the political—in the radical secular sense, the great achievement of European modernity—lose its formative power?

(…)

Here, ideology enters the scene—not just ideology in the sense of ideas and guiding principles, but ideology in a more basic sense of how political discourse functions as a social link. Aaron Schuster has observed that Trump is “an overpresent leader whose authority is based on his own will and who openly disdains knowledge—it is this rebellious, anti-systemic theater that serves as the point of identification for the people.” This is why Trump’s serial insults and outright lies—not to mention the fact that he is a convicted criminal—work for him: His ideological triumph resides in the fact that his followers experience their obedience to him as a form of subversive resistance.

Here we should mobilize the Freudian notion of the “theft of enjoyment”: an Other’s enjoyment inaccessible to us (as woman’s enjoyment is for men, or another ethnic group’s enjoyment is for our group), or our rightful enjoyment stolen from us by an Other or threatened by an Other. Russel Sbriglia noticed that the “theft of enjoyment” played a crucial role when Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021: What happened on Jan. 6 wasn’t a coup attempt, but a carnival, previously the model for progressive protest movements, suddenly appropriated by the right. The idea that carnivals represent a subversion of the status quo not only in their form and atmosphere (theatrical performances, humorous chants), but also in their non-centralized organization, is deeply problematic: Is capitalist social reality itself not already carnivalesque? Was the Kristallnacht of 1938 not a carnival if there ever was one? Furthermore, is “carnival” not also the name for the obscene underside of power, from gang rapes to mass lynchings? Let us not forget that Michail Bakhtin developed the notion of carnival in his book on Rabelais written in the 1930s, as a direct reply to the carnival of the Stalinist purges.

The contrast between Trump’s official ideological message (conservative values, of a kind) and the style of his public performance (saying more or less whatever pops up in his head, insulting others and violating all rules of good manners) says a great deal about our predicament. What kind of world do we live in in which bombarding the public with indecent vulgarities presents itself as the last barrier to protect traditional values from the triumph of total permissiveness? Or as Alenka Zupančič put it, Trump isn’t a relic of the old moral-majority conservativism—rather, he is the caricatural inverted image of postmodern “permissive society” itself, a product of this society’s own antagonisms, contradictions, and inner limitations.

Adrian Johnston has proposed “a complementary twist on Jacques Lacan’s dictum according to which ‘repression is always the return of the repressed’: The return of the repressed sometimes is the most effective repression.” Is this not also a concise definition of the figure of Trump? As Freud said about perversion, in it, everything that was repressed, all repressed content, comes out in all its obscenity. But this return of the repressed only strengthens the repression. And this is also why there is nothing liberating in Trump’s obscenities: They merely strengthen social oppression and mystification. Trump’s obscene performances thus express the falsity of his populism: To put it with brutal simplicity, while acting as if he cares for the ordinary people, he promotes big capital.

How to account for the strange fact that Trump, lewd and the very opposite of Christian decency, can function as the chosen hero of the Christian conservatives? The explanation one usually hears is that, while Christian conservatives are well aware of the problematic character of Trump’s personality, they have resolved to ignore his seedy dimension, since what really matters to them is Trump’s agenda, especially his anti-abortion stance (though he played it down this time around). But are things as simple as that? What if the very duality of Trump’s personality—his ostensible support for traditional morality accompanied by personal lewdness and vulgarities—is precisely what makes him attractive to Christian conservatives? What if they secretly identify with this very duality? This, however, doesn’t mean that we should take too seriously the images that abound in our media of a typical Trumpian as an obscene fanatic. No, the vast majority of Trump voters are ordinary people who appear decent and talk in a normal, rational way. It is as if they externalize their madness and obscenity in Trump.

(…)

This coming-open of the obscene background of our ideological space in no way means that the time of mystification is over, that now ideology openly displays its cards. On the contrary, when obscenity penetrates the public scene, ideological mystification is at its strongest: The true political, economic, and ideological stakes are more invisible than ever. Public obscenity is always sustained by a concealed moralism. Its practitioners secretly believe they are fighting for a cause, and it is at this level that they should be attacked.

