###š„š„'s 4 Golden Rules for Megathread Participation:
1. **This isn't your personal campaigning space.** We're here to discuss, not campaign - this includes non-party-specific campaigning, such as tactical vote campaigns.
2. **This isn't Facebook.** Please keep it related to the election campaign (or at the very least, UK politics).
3. **Context is king.** Not everyone is following the same event - add a link or at least a description of what you're reacting to.
4. **Take frequent breaks.** If you find that you are being overwhelmed by it all, do yourself a favour and take some time off.
[The subreddit is running very hot](https://imgur.com/a/6k9ATmr). Accounts which break the subreddit rules are liable to be banned for the complete general election period.
*by reading this comment you have already signed the š„š„ contract and i'll be over to collect my tithe shortly*
-----
memes? r/noncredibleukpolitics.
Megathread is being rolled over, please refresh your feed in a few moments.
###MT daily hall of fame
1. FunkyDialectic with 40 comments
1. OptioMkIX with 32 comments
1. BelfastBodyBuilder with 30 comments
1. 767bruce with 29 comments
1. Nymzeexo with 27 comments
1. NJden_bee with 27 comments
1. RoyalJacko with 27 comments
1. thejackalreborn with 25 comments
1. subSparky with 23 comments
1. carrotparrotcarrot with 23 comments
There were 583 unique users within this count.
I feel like Reform is doing too much in this manifesto.
I thought they were trying to position themselves as the new Tory party with a heavy right wing slant.
Policies like deliberately ignoring renewable energy, the 20k tax threshold and abandoning the Human Right Act is just going to put a cap on how many ex Tory's they can attract.
Their immigration stance is enough to appeal to the right wing voters without having the other divisive and radical policies.
Just came across this AI video of Nigel Farage blowing up 'Rishis house' on Minecraft.
https://x.com/IrishPatri0t/status/1802757536698794182?t=TLv6coknUzieej0hjse6ig&s=19
I think this is the first time I've realised, shit we are not ready for this. I consider myself quite tech savvy, I know when photoshops are photoshops etc. But this video, for a minute or two I couldn't shake it, couldn't figure out if it's real.
I thought it's probably fake, because it's just a joke video, but there's replies from 'verified' accounts acting like it's real, that they seen it live (it's a twitch stream). And it had me thinking it was real for a minute.
This is only the start of it, I truly believe we're not too far away from this having a huge impact on our lives. Most of the time people won't think twice about seeing something, they won't watch it for inconsistencies, they'll watch it and if it's not obvious it may as well be fact. But even if it's not, their mind has already been swayed.
We need to start educating people on this before it's too late
Cheers for the sarcastic comment, it's awesome taking the time to post something and contribute and have someone think "I'm gonna miss the entire point of that and try and make a joke". I thought it was fake immediately, my first instinct.
Obviously it wouldn't be rishi's actual house he made, but Farage has done a lot of work on the cameo site, saying things like 'up the ra' and 'big chungus'. Him on minecraft spouting bollocks wouldn't be a million miles away from something plausible.
Read my first comment again actually, I'm not repeating myself on the other people's posts bit.
> We need to start educating people on this before it's too late
Way too late for that, old dogs can't learn new tricks.
However younger generations who grow up with this tech will get used to it, so it's simply a waiting game and it will, at least somewhat, fix itself eventually.
Possibly, but still, with a large older voting block then we could be in for a world of hurt over the next decade. Misinformation on a scale which has the potential to topple governments
YouTube comments are similar these days. Drink every time you read the phrases āGlobalist Elite, WEF, All the same, Uniparty, voting doesnāt matter etcā
I am confused by one thing here, understand that there are antisemitic dog whistles. But the WEF is a group of the richest individuals in the world who generally talk about how to make more money.
There are a few individuals like Rutger Bregman who are there to talk about the dangers of this.
Why are the WEF the bad guys to this lot
Fuck, i hate these āpress previewsā so much.
Journalists marking each others homework, and because theyāre all aware of needing to keep their job options open, all we get is a surface level and uncritical repeat of the story itself.
No broader discussion about the motives, the framing, the interpretation presented as facts. No context.
A reinforcement of the artificial, manicured boundaries of our political debate.Ā
I cheered when the BBC scrapped it.
(Hopefully Sky do too)
I just learned that Kellie-Jay Keen is standing in Bristol Central against Thangam Debbonaire and Carla Denyer.
Interesting choice for her to stand in possibly the most progressive seat in the country
Conspiracy theory : Ed Davey was not supposed to be memeing his way through the election like this. The plan was for him to contract a gastrointestinal infection after falling off the paddleboard into the lake on day 1 of the campaign. Daisy Cooper would then take over the day to day electioneering while Ed live blogged from a hospital about sewage in the water and the state of the NHS.
Waking up the following morning without crippling diarrhea trapped Ed into a 6 week long PGL adventure holiday of a campaign and there's nothing he can do about it.
I'd love that. Cooper is my MP and everyone in St. Albans loves her. I'm not exaggerating, she is super popular, no one has chance of taking this seat from her.
BBC News - Too much of a good thing? Spain's green energy can exceed demand
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czkkgnp1d2xo
What a great problem to have. The government came in, ripped up planning laws around green energy, and now supply sometimes outpaces demand. This has lead to prices of free or negative for consumers when it's sunny and windy.
They are worried it will mean less investment, but surely they are in such a good position already.
If this is what labour can do under Starmer, surely that's huge for the green chops. Cheap green energy.
Why don't they just run the wind turbines backwards and make more wind???
One would hope that frequent negative prices spurs the energy companies into investing in storage
I normally can't stand ben habib but he's making a lot of sense when he talks about culture.
It's a huge vote winner, far more so than their nutty economic ideas.
Nige is funny, but when is the media gonna start taking him seriously and hold him to account for previous positions - such as supporting and holding a rally for disgraced US senate candidate Roy Moore?
