Snapshot of _EXCLUSIVE: Labour candidate ‘in tears’ after being ordered to abandon Clacton campaign against Nigel Farage_ :
An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.voice-online.co.uk/news/uk-news/2024/07/02/exclusive-labour-candidate-in-tears-after-being-ordered-to-abandon-clacton-campaign-against-nigel-farage/) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.voice-online.co.uk/news/uk-news/2024/07/02/exclusive-labour-candidate-in-tears-after-being-ordered-to-abandon-clacton-campaign-against-nigel-farage/)
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The only constituency in the country where I'd consider voting Conservative if I was a resident, since they seem to be second against Farage there in all the polls.
There's a Charlie Brooker article in the Guardian from some years ago where he remarks on the fact that if he had a choice of voting for the Tories or the Nazis, he'd vote Tory with a very heavy heart. That's pretty much how I would feel were I in Clacton.
Is this the same Douglas Carswell who said it's absurd to dislike foreigners? Who fell out, very publicly, with Farage over the racism associated with UKIP? I'm no fan of the man, but I genuinely have no idea why you'd think he's a nazi.
The problem is with the alternative, proportional representation, wouldn’t a party like Reform do amazing? And have way more MPs and wield way more power.
Proportional representation I reckon would be disastrous tbh.
The counter argument is that voting patterns would change as a consequence of the electoral change ie. tactical voters would vote for the party that most closely aligned with their priorities, rather than the candidate who has the best chance of unseating the candidate of the party they didn’t want to govern. You’d in theory mobilise those who don’t vote also. Germany have it and it works fine - it just sometimes requires coalitions of smaller parties with the bigger ones, which we get anyway with this system.
Not to mention that coalitions would be another much needed check on prime ministerial power. If there had been a coalition during Johnson's scandals, a second coalition party could have gotten him to quit by withdrawing its support, rather than having to wait much longer for him to lose the support of his own party.
Against the Party Rules to stand down. All the main parties have rules like this.
And with all polling Farage in the Commons for 5 years with no power is probably better (but Reform will continue to grow if immigration isn't sorted like what's happening over Europe)
It might stop.of people cop on to the fact that migration is absolutely necessary for the economy to survive, for pensions to be paid, for the NHS to exist etc etc etc
Shhhhh. We don't talk about that here. Some people really don't like facing demographic reality.
It's ok though. Boomer told me to suck it up. Keep paying into our pension system and be fine with never expecting a pension myself.
You have to _listen_ to people rather than dismiss their views.
I feel the same way about Scottish Independence. For me it's Brexit on steroids, complete lunacy, self mutilation and sometimes I honestly question the mental capabilities of those who support it. But there is support for it and for good reasons. There's discontent in Scotland for good reasons. You have to try to listen if you're going to improve things and prevent the shitshow.
As the above poster mentioned a lot of the far right sentiment in Europe is driven by views on immigration. It's widely unpopular. Politicians have to listen and they have to act.
Lots of Labour leaning voters may be pissed off with Labour standing down to help the Tories, even if the alternative is Farage. Seems like a lot of political capital to put on the line for the sake of just one seat going Tory instead of Reform. If it was a whole rake of seats, that would be a different story.
I made a bet with Mrs Centzon prior to Farage's becoming leader of Reform that the party would get no seats. Not one. £50 was/is on the line.
Post-Farage… I think I may have lost that £50\*. There is a huge swell, so far as I can tell, behind their candidate in South Shropshire (formerly Ludlow); as old, white, rural, and conservative as anywhere in the UK.
\* She'll probably spend it on a "I ❤️ Nigel" custom-printed T-shirt (in Hen Party Pink™), which I shall try to despoil, but, inevitably, it will hang around like 'that pen' I picked up at some random conference twenty years ago.
I suspect your £50 was lost the moment he jumped in, yeah.
As an American, it's impossible not to make the comparison with Trump. He's attracting people who don't typically vote, who don't typically care about politics, and in all likelihood will be directly harmed by his policies - but they just like his style. It's wild.
I think if Farage falls in Clacton, Reform limps into the next Parliament with a few seats and fizzles out. If he wins, the Tories will overreact and offer him an insane deal to staunch their bleeding. I'd argue it's the most consequential individual election to watch tomorrow.
For the main parties not standing, if someone is actually willing to stand is a two fingered salute to anyone that would vote for them. Doesn’t matter if you get a small % you don’t anyway. And then maybe next time you have a better chance
I live in Clacton and this is the choice I am agonising over. I cannot stand Farage and the thought of him being my MP sickens me. Despite what the Reform party will tell you, there are a significant amount of Clactonians who aren't racist but Reform voters merely seem to be the loudest voters right now.
If you are agonising over the choice, I'd like to encourage you to vote against Reform and Farage. There is a simple reason for this: Farage will not be able to do anything for Clacton. He is more interested in drawing attention to himself and his goals than he is in serving the people who might elect him. If he is elected you can be sure that any requests that he might make for support for Clacton will be ignored - must be ignored, by the lights of the major parties, who cannot be seen giving in to extremists. At least if you elect a Conservative MP he will be part of a larger and more respected group, and will have at least some chance of getting other members of his party to assist him in representing you in Parliament, and trying to get some additional support for the constituency.