Recall the sheer number of times that liberal media outlets crowed that Trump was finally caught with pants down, that he had finally committed a public suicide (mocking POWs, boasting about pussy-grabbing, etc.). Arrogant liberal commentators were shocked at how their continuous attacks on Trump’s vulgar outbursts didn’t hurt him at all, but maybe even enhanced his popular appeal. They missed how identification works: We as a rule identify with the other’s weaknesses, not only or even not principally with his strengths. So the more Trump’s limitations were mocked, the more ordinary people identified with him and perceived attacks on him as condescending attacks on themselves.

The subliminal message to ordinary people of Trump’s vulgarities was: I am one of you! This, while ordinary Trump supporters felt constantly humiliated by the liberal elite’s patronizing attitude towards them. Or as Alenka Zupančič put it succinctly: “The extremely poor do the fighting for the extremely rich, as it was clear in the election of Trump. And the left does little else than scold and insult them.” Indeed, the left does what is even worse: It patronizingly “understands” the confusion and blindness of the poor. This left-liberal arrogance explodes at its purest in the political-comedy shows anchored by the likes of Jon Stewart and John Oliver.

(…)

The problem isn’t that Trump is a clown. The problem is that there is a program behind his provocations, a method in his madness. Trump’s (and others’) vulgar obscenities are part of their populist strategy to sell this program to ordinary people, a program that—in the long term, at least—works against ordinary people: lower taxes for the rich, shoddier health care and diminished bargaining power for workers. Unfortunately, people are ready to swallow many things if these are presented to them through obscene laughter and false solidarity.

The ultimate irony of Trump’s project is that MAGA effectively amounts to its opposite: Make the United States another local superpower interacting on equal footing with other new local superpowers (Russia, India, China). An EU diplomat was right to point out that, with Trump’s victory, Europe should no longer act as Washington’s “fragile little sister.” Will Europe find the strength to oppose MAGA with something that could be called MEGA—make Europe great again—by resuscitating its radical emancipatory legacy?

The lesson of Trump’s victory is the opposite of what many liberal leftists advocated: Whatever remains of the left should get rid of its fear that it will lose centrist voters if they are perceived as too “extreme.” The left should clearly distinguish itself from the “progressive” liberal center and its corporate-friendly woke-ism. To do this brings its own risks, of course: The state itself might be divided between three or more factions, with no big governing coalition capable of taking form. However, taking this risk is the only way forward.

Hegel wrote that through its repetition, a historical event asserts its necessity. When Napoleon lost in 1813 and was exiled to Elba, this defeat may have appeared as something contingent: With better military strategy, he might have won. But when he returned to power again and lost at Waterloo, it became clear that his time was over, that his defeat was grounded in a deeper historical necessity. The same goes for Trump: His first victory could still be attributed to tactical mistakes, but now that he has won again, it should become clear that Trumpian populism expresses a historical necessity.

A sad conclusion thus imposes itself. Many commentators expect that Trump’s reign will be marked by catastrophic events, but the worst option is that there will be no great shocks: Trump will try to finish the ongoing wars (not least by imposing a peace on Ukraine); the economy will remain stable and perhaps even thrive; tensions will be attenuated; life will go on…. However, a whole series of federal and local measures will continuously undermine the existing liberal-democratic social pact and change the basic texture that holds together the United States—unraveling what Hegel called Sittlichkeit, the set of unwritten customs and rules that underpin politeness, truthfulness, social solidarity, political rights, and so on. This new world will appear as a new normality, and in this sense, Trump’s second reign may well bring about the end of what was most precious in our civilization.”