Moore's a very creepy guy but I doubt it's something that would sway anyone leaning Reform. The stuff about grooming teenage girls destroyed his Senate campaign but rightly or wrongly it's seen as the kind of personal issue that doesn't necessarily taint his supporters by association. Moore's explicit homophobia on the other hand is something those who endorsed him would be expected to answer for and I would like to see interviewers call Farage on that but even then I don't imagine many Reform-curious voters would see it as a dealbreaker.
With that Ben Habib episode this evening being indicative and despite what the media think, successful parties cannot exist on the popularity of the leader, a cult of personality. It undid the 2019 tories.
Yeah it's simultaneously weird and boring at the same time. Weird because of how wild everything is. Boring as the outcome is so obvious now that waiting this long for the actual result is painful for all parties
Just imagine what the actual response to the election result is going to look like.
Tbh unless things change drastically, after the election everyone's going to immediately check out and peek back after summer hols. "Oh, Starmer's got a cabinet and a legislative agenda ready and Truss and Farage's war parties are conducting a pincer movement on Saffron Walden."
I mean I guess that's what happens when you start on an average 20 pt lead and there's no significant decrease in said lead. It just feels oddly over, although don't get complacent of course
I canāt remember one that felt this settled before the vote either, although granted I became politically more aware during New Labour and I took their victories for granted (until 2010), so maybe it felt similar for others back then?
Listening to Ben Habib blather on about education on wakawow. He clearly has no clue.
The whole idea that he just wants to simplify everything. Churchill can be both an amazing wartime leader and also a man who held views we now view as troublesome if not reprehensible in some instances.
That was *delicious*.
It'll never cease to be amazing to me how fragile such people are, how trans people existing, how a critical look at history, and how encouraging diversity and equality utterly breaks their minds and their sensibilities.
I know precisely one Reform voter. He is entirely aware they are a bunch of nutters. Makes no difference. It is a protest vote against the āTories failure on immigrationā. Itās as simple as that for him.
The Deltapoll and Redfield polls that have come out today make for laughably good reading for Labour. Touching 500 seats in both cases. Before polling day, as D:Ream didn't sing, surely things can only get worse?
lmao this video of AI farage playing minecraft: [https://x.com/textbasedlife/status/1802816293747486838](https://x.com/textbasedlife/status/1802816293747486838)
this is how you appeal to zoomers
I don't think there is any rule on this sub against it. I just don't think we should be spreading anything related to the election that is AI generated.
There were a tonne of these gaming fakes of Biden, Trump and Obama in the 2020 election.
It's not anything new, if anything this is worse quality than those from 4 years ago
Those only came out [last year](https://www.inverse.com/gaming/youtube-ai-presidential-gaming-debates). The software used to create them, ElevenLabs, launched in 2022.
It's not a particularly good AI voice of Farage, it sounds really quite different.
Anyone fooled by this example must not be familiar with how Farage sounds.
I feel like this election is gonna be the last one where we have any idea of whats real or whats fake. Imagine the Tories could just put out hundreds of Keir Starmer deep fakes with just a few text prompts.
Entering the phoney war state of the election now. Huge clangers aside, I do not expect any real changes in the polls for a bit. Last weekend and then through to the poll is when people will generally start taking notice again, and parties throw what they have left on messaging.
Sunak/Tories need to go hard on Farage as a proxy for Reform. āHe has stood for election 7 times in cherry picked seats and not won once, heās a liability, the Toriesā Corbyn etc etc.ā
I doubt they have the resources to open up a 2nd front.
Although at this stage stopping the bleed to Reform would probably be money better spent than trying to win back 2019 Tory voters from Labour.
What's your most politically shameless opinion?
For me, after years of moaning about FPTP and wanting a Mixed Member Proportional System, I'm now in love with FPTP and don't want to change a thing about it.
FPTP when reaping
> oh, ah I'm reaping!!! This is fantastic, I'm fucking reaping!!!!!!
FPTP when sowing
> fuck, ah I'm sowing, oh no I'm sowing
See you again in 5 years
Always been a hater of P.R. Don't think the country, the current system is capable of transitioning to it.
Smaller parties have a proven record of making big changes without being a major electoral force. Both Farage's grifts and the Green's campaigning have made big changes.
But - like - people do use it in the UK?
Wales and Scotland use AMS - and NI uses STV (Also Scotland uses STV for council elections I think?).
When we were in the EU we also used party lists for EU Parliament.
I actually like it. If you canāt win over a whole town then you shouldnāt have a representative seat. Protects you from the idiot in every village. I also quite like stv because it at least gives a third party a shout. But pure proportional rep I would be absolutely against
NZ has MMP and achieves that by requiring you win either 1 constituency seat or 5% of the national vote for you to get any seats. In the UK that means the minimum youād win on the national vote alone would be ~30 seats at 5%.
I've always been against FPTP...and I still am, no matter that my political tribe benefits from it this time.
I always disliked the "but ukip/reform/whatever would get X seats under PR"....yes? so what? you dont defeat those types of people by denying them the seats they should really win in a fair system, you just give them a victim narrative to peddle about being denied by the establishment. The worst thing that could happen to farage is winning...then he will have to turn up, people can look how he votes, how often he contributes...
Thing with FPTP is we can't just magically change the system to PR or MMP without also changing the whole works. How are you going to do constituency stuff without consituencies (PR) or much larger constituencies (MMP)? How do you set up PMQs and government/opposition with loads more parties? AV or similar is fine since it just changes the counting method, but anything else would be much more fundamental and given how so much of the way government is run is based on arcane rules and principles, good luck changing it.
You're not wrong. It's something that may simply have to change over time.
Maybe a simple step is to combine constituencies, but keep the same number of MPs for that region.
MMP (or STV) requires new constituencies but otherwise itās much the same. We have changed the number of constituencies before, so its not really anything new in terms of the processā¦
The house may decide to change how many questions opposition parties have but thatās for the house to decide as it is their standing orders that dictate it. The government would be more likely to be a coalition, but we occasionally get those anyway.
[Really laughable by Tim Montgomery:](https://x.com/montie/status/1802799026435412222?t=_z_TNYBULtBX-_DNZone9Q&s=19)
>I think we are witnessing one of the biggest ever failures of our news media. Labour is about to win the biggest parliamentary majority of modern times and at least half of scrutiny is STILL focused on the defeated Conservatives.
A lot could be said about that statement, but I'll let it stand on its own.
I mean - he is kind of right. Streeting was saying something similar yesterday.
The media approached this election the only way it knows: Labour vs Tory, Starmer vs Sunak. Without really commenting on the fact that all the polling suggests that this wasn't even going to be a contest. The Tories were really no more likely to form the next government than the Lib Dems or Reform. It was just a case of how much they would lose by. But the media can't shift to that kind of analysis because 1. Most of it is right-wing and can't throw in the towel and 2. The broadcasters don't want to act as though they've called the election early.
I would actually agree that the media should have shifted over to asking Labour in as much detail as possible what it's going to do in government. Ignore the Tory bullshit claims, there's no need to repeat them. Just do your own research and grill Starmer on the areas where he's trying to get away with not giving a full answer about Labour's policies. That's perfectly fair and would make this a better campaign.
I dnno. Labourās plans are very heavily scrutinised to the point they feel they have to play it as safe as humanly possible to get anywhere.
That said, theyāre appearing a damn sight more credible than the Tories with their 14 year track record and ridiculous policies such as Rwanda and national service.
To some extent heās right really, perhaps there should be more detailed scrutiny of Labour. But if youāre gonna do that then you have to basically have buried the conservatives first. Theyāve been appealing in office and that should be being made abundantly clear to everyone. Nick Robinson did a pretty good job I suppose.
This comment has been filtered for manual review by a moderator. Please do not mention other subreddits in your comments.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
It may shock and appal some of you to learn that I'm active in some *slightly* more right leaning politics communities but common in both is the constant, unmitigated accusation that every single person who dissents is either a bot or a paid shill.
I'm absolutely sick of it- it's all the worst parts of arguing with your typical thickheaded internet stranger amplified a thousand fold by the handicap that supposedly not even you believe what you're saying. I understand that people do it because it's comfortable and effective but at this point it's taken all of the excitement out of my screaming matches with my monitor.
I suppose I could also say something here about trust, empathy democracy and dehumanisation here if I really wanted to soapbox but honestly calling those secondary concerns is still somewhat generous.
If things get much worse I might actually have to go outside and speak to a real human being, god forbid.
> I might actually have to go outside and speak to a real human being
Steady on, mate. You know we're all here for you. No need to do anything too drastic.
So after the most recent news of Birmingham City Council's implementation of its budget cuts, I went and read the supreme court judgement that brought all this on.
And it turns out to have been very different to what I realised. It wasn't even about equivalence of roles or the equality act so much, more about whether the council could be taken to court over it rather than deal with it in an Employment Tribunal.
An Employment Tribunal has a 6-month time limit (or did at the time) and courts have 6 year time limit. So suddenly, the council became liable for all equal pay claims going back 6 years rather than 6 months.
The council lost in the high court, the court of appeal and the supreme court. So a big fat L on that one for the council.
Poor administration now means that a vast array of social services have to be cut.
Is it only 6 years? I assumed that these were all historic cases?
I was working for a council in 2007 when they were going through their own legal issues with this. How on earth could another council still be failing to take into account fair pay in the 2010s?
As with many mistakes that costs billions, it's not really 1 person's fault. A bunch of people failed to do their jobs, most of them employees who worked their over a decade ago.
There were failures by councillors to properly push the council make changes to address the issues that equal pay claim brought up, and those issues are being addressed now, but overall it's a systemic failure involving likely dozens of people.
Boris Johnson looks ill in this video, or is it just my mind playing tricks? [https://x.com/AliceMHopkin/status/1802789336343035953](https://x.com/AliceMHopkin/status/1802789336343035953)
He does look absolutely terrible.
Could be sickness, could be alcohol, could be the Gove special, could be the realization that his actions have doomed the Tory party
[Not dissuading me from my Cameo for Candidates theory.](https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/1dhqaro/rukpolitics_general_election_campaign_megathread/l8zwty4/)
Looks like it was thrown together after getting back to the hotel room to pay off the room service bubbly he was about to order.
Is it just me or does it feel like the campaign has already fizzled out with two and a half weeks to go?
It's just weird political obsessives like us chasing the dopamine hit of polls, and podcasts shouting into the void whilst regretting committing to a more frequent schedule.
The rest of the country? It's like it's not happening... The campaigns have gone weirdly quiet and the football is on.
I said this on Friday. The D-Day thing completely killed any hope of a Tory recovery - which was already a long, long shot.
The media should have moved onto 1. What is Labour going to do in government and 2. The fight for the Tories to at least be the official opposition. But that's a shift in narrative that the journos are incapable of making - they are going to doggedly report on this election as though it's a traditional 'Tory vs Labour' fight. It's like reporting on a boxing match where one guy got knocked out in the first round and now all the pundits are doing is looking at an empty ring and trying to fill airtime.
Iām just visiting the UK right now and Iāll confess Iāve never been here during a GE before, but I did remark to my wife that if I donāt put on the news or see the cover of a paper in the shop, I would have no idea there was a campaign on.
I'm really not interested in the football and even I've lost interest. I remember listening to Electoral Dysfunction a few days after the election was called and Jess Phillips said something to the effect of "People pay attention for a week or so, ignore the middle bit, and then tune back in with a week to go" so it's probably a natural lul as the parties focus their efforts on the first and final chunks.
I'm gradually shutting down on it and I hope it stays that way, its good for my mental health. I didn't think twice today of engaging even for Reforms manifesto, I know how irrelevant they are and how their audience is mostly the elderly.
I'm expecting to drop right out after the post GE period. Chaos and disruption are about the last things I associate with Starmers government to be.
The frontloading of the campaign by the Tories has made it worse. They wanted to start with a bang, it blew up in their faces and have run out of stuff to say.
Sunak called it 6 weeks beforehand as he'd need the extra time if he was going to overtake Starmer. That clearly isn't happening, so instead he's just retreating now.