“On Tuesday, American men showed that they weren’t buying what the Harris-Walz campaign was selling. Donald Trump, liberal America’s avatar of toxic masculinity, won male voters by a margin of 10 percentage points to 13 points, depending on the survey. Harris won women, but by a much smaller seven or eight points. Men without a college degree supported Trump by 22 points. White men supported him by 20 points to 23 points, again depending on the survey. And white men without a college degree, those the Harris campaign hoped would see themselves in “America’s coach,” favored Trump by an overwhelming 38 points to 40 points.

The most impressive gendered result of the election has to be the response of young men. According to The Wall Street Journal, men aged 18 to 29 supported Joe Biden in 2020 by 15 points. In 2024, they favored Donald Trump by 14 points, an astounding 29-point swing in a single election. CNN found a much smaller Trump lead among young men of two points, but even this is a significant transformation. Democrats long believed that young people were their electoral Superman, weakened only by the kryptonite of indifference. If they could get these young voters to the polls, victory would be assured. This election just cast those illusions onto the ash heap of history.

(…)

In the end, liberal women in the media had the better measure of Minnesota’s governor. Rebecca Traister lauded Walz as an example of the emergent “Democratic man newly confident in his equal-to-subsidiary status.” Karrin Vasby Andersen praised Walz for “stepping back” and playing “contented second fiddle.” Alyce Collins acclaimed his “positive masculinity” for “showing more traditionally feminine traits” and “letting women take center stage.” Judy Berman echoed this in complimenting Walz’s “gentle form of masculinity.” Joy Reid dubbed it downright “21st century.” American women seemed to admire Walz’s masculinity far more so than did American men. Like those in 2016 who described Donald Trump as a poor man’s idea of a rich man, Walz proved to be a professional-managerial-class woman’s idea of a working-class man.

Already by mid-October, Team Harris was running low on joy. Democrats started playing hardball to close the gender gap with men. Barack Obama scolded black men in Pennsylvania for their lack of enthusiasm for the Harris-Walz campaign, explicitly accusing “the brothers” of misogyny. In Michigan, Michelle Obama tried to shame men with abortion rights, rebuking those considering a vote for Trump for treating women as “just baby-making vessels” and turning them into “collateral damage to your rage.” In the waning days of the campaign, the Democratic super PAC Progress Action Fund targeted young men with ad buys on social media warning them—in graphic terms—that their consumption of pornography and emergency contraception was at stake. Democrats were right to be worried. White men increased their vote for Trump at most by one percentage point. Black men added around 12 points, doubling their support from 2020. Hispanic men shifted to the right by anywhere from nine points to a shocking 17 points.

(…)

Americans might be consoled by the fact that, on the female side, the gender gap has actually shrunk over the Trump era. According to Pew Research analysis of validated voters, Hillary Clinton enjoyed a 15-point advantage among women in 2016, compared to 11 points for Biden in 2020. As noted earlier, current surveys for the 2024 race show Harris’s advantage among women down to seven or eight points. Men were also becoming less polarized over time. In 2016, Trump enjoyed an 11-point advantage among them, compared to two points in 2020. Some Democrats interpret the 2024 election’s return to 2016 levels among men as an undoubtable sign of misogyny. They would do better to instead see it as a reaction against those same Democrats’ attempts to scold, shame, denigrate, and manipulate men on the grounds of being men. Democrats don’t get to decide who is allowed to play gender politics; sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. Turning the temperature down—way down—on gender politics will not only help Democrats in the future. It will help America as a whole.”

[tomorrowusa]

In the UK, the ruling Conservatives got clobbered in two more by-elections.

This has been happening so often over the past couple of years that it almost doesn't seem like news any more. It's more like an ongoing political saga of Tory decline.

Labour picked up seats in the House of Commons previously held by Tories in the constituencies of Wellingborough and Kingswood. The results were not close and displayed a stunning drop in support for the ruling party.

^^^ There appears to have been some tactical voting as many Lib Dem voters seem to have thrown their support to Labour just to get rid of the Tories.