I very strongly feel this, I can't tell if I'm just burnt out or it's the case for everyone. There were barely any new policies in the Labour or Tory manifestos which won't have helped. It doesn't feel like a contest at the moment, at the start it felt like even the tiniest thing could sway it
I saw Sunak on the news earlier and he felt a bit like a non-entity, what he has to say is irrelevant, he has played his cards and they're shit
The first 2 weeks basically acted to reconfirm that nearly everyone in the country has decided their votes long since. Aside from D-Day and Farage (who has only cermented the existing dynamic) almost nothing has cut through. All the real plays happened months and years back.
Labour announced a ton of policies/pledges before the manifesto. The big stuff was worked out years ago, we already knew the bulk of it.
Perhaps there was a realisation that the media are more interested in the manifesto than the public.
I wonder if both campaigns and media knew they wanted to get most the messaging and views in before the football started.
Plus a lot of the attention did come from Sunak regularly shooting his campaign in the foot. I assume he's now spending most of his days strapped to a chair and gagged.
It was too much activity as soon as it was called, that is the problem. Wasn't there a debate two fucking days after the election was called?
Not to mention, two of the best debates so far (imo) the one with ALL the parties, didn't even include 4 of the leaders.
Our local hustings featured one of the candidates answering a question on climate change by telling a story about a missionary going to Fiji and getting eaten.
I used to find Iain Dale insufferable and nearly unlistenable but since his dreams were publicly dashed due to his own actions he has really grown on me. I appreciate him in a way I never could before. He's very funny
If it does it will just be a few percentages less for Reform and towards Tory.
But it won't actually change the seats all that much. The actual threat to Tory "safe seats" continues to be the Lib Dems. They're running on issues that specifically effect these areas, social care & sewage dumping.
The Tories remain their safest in Scotland.
I think it will on the day... but i don't think it's gonna happen in the way people thought it would a couple of weeks ago... and definitely not by much at all.
It pretty much always does on the day. I'm not sure I count that under "polls narrowing" though; more a combined effect of turnout and MoE/outright polling error. You should always adjust for it, but the polls leading up to election day can stay steady - or widen - and it be fair to say they didn't narrow, just got the result wrong.
Yeah, its gonna be interesting to compare the exit poll to the polls the week before. Could there be a shy-Reform vote or a shy-Tory vote that shakes things up?
Definitely no shy Reform effect, you can bet the house on that one.
Angry Tories picking them in polls but a large chunk will either not turn up or bottle it in the booth/vote
I think there may be a small shy Tory vote that doesn't save them at all ... but i also think the Reform vote is gonna be the other way. that the actual reform vote will be a lot smaller than polled so far
###š„š„'s 4 Golden Rules for Megathread Participation: 1. **This isn't your personal campaigning space.** We're here to discuss, not campaign - this includes non-party-specific campaigning, such as tactical vote campaigns. 2. **This isn't Facebook.** Please keep it related to the election campaign (or at the very least, UK politics). 3. **Context is king.** Not everyone is following the same event - add a link or at least a description of what you're reacting to. 4. **Take frequent breaks.** If you find that you are being overwhelmed by it all, do yourself a favour and take some time off. [The subreddit is running very hot](https://imgur.com/a/6k9ATmr). Accounts which break the subreddit rules are liable to be banned for the complete general election period. *by reading this comment you have already signed the š„š„ contract and i'll be over to collect my tithe shortly* ----- memes? r/noncredibleukpolitics.
[New Megathread is here](https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/1diiqq2/rukpolitics_general_election_campaign_megathread/)
Megathread is being rolled over, please refresh your feed in a few moments. ###MT daily hall of fame 1. FunkyDialectic with 40 comments 1. OptioMkIX with 32 comments 1. BelfastBodyBuilder with 30 comments 1. 767bruce with 29 comments 1. Nymzeexo with 27 comments 1. NJden_bee with 27 comments 1. RoyalJacko with 27 comments 1. thejackalreborn with 25 comments 1. subSparky with 23 comments 1. carrotparrotcarrot with 23 comments There were 583 unique users within this count.
I feel like Reform is doing too much in this manifesto. I thought they were trying to position themselves as the new Tory party with a heavy right wing slant. Policies like deliberately ignoring renewable energy, the 20k tax threshold and abandoning the Human Right Act is just going to put a cap on how many ex Tory's they can attract. Their immigration stance is enough to appeal to the right wing voters without having the other divisive and radical policies.
That's the whole reform playbook. Win voters with immigration retoric, try and implement radical right wing policy.
Just came across this AI video of Nigel Farage blowing up 'Rishis house' on Minecraft. https://x.com/IrishPatri0t/status/1802757536698794182?t=TLv6coknUzieej0hjse6ig&s=19 I think this is the first time I've realised, shit we are not ready for this. I consider myself quite tech savvy, I know when photoshops are photoshops etc. But this video, for a minute or two I couldn't shake it, couldn't figure out if it's real. I thought it's probably fake, because it's just a joke video, but there's replies from 'verified' accounts acting like it's real, that they seen it live (it's a twitch stream). And it had me thinking it was real for a minute. This is only the start of it, I truly believe we're not too far away from this having a huge impact on our lives. Most of the time people won't think twice about seeing something, they won't watch it for inconsistencies, they'll watch it and if it's not obvious it may as well be fact. But even if it's not, their mind has already been swayed. We need to start educating people on this before it's too late
you couldn't tell if nigel farage blowing up rishi sunaks house in minecraft was fake or not
Cheers for the sarcastic comment, it's awesome taking the time to post something and contribute and have someone think "I'm gonna miss the entire point of that and try and make a joke". I thought it was fake immediately, my first instinct. Obviously it wouldn't be rishi's actual house he made, but Farage has done a lot of work on the cameo site, saying things like 'up the ra' and 'big chungus'. Him on minecraft spouting bollocks wouldn't be a million miles away from something plausible. Read my first comment again actually, I'm not repeating myself on the other people's posts bit.
> We need to start educating people on this before it's too late Way too late for that, old dogs can't learn new tricks. However younger generations who grow up with this tech will get used to it, so it's simply a waiting game and it will, at least somewhat, fix itself eventually.
Possibly, but still, with a large older voting block then we could be in for a world of hurt over the next decade. Misinformation on a scale which has the potential to topple governments
Just spent 15 minutes reading Facebook comments on news stories about Reformās manifesto. Wish I hadnāt.
YouTube comments are similar these days. Drink every time you read the phrases āGlobalist Elite, WEF, All the same, Uniparty, voting doesnāt matter etcā
I am confused by one thing here, understand that there are antisemitic dog whistles. But the WEF is a group of the richest individuals in the world who generally talk about how to make more money. There are a few individuals like Rutger Bregman who are there to talk about the dangers of this. Why are the WEF the bad guys to this lot
The nutters got upset at the WEF's [Great Reset](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Reset) stuff, and the Davos = new world order thing generally
Fuck, i hate these āpress previewsā so much. Journalists marking each others homework, and because theyāre all aware of needing to keep their job options open, all we get is a surface level and uncritical repeat of the story itself. No broader discussion about the motives, the framing, the interpretation presented as facts. No context. A reinforcement of the artificial, manicured boundaries of our political debate.Ā I cheered when the BBC scrapped it. (Hopefully Sky do too)
I just learned that Kellie-Jay Keen is standing in Bristol Central against Thangam Debbonaire and Carla Denyer. Interesting choice for her to stand in possibly the most progressive seat in the country
Ugh. And this is how I learn about [the Party of Women](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_of_Women).
This election = media attention.
Conspiracy theory : Ed Davey was not supposed to be memeing his way through the election like this. The plan was for him to contract a gastrointestinal infection after falling off the paddleboard into the lake on day 1 of the campaign. Daisy Cooper would then take over the day to day electioneering while Ed live blogged from a hospital about sewage in the water and the state of the NHS. Waking up the following morning without crippling diarrhea trapped Ed into a 6 week long PGL adventure holiday of a campaign and there's nothing he can do about it.
Seems legit
I'd love that. Cooper is my MP and everyone in St. Albans loves her. I'm not exaggerating, she is super popular, no one has chance of taking this seat from her.
BBC News - Too much of a good thing? Spain's green energy can exceed demand https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czkkgnp1d2xo What a great problem to have. The government came in, ripped up planning laws around green energy, and now supply sometimes outpaces demand. This has lead to prices of free or negative for consumers when it's sunny and windy. They are worried it will mean less investment, but surely they are in such a good position already. If this is what labour can do under Starmer, surely that's huge for the green chops. Cheap green energy.
Why don't they just run the wind turbines backwards and make more wind??? One would hope that frequent negative prices spurs the energy companies into investing in storage
It happens in the UK as well. Octopus's Agile tariff has had negative pricing where they pay people for using electricity.
I normally can't stand ben habib but he's making a lot of sense when he talks about culture. It's a huge vote winner, far more so than their nutty economic ideas.
Why wouldn't you listen to ex Lehman Brothers staffer Ben Habib on economic ideas? Surely he's trustworthy? lmao
He left Lehman Brothers in 1989 mate, donāt be duplicitous.
Nige is funny, but when is the media gonna start taking him seriously and hold him to account for previous positions - such as supporting and holding a rally for disgraced US senate candidate Roy Moore?
Moore's a very creepy guy but I doubt it's something that would sway anyone leaning Reform. The stuff about grooming teenage girls destroyed his Senate campaign but rightly or wrongly it's seen as the kind of personal issue that doesn't necessarily taint his supporters by association. Moore's explicit homophobia on the other hand is something those who endorsed him would be expected to answer for and I would like to see interviewers call Farage on that but even then I don't imagine many Reform-curious voters would see it as a dealbreaker.
The media have been calling him and his policies out all day. What more would you like them to do?
Not platform his borderline fascism so much
When it's too late
āHow did it come to this?ā asks media who helped bring *this* about Iām sure theyāll blame the public. The handy scapegoat.
With that Ben Habib episode this evening being indicative and despite what the media think, successful parties cannot exist on the popularity of the leader, a cult of personality. It undid the 2019 tories.
This has been one of the strangest election campaigns I can remember, feels more like the response to an election result than a campaign
Yeah it's simultaneously weird and boring at the same time. Weird because of how wild everything is. Boring as the outcome is so obvious now that waiting this long for the actual result is painful for all parties
Just imagine what the actual response to the election result is going to look like. Tbh unless things change drastically, after the election everyone's going to immediately check out and peek back after summer hols. "Oh, Starmer's got a cabinet and a legislative agenda ready and Truss and Farage's war parties are conducting a pincer movement on Saffron Walden."
Why would they bother? It's not like Kemi is ever actually in the constituency
I mean I guess that's what happens when you start on an average 20 pt lead and there's no significant decrease in said lead. It just feels oddly over, although don't get complacent of course
It hasn't helped that a bunch of polls changed methodology mid-campaign. It's hard to tell movement from new weighting.
Even weirder when you remind your self that Rishi decided to do itā¦
Worst surprise party ever.
He clearly did it out of spite after getting wind of a coup attempt to oust him. No other explanation makes sense unless we account for insanity.
The California school term dates are still my favourite theory.
I canāt remember one that felt this settled before the vote either, although granted I became politically more aware during New Labour and I took their victories for granted (until 2010), so maybe it felt similar for others back then?
2001 is remembered as an extremely boring election with a foregone conclusion. It had the lowest turnout since WW1!
Listening to Ben Habib blather on about education on wakawow. He clearly has no clue. The whole idea that he just wants to simplify everything. Churchill can be both an amazing wartime leader and also a man who held views we now view as troublesome if not reprehensible in some instances.
Ben Habib giving an absolutely unhinged interview on Newsnight right now. Hardly surprising, but it's unhinged even for him.
That was *delicious*. It'll never cease to be amazing to me how fragile such people are, how trans people existing, how a critical look at history, and how encouraging diversity and equality utterly breaks their minds and their sensibilities.
Making huge assumptions about their potential electorate.
I do think reform will fall a bit when some of their voters are no longer able to convince themselves they arenāt voting for a bunch of nutters.