By-elections: Tory gloom deepens after double poll blow

What is most striking about the results in Wellingborough and Kingswood is that they feel almost unsurprising, despite the scale of Labour's wins. Why? Because it extends the trend of Labour marching forward and Conservative gloom. The results underline the current likelihood, if the mood of the electorate does not shift, of Labour winning the general election. But Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer is going out of his way to avoid even the merest whiff of complacency. Despite the massive swings to Labour, he told BBC Breakfast his party were merely "credible contenders" at the general election. The added political spice that garnishes the Tory gloom today is the performance of Reform UK. I'm typing this in a café in Wellingborough, in Northamptonshire, where this morning Reform candidate and deputy leader Ben Habib has been on a victory lap. Mr Habib finished third behind the Labour and the Conservative candidates, but it represents a victory in Reform's battle for influence, as they inflicted two very painful statistical wounds on Rishi Sunak's party.

Reform UK is a rightwing populist party which grew out of Brexit.

Polls for the past six months show Labour with a consistent lead of roughly 20 percentage points nationally.

If not already, this is a particularly good year to take an interest in UK politics. By law, an election must be called within the next 11 months. Some people are betting on a May parliamentary election because local elections are scheduled for early that month. But Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak may wish a delay until autumn in the hope that things will miraculously improve for his party.

[scottishsocialpolitics]

What does Keir Starmer stand for?

Does anyone know? I certainly don't. I doubt even his own wife knows. Even more worryingly, I'm not even sure he knows!

Here is a man who was named after Labour's founder and first parliamentary leader, the great Keir Hardie. To be named after such a pioneering man goes to show what kind of politics Starmer must have been brought up with. What belief his parents must have had for the rights and welfare of working class families to name their son after the man responsible for making working class politics mainstream. Perhaps these ideological views had been thrust upon him. Perhaps he believed that he believed in the rights of working class people and the importance of trade unions. But it’s becoming excruciatingly clear and apparent that he does not. Or is it?

Again who knows? He says one thing then does another. He is a man of so many contradictions that I'm not even sure when I look at him I see the figure of a man. What I see instead is the impressionist brushstrokes of a man. Who are any of us if not our views and opinions. It is what keeps us ticking. It's what makes us who we are. But again who the hell is Keir Starmer? He may be named after Keir Hardie but his recent political run is abhorrently different to that of the father of Labour. The reason Hardie became a member of the Scottish Labour party was because he had become disenfranchised by the Liberal party. He concluded that Liberals would not advocate for the interest of the working class nor would they instil the radical reform needed but wanted the workers' votes. Starmers recent course reversal into the right of Labour politics, the Blairite politics, the third way thinking of neoliberals is the exact reason the Labour party was founded! The neoLiberals guise of being for the people is a myth and always has been. The further right Starmer pulls the Labour party, the less they advocate for progressive change for the ordinary people of the country.

He’s a man who said he would not oust Jeremy Corbyn because ‘he’s a colleague, he’s a friend’ then he goes on LBC and says no he’s not a friend and he ‘hasn’t spoken to him for two and a half years.’ What one is it Keir? He said ‘we have to make the case for the benefits of migration, the benefits of free movement’ then he goes on the Sunday show and says ‘we don't want open borders.’ What one is it Keir? He was on the picket lines with the striking McDonalds workers. Then he tells his front bench not to cross the picket lines in the RMT rail strikes. What one is it Keir? There are countless more instances of these complete contradictions, not only contradictions of what he’s said but that of the very essence of what it means to be Labour. He was elected Labour leader on the basis of nationalizing the six major energy companies and the water network. Are you even surprised that he’s now said no, actually I'm not going to do that? So he’s elected leader on progressive left policies and then when he’s in power he gets everyone on the left of the party ousted from any semblance of power within the party and then goes on a media campaign of neoliberalism. 

Back in august Open Democracy ran a piece in which it entails the amount of ‘free’ tickets Starmer had accepted since being Labour leader. The monetary value of these tickets at that time was estimated to be in the region of £30,000 and the number is twenty eight. That’s more than all Labour leaders combined since records began in 1997! Jeremy Corbyn who was Labour leader for 5 years accepted one free ticket which was to Glastonbury. Where he spoke on stage to memorable chants of ‘ohhhhhhh Jeremey Corbyn.’ Ed Miliband accepted tickets to the Olympics and Paralympics in London. Gordon Brown accepted none. Even Tony Blair, Keir Starmer's Daddy who was prime minister from 1997 to 2007 accepted less gifts than Starmer has already! Blair would usually donate the monetary value of the tickets to a relevant charity. Starmer does not. He whores himself out to corporations in hopes of funding. With Corbyn as leader the membership of Labour soared as did its coffers. In the wake of Starmer attempting to eradicate any left leaning thoughts from the party the membership and coffers have significantly declined. So how does Starmer get money to pay for his upcoming election campaign ? He allows corporations to essentially and directly lobby him. He accepted a gift of a free meal worth £380 from Google in January. Seems quite innocuous right? Well by June he dropped the policy of a digital tax on big corps like Google which was estimated to bring in three billion pounds worth of tax revenue.

There’s a consensus that you cannot be elected in this country unless you are endorsed by the most powerful politician there has ever been in the Uk. The end game boss. That’s right, Mr I own basically all of the news press Rupert Murdoch. The notoriously right wing media mogul. Well I don't think you’re going to be surprised that Declassified UK reported that Starmer has accepted more hospitality from Rupert Murdoch owned newspapers than the rest of the British press combined. 

So back to the question: what does Keir Starmer stand for? I honestly have no idea. I think he’s a political chameleon. He’s inherently dishonest. He will say whatever he needs to gain power. There’s a hope that his flip flopping will work back in the favour of the left of the party once he inevitably gets elected. I’m not so hopeful. I think we have to take him at what he’s showing. He is not progressive. He is essentially an imitation of his Daddy Tony Blair. Although he’s never going to be his Dads favourite son. That is firmly French president and centrist Emmanuel Macron.

JCF.

sources

Media bias of sources

[thessalian]

Thess vs the Cass Report

Okay. So. Real quick, because I haven't got the heart for much else.

Yesterday saw the publication of a report by a paediatrician looking into a gender identity direction service run by a NHS hospital, and into gender identity transition in general. The findings ... I ... don't understand why no one is asking about any of these findings.

Hormone therapy like puberty blockers is "untested and dangerous": I honestly don't know. Maybe. I couldn't honestly say. But puberty blockers must have a purpose or they would never have been developed far enough to bring them to market.

Social transitioning "alters the course of children", making them more likely to become trans: Um ... this is some "chicken vs egg" argument bullshit. Maybe they want to socially transition because they're trans?!? MAYBE? But apparently not, because...

A lot of transgender people have ADHD or autism or other mental health issues, and those should be treated before they go around deciding that they're trans: This is word for word some JK Rowling bullshit about "trans men are just confused lesbians too autistic to know better". THIS IS BULLSHIT.

Some people are happy with their transition but some people regret it and we really should focus more on that: Some people regret tattoos, and vasectomies. Fuck off.

Long story short, there's a whole thing where this report is erring on the side of, "Transgender people are just confused and we should deny them any kind of treatment until they give us the opportunity to prove that their desire to transition is rooted in mental illness".

Now, we already know that Rishi Sunak and his transphobic Tory asshole government are entirely in support of stripping trans people of rights and ram them right back into the closet, if not the nearest psychiatric care unit. That's ... horrible, but we're probably not going to have them in government for much longer.

However.