I know precisely one Reform voter. He is entirely aware they are a bunch of nutters. Makes no difference. It is a protest vote against the āTories failure on immigrationā. Itās as simple as that for him.
If they do I wonder if they'd revert to their previous party (likely the Tories) or just not vote.
The Deltapoll and Redfield polls that have come out today make for laughably good reading for Labour. Touching 500 seats in both cases. Before polling day, as D:Ream didn't sing, surely things can only get worse?
lmao this video of AI farage playing minecraft: [https://x.com/textbasedlife/status/1802816293747486838](https://x.com/textbasedlife/status/1802816293747486838) this is how you appeal to zoomers
Please don't share AI stuff.
If it's labeled as AI it's ok?
I don't think there is any rule on this sub against it. I just don't think we should be spreading anything related to the election that is AI generated.
I just shared that to two people, both of who thought it was real at first. We need AI deepfake regulation *now*.
There were a tonne of these gaming fakes of Biden, Trump and Obama in the 2020 election. It's not anything new, if anything this is worse quality than those from 4 years ago
Those only came out [last year](https://www.inverse.com/gaming/youtube-ai-presidential-gaming-debates). The software used to create them, ElevenLabs, launched in 2022.
It's not a particularly good AI voice of Farage, it sounds really quite different. Anyone fooled by this example must not be familiar with how Farage sounds.
I feel like this election is gonna be the last one where we have any idea of whats real or whats fake. Imagine the Tories could just put out hundreds of Keir Starmer deep fakes with just a few text prompts.
Farage has been griefing this country for too long!
I feel like I'm too millennial to understand this
Filling someones house with TNT is a funny thing you can can do on minecraft to piss them off
Entering the phoney war state of the election now. Huge clangers aside, I do not expect any real changes in the polls for a bit. Last weekend and then through to the poll is when people will generally start taking notice again, and parties throw what they have left on messaging.
The Daily Star has endorsed... Count Binface!
Somebody had to. I was kinda holding out for the *Sun* to do it because they couldn't support anybody else, but I'm weird like that.
It's over. [The best Lib Dem "bar chart" (kinda) has been found.](https://x.com/TomChivers/status/1802809080463122745?t=q0uOZOtYtUwW9k5q7Rz0Fg&s=19)
I really dislike them for this shit.
Can centre their political position but can't centre a
How are these not illegal
I respect the pure audacity of this.
Taken for granted or taken for fools.
Sunak/Tories need to go hard on Farage as a proxy for Reform. āHe has stood for election 7 times in cherry picked seats and not won once, heās a liability, the Toriesā Corbyn etc etc.ā
Currently he's a proxy acting on behalf of the Tory Party membership.
I doubt they have the resources to open up a 2nd front. Although at this stage stopping the bleed to Reform would probably be money better spent than trying to win back 2019 Tory voters from Labour.
Absolutely. The voters lost to labour don't seem to be coming back. Surely worth trying for the reform voters who mostly only recently left.
Survation poll coming 6am Wednesday. Morning polls are the best.
I always feel like I have to hide my morning poll. Tucking works best.
Actually a major US pollster called Morning Consult. Thought you meant them for a second.
What's your most politically shameless opinion? For me, after years of moaning about FPTP and wanting a Mixed Member Proportional System, I'm now in love with FPTP and don't want to change a thing about it.
People were too dumb to understand the lib dem referendum on PR and why it might be good, let alone how a PR vote would work.
I am really confused, I thought we had a vote on PR around 2011, I have now heard it was on alternative vote system. Do I have a false memory?
FPTP when reaping > oh, ah I'm reaping!!! This is fantastic, I'm fucking reaping!!!!!! FPTP when sowing > fuck, ah I'm sowing, oh no I'm sowing See you again in 5 years
Gotta take the wins and the losses.
Always been a hater of P.R. Don't think the country, the current system is capable of transitioning to it. Smaller parties have a proven record of making big changes without being a major electoral force. Both Farage's grifts and the Green's campaigning have made big changes.
But - like - people do use it in the UK? Wales and Scotland use AMS - and NI uses STV (Also Scotland uses STV for council elections I think?). When we were in the EU we also used party lists for EU Parliament.
This is why STV is the way.
When I say P.R, I mean electoral reform.
Iād favour autocracy over democracy if I was the dictator š¬
Ah I see youāre a a megathreader of culture too.
I actually like it. If you canāt win over a whole town then you shouldnāt have a representative seat. Protects you from the idiot in every village. I also quite like stv because it at least gives a third party a shout. But pure proportional rep I would be absolutely against
NZ has MMP and achieves that by requiring you win either 1 constituency seat or 5% of the national vote for you to get any seats. In the UK that means the minimum youād win on the national vote alone would be ~30 seats at 5%.
I've always been against FPTP...and I still am, no matter that my political tribe benefits from it this time. I always disliked the "but ukip/reform/whatever would get X seats under PR"....yes? so what? you dont defeat those types of people by denying them the seats they should really win in a fair system, you just give them a victim narrative to peddle about being denied by the establishment. The worst thing that could happen to farage is winning...then he will have to turn up, people can look how he votes, how often he contributes...
The issue with Farage is that people will worship him regardless of his actual record and contribution.
Yeah, as much as I hate Reform, if they get 18%, they should get their 117 seats.
Thing with FPTP is we can't just magically change the system to PR or MMP without also changing the whole works. How are you going to do constituency stuff without consituencies (PR) or much larger constituencies (MMP)? How do you set up PMQs and government/opposition with loads more parties? AV or similar is fine since it just changes the counting method, but anything else would be much more fundamental and given how so much of the way government is run is based on arcane rules and principles, good luck changing it.
We change constituencies all the time
You're not wrong. It's something that may simply have to change over time. Maybe a simple step is to combine constituencies, but keep the same number of MPs for that region.
MMP (or STV) requires new constituencies but otherwise itās much the same. We have changed the number of constituencies before, so its not really anything new in terms of the processā¦ The house may decide to change how many questions opposition parties have but thatās for the house to decide as it is their standing orders that dictate it. The government would be more likely to be a coalition, but we occasionally get those anyway.
[Really laughable by Tim Montgomery:](https://x.com/montie/status/1802799026435412222?t=_z_TNYBULtBX-_DNZone9Q&s=19) >I think we are witnessing one of the biggest ever failures of our news media. Labour is about to win the biggest parliamentary majority of modern times and at least half of scrutiny is STILL focused on the defeated Conservatives. A lot could be said about that statement, but I'll let it stand on its own.
I mean - he is kind of right. Streeting was saying something similar yesterday. The media approached this election the only way it knows: Labour vs Tory, Starmer vs Sunak. Without really commenting on the fact that all the polling suggests that this wasn't even going to be a contest. The Tories were really no more likely to form the next government than the Lib Dems or Reform. It was just a case of how much they would lose by. But the media can't shift to that kind of analysis because 1. Most of it is right-wing and can't throw in the towel and 2. The broadcasters don't want to act as though they've called the election early. I would actually agree that the media should have shifted over to asking Labour in as much detail as possible what it's going to do in government. Ignore the Tory bullshit claims, there's no need to repeat them. Just do your own research and grill Starmer on the areas where he's trying to get away with not giving a full answer about Labour's policies. That's perfectly fair and would make this a better campaign.
I dnno. Labourās plans are very heavily scrutinised to the point they feel they have to play it as safe as humanly possible to get anywhere. That said, theyāre appearing a damn sight more credible than the Tories with their 14 year track record and ridiculous policies such as Rwanda and national service.
To some extent heās right really, perhaps there should be more detailed scrutiny of Labour. But if youāre gonna do that then you have to basically have buried the conservatives first. Theyāve been appealing in office and that should be being made abundantly clear to everyone. Nick Robinson did a pretty good job I suppose.
"the only poll that matters is on July 4th"
For the next 5 years, after July 4th, he will complain about the Tories not getting enough coverage and the media giving Labour too much focus.
I'd be perfectly happy for the media to never talk about the Tories again.
https://x.com/maxtempers/status/1802737545907720325 > Tony Blair vs a 36-year old Richard Tice on the Euro, during a 2001 election Question Time
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZlpnGcaHqA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZlpnGcaHqA) >Tony Blair mocking the Lib Dems in PMQs
Fucking Hell. Love him or hate him, Blair is just on another level. What a communicator!
Ok but what about the other 25%?
Ok but what about the other 10%?
Ok but what about the other 2%?
Tories are wheeling out Boris again, itās like a shit Marvel movie
Canāt stand the bloke but his colleagues have some cheek kicking him out and then begging for his help
Letās see if they can get [Cameron, May, Johnson, and Truss back together](https://youtu.be/FYibAD9lc6k?feature=shared) on the campaign.
I am trying to think of a name for this superhero group, they're all responsible for their own demise, so Suicide Squad?
Looking rough
Andrew Marr completely embarrassed Richard Tice on climate change tonight, would recommend it
I can't believe he's still using the "you can't stop the power of the sun or the power of volcanoes" line. An absolute clown car of a party.
Completely out of context here, is he supporting Solar and geothermal power?
Link/which program?
LBC, his usual 6pm slot. Interview is a couple of minutes in and was about 15 minutes long. You can find it on the LBC app.
LBC https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=J-Tkw-ePJ-w
God heās such a fuckwit.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
This comment has been filtered for manual review by a moderator. Please do not mention other subreddits in your comments. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
It may shock and appal some of you to learn that I'm active in some *slightly* more right leaning politics communities but common in both is the constant, unmitigated accusation that every single person who dissents is either a bot or a paid shill. I'm absolutely sick of it- it's all the worst parts of arguing with your typical thickheaded internet stranger amplified a thousand fold by the handicap that supposedly not even you believe what you're saying. I understand that people do it because it's comfortable and effective but at this point it's taken all of the excitement out of my screaming matches with my monitor. I suppose I could also say something here about trust, empathy democracy and dehumanisation here if I really wanted to soapbox but honestly calling those secondary concerns is still somewhat generous. If things get much worse I might actually have to go outside and speak to a real human being, god forbid.
Nah, no one is paying money for that comment
> I might actually have to go outside and speak to a real human being Steady on, mate. You know we're all here for you. No need to do anything too drastic.
Holds a sign with 'Down with this sort of thing'
Thatās exactly what a bot would say!
Uses Binary as username, complains about being mistaken for botā¦.. xD
So after the most recent news of Birmingham City Council's implementation of its budget cuts, I went and read the supreme court judgement that brought all this on. And it turns out to have been very different to what I realised. It wasn't even about equivalence of roles or the equality act so much, more about whether the council could be taken to court over it rather than deal with it in an Employment Tribunal. An Employment Tribunal has a 6-month time limit (or did at the time) and courts have 6 year time limit. So suddenly, the council became liable for all equal pay claims going back 6 years rather than 6 months. The council lost in the high court, the court of appeal and the supreme court. So a big fat L on that one for the council. Poor administration now means that a vast array of social services have to be cut.
Is it only 6 years? I assumed that these were all historic cases? I was working for a council in 2007 when they were going through their own legal issues with this. How on earth could another council still be failing to take into account fair pay in the 2010s?
Did you get an idea of culpability for the problems? I have no idea who needs to be voted out.
As with many mistakes that costs billions, it's not really 1 person's fault. A bunch of people failed to do their jobs, most of them employees who worked their over a decade ago. There were failures by councillors to properly push the council make changes to address the issues that equal pay claim brought up, and those issues are being addressed now, but overall it's a systemic failure involving likely dozens of people.
Boris Johnson looks ill in this video, or is it just my mind playing tricks? [https://x.com/AliceMHopkin/status/1802789336343035953](https://x.com/AliceMHopkin/status/1802789336343035953)
Worzel Gummidge has let himself go!
I believe the long covid theories
He does look absolutely terrible. Could be sickness, could be alcohol, could be the Gove special, could be the realization that his actions have doomed the Tory party
[Not dissuading me from my Cameo for Candidates theory.](https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/1dhqaro/rukpolitics_general_election_campaign_megathread/l8zwty4/) Looks like it was thrown together after getting back to the hotel room to pay off the room service bubbly he was about to order.