Wes Streeting, the Shadow Health Secretary - the guy who'll take over as Health Secretary and basically be in charge of the NHS if and when (almost certainly "when") Labour comes to power - also agrees with the Cass Report and has pledged to implement all of its recommendations into health policy when he takes the Health Secretary job. Which means basically denying everyone under the age of 25 gender-affirming care, and effectively making sure that it's harder than it needs to be to transition. Not to mention that Starmer, the Labour Party leader, agrees with making schools out kids who are socially transitioning at school to their parents, and with allowing and in fact obliging teachers to deadname their students.

Basically, don't go thinking that it's "just JK Rowling" somehow. Her money supports this kind of shit, and so does her influence, and it's all over the government right now. This country has been getting increasingly ugly for trans people, and it's about to get worse.

I'm going to build a fallout shelter in my closet now, I guess.

[mariacallous]

Commons leader Penny Mordaunt and former minister Jacob Rees-Mogg are among senior Tories to have lost their seats, as the party suffers a heavy election defeat.

Ms Mordaunt, who was tipped as a future Tory leadership contender, saw her majority of more than 15,000 overturned in Portsmouth North.

Mr Rees-Mogg, a former business secretary, lost in North East Somerset and Hanham, with Labour overturning his 16,000 majority.

He told the BBC he wouldn't "blame anybody other than myself" and that it had been "a very bad night for the Conservatives".

Defence Secretary Grant Shapps, Justice Secretary Alex Chalk and Michelle Donelan are among a clutch of cabinet ministers to lose their seats.

But Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, who had been seen as vulnerable in his Godalming and Ash constituency, managed to hold on with slender 891 majority.

'Sobering verdict'

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak conceded the election, speaking after he was re-elected in Richmond and Northallerton.

He said the electorate had “delivered a sobering verdict” on the Tories, and apologised to those in his party who had lost their seats. He said he had called Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer to congratulate him on winning.

Speaking after losing her seat, Ms Mordaunt said her party had "taken a battering because it failed to honour the trust that people had placed in it".

She warned against "talking to an ever smaller slice of ourselves," adding, "if we want again to be the natural party of government, then our values must be the people's".

In other high profile Tory losses:

Veterans Minister Johnny Mercer lost to Labour in Plymouth Moor View

Education Secretary Gillian Keegan lost to the Liberal Democrats in Chichester, a West Sussex seat the Tories have held for a century

Culture Secretary Lucy Frazer lost Ely and East Cambridgeshire, also to the Liberal Democrats

Chief Whip Simon Hart - in charge of party discipline - lost to Plaid Cymru in Caerfyrddin, as the Tories lost all their seats in Wales

Former justice secretary Sir Robert Buckland, who also lost his seat, told the BBC his party faced "electoral Armageddon".

He said too many Conservatives had focused on "personal agendas and jockeying for position" instead of "concentrating on doing the job that they were elected to do".

"I've watched colleagues strike poses, write inflammatory op-eds, and say stupid things they have no evidence for, instead of concentrating on doing the job that they were elected to do," the former justice secretary said.

Asked whether he was referring to former home secretary Suella Braverman, who days before polls opened published an article in the Daily Telegraph strongly criticising the government, he said: "Yes, and I'm afraid that's not an isolated example."

"I'm fed up of personal agendas and jockeying for position. The truth is now with the Conservatives facing electoral Armageddon, it's going to be like a group of bald men arguing over a comb.

Sir Robert said for the party to move further to the right would be a "disastrous mistake" that "would send us into the abyss".

Speaking earlier, before his defeat, Sir Jacob said it was “clearly a terrible night” for his party, that had come to take its “core vote for granted”.

“We need to win voters at every single election. If you take your base for granted... your voters will look to other parties.”

He thought the party had made a mistake by ousting Boris Johnson, who led it to victory in the 2019 election but was forced to step down as prime minister in 2022 following a series of scandals.

Former cabinet office minister Steve Baker, who BBC projections gave less than a 1% chance of holding onto his seat, said his party was having an “incredibly difficult night”.

He said Rishi Sunak had a "brilliant mind" but acknowledged he had made mistakes during the campaign, including the decision to leave D-Day commemorations early.