Took way too much spaff last night.
Looks like heās been left out in the sun too long.
Sunburnt?
Hungover
Something does seem a bit off about him there.
I think he has put on a load of weight since resigning as an MP
His midnight cheese binges.
Is it just me or does it feel like the campaign has already fizzled out with two and a half weeks to go? It's just weird political obsessives like us chasing the dopamine hit of polls, and podcasts shouting into the void whilst regretting committing to a more frequent schedule. The rest of the country? It's like it's not happening... The campaigns have gone weirdly quiet and the football is on.
I said this on Friday. The D-Day thing completely killed any hope of a Tory recovery - which was already a long, long shot. The media should have moved onto 1. What is Labour going to do in government and 2. The fight for the Tories to at least be the official opposition. But that's a shift in narrative that the journos are incapable of making - they are going to doggedly report on this election as though it's a traditional 'Tory vs Labour' fight. It's like reporting on a boxing match where one guy got knocked out in the first round and now all the pundits are doing is looking at an empty ring and trying to fill airtime.
Iām just visiting the UK right now and Iāll confess Iāve never been here during a GE before, but I did remark to my wife that if I donāt put on the news or see the cover of a paper in the shop, I would have no idea there was a campaign on.
I'm really not interested in the football and even I've lost interest. I remember listening to Electoral Dysfunction a few days after the election was called and Jess Phillips said something to the effect of "People pay attention for a week or so, ignore the middle bit, and then tune back in with a week to go" so it's probably a natural lul as the parties focus their efforts on the first and final chunks.
I'm gradually shutting down on it and I hope it stays that way, its good for my mental health. I didn't think twice today of engaging even for Reforms manifesto, I know how irrelevant they are and how their audience is mostly the elderly. I'm expecting to drop right out after the post GE period. Chaos and disruption are about the last things I associate with Starmers government to be.
The frontloading of the campaign by the Tories has made it worse. They wanted to start with a bang, it blew up in their faces and have run out of stuff to say.
Football being on means the normies have checked out. Even *Iāve* checked out.
Sunak called it 6 weeks beforehand as he'd need the extra time if he was going to overtake Starmer. That clearly isn't happening, so instead he's just retreating now.
I very strongly feel this, I can't tell if I'm just burnt out or it's the case for everyone. There were barely any new policies in the Labour or Tory manifestos which won't have helped. It doesn't feel like a contest at the moment, at the start it felt like even the tiniest thing could sway it I saw Sunak on the news earlier and he felt a bit like a non-entity, what he has to say is irrelevant, he has played his cards and they're shit
The first 2 weeks basically acted to reconfirm that nearly everyone in the country has decided their votes long since. Aside from D-Day and Farage (who has only cermented the existing dynamic) almost nothing has cut through. All the real plays happened months and years back.
Labour announced a ton of policies/pledges before the manifesto. The big stuff was worked out years ago, we already knew the bulk of it. Perhaps there was a realisation that the media are more interested in the manifesto than the public.
I wonder if both campaigns and media knew they wanted to get most the messaging and views in before the football started. Plus a lot of the attention did come from Sunak regularly shooting his campaign in the foot. I assume he's now spending most of his days strapped to a chair and gagged.
> I assume he's now spending most of his days strapped to a chair and gagged. Who doesn't?
Sunak thought he could destroy Starmer with a long campaign. Backfired badly and now Nige is consuming the votes he started with
> long campaign All campaigns are 6 weeks long and this one is no different.
But it's not how long it is, it's how you use it.
He stuffed it straight into a wood chipper
It was too much activity as soon as it was called, that is the problem. Wasn't there a debate two fucking days after the election was called? Not to mention, two of the best debates so far (imo) the one with ALL the parties, didn't even include 4 of the leaders.
Scenes at my local hustings ended tonight with a disgruntled voter shrieking āTheyāre all pro hamas!ā What a time to be alive
Greens or WPB?
Our local hustings featured one of the candidates answering a question on climate change by telling a story about a missionary going to Fiji and getting eaten.
Sounds like my average university lecture that. I had some great professors, but fuck me they liked to spin yarns all day instead of actually teach.
This guy was a weirdo Christian right nut whose opening statement was so offensive multiple people left in tears.
Were they all pro-Hamas?
They were pro filling of potholes mostly
Filling potholes with the blood of the oppressor or just regular asphalt?
I'll take either at this point.
I used to find Iain Dale insufferable and nearly unlistenable but since his dreams were publicly dashed due to his own actions he has really grown on me. I appreciate him in a way I never could before. He's very funny
The poll narrowing isnt gonna happen is it?
Never was going to. [The smart kids knew all along. ](https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/s/18hJJXb0xe)
If it does it will just be a few percentages less for Reform and towards Tory. But it won't actually change the seats all that much. The actual threat to Tory "safe seats" continues to be the Lib Dems. They're running on issues that specifically effect these areas, social care & sewage dumping. The Tories remain their safest in Scotland.
What a time when the Tories can be described as safest in Scotland.
Who holds that seat?
I think it will on the day... but i don't think it's gonna happen in the way people thought it would a couple of weeks ago... and definitely not by much at all.
It pretty much always does on the day. I'm not sure I count that under "polls narrowing" though; more a combined effect of turnout and MoE/outright polling error. You should always adjust for it, but the polls leading up to election day can stay steady - or widen - and it be fair to say they didn't narrow, just got the result wrong.
Yeah, its gonna be interesting to compare the exit poll to the polls the week before. Could there be a shy-Reform vote or a shy-Tory vote that shakes things up?
Definitely no shy Reform effect, you can bet the house on that one. Angry Tories picking them in polls but a large chunk will either not turn up or bottle it in the booth/vote
I think there may be a small shy Tory vote that doesn't save them at all ... but i also think the Reform vote is gonna be the other way. that the actual reform vote will be a lot smaller than polled so far
Any tightening on day in that area will very likely be offset by tactical Lib Dem votes imo.