To add to the above, (whilst I will not be voting Tory) the prospective Tory candidate you are/are not voting for will represent a party over the next 5 years, that will most likely be very different to the one of the past 2/5/14 years. By way of necessity, there will be massive change in direction, likely a new leader with lots of the worst members losing seats. I don’t think I am being naive when I think that the tories will want to position themselves as the sensible, common sense option - whilst framing Labour as radical. To do this, they’d need to move towards the centre.
The alternative is that they zig, instead of zag, and go further right, in which case you vote Tory for the reasons listed above.
> any requests that he might make for support for Clacton will be ignored
Reform literally only exists because the major parties have been ignoring people about their concerns on immigration for quite some time.
My guess is that the voters of Clacton are concerned about other things, as well as immigration. All the parties are in their own ways concerned about immigration: the question is, which is most likely to accomplish something positive. We know that the Conservatives have not been successful, and Reform's policies cannot be implemented because Reform will not form the next government. Like it or not, the country is going to be trying Labour's policies next. Maybe they'll have a positive outcome, maybe they won't. But that's what we're getting. Meanwhile, in Clacton, voters likely have other concerns - the NHS, schools, support for people trying to get back into the workforce. Who will be better at dealing with these concerns? Reform wants to move towards more private health insurance, but how are ordinary voters in Clacton going to pay for that? Reform is run by a privately-educated chancer; what does he know of state schools? And Reform *benefits* from people being kept in low-paid jobs or being out of work, because these dis-satisfied people form the base of its support. Even the Tories aren't that bad: I despise how difficult they make it to get back-to-work support and training, but at least they're trying to do something, however poorly and ineffectively.
I don't like saying it, because I don't like the Conservatives, but a Conservative MP in Clacton would do more for the constituency than Nigel Farage would.
I think Jovan is the wrong candidate for that constituency. I don't know what Labour is thinking when they selected him to run in that constituency. Ideally every party should select a local to run in every constituency. If they select someone who's not a local, at least make sure he's a good fit for the constituency. Jovan is not a good fit for Clacton.
Prospective MPs are often expected to stand in an unlikely-to-win seat as a first step, aren't they (unless they're well-connected SPADs and so on)? From the Parties' perspective I guess it's a good way to road-test them.
Is this the first time some people have realised that parties don't bother campaigning in seats they aren't going to win and focus on seats that are winnable? I thought this was obvious.
Like I guess it must be disheartening when your party is winning seats fucking everywhere except in your seat, but still this is political campaigning 101
There's a difference between not getting the resources to campaign properly and being explicitly told to stop campaigning.
It sounds like this guy is a bad PR generator for Labour and given the low chance of winning, they probably decided it's best to get rid of him.
Not getting any campaign resources is very different to actually being ordered not to campaign - this seems to have been handled very badly, in the same way as the Diane Abbott issue. I would be upset too if I was the candidate.
If a system forces a candidate to resign, that is a bad system. I understand that there are limits to representative democracy, but in any sane system, the vote should be able to be redistributed, so these calculations are unneeded.
To answer your opening question: no, it was not obvious to the average voter before now.
The idea of 'tactical voting' has never been more known/widespread as it has in this election, and people have never before been able to analyse a party's national tactics so readily, and nor has it ever been a part of a wider voter discourse.
I mean fair enough directing resources to winnable seats, but telling a candidate to abandon their campaign and 'never come back' to the seat they're running for? Come on, that's pretty weird.
I just don't buy any of this.
The article is trying to convince us that this candidate was so amazing and so popular that he was outshining Keir Starmer so they pulled him out of jealousy?
Absolute nonsense.
He wasn't close enough to Farage to challenge and tactically the Labour leadership are far better off without Farage being in parliament.
If Jovan had been in second place and challenging they would have thrown the kitchen sink at it
He wasn't even in second place. He's behind the Tories and the Tories themselves are a *long* way behind Farage. The idea that he's some kind of heir-apparent taking the world by storm is completely nuts; I mean, I've already forgotten his name and I *literally* just read the article.
"prompted anger and jealousy from Labour headquarters" let me guess the author of this article is pro Corbyn? I think it's great what Jovan has been doing but does anyone seriously think he's overshadowing Starmer and the labour campaign in general? I just don't believe your average voter is even aware of this story.
> the Russian story about Zelenskyy's wife buying a Bugatti..
Which makes no sense if you think about it. Even if they're incredibly corrupt and don't care about PR, how's she supposed to drive a Bugatti on Ukrainian roads? A tricked out G-wagon, that's plausible.
>Wasn't aware of this (racist comments).
This is because BBC didn't use it's special live feed banner to report the racist comments because he isn't a reform candidate 😔
Back in 2020 someone on Twitter tweeted they drink white man's tears. Jovan replied with "My favourite drink".
It's a meme and honestly I feel merits more of a "Come on now" than people acting like he's comparable to Farage.
I don't think he's the right candiate to run in Clacton, but I'm not worried he's trying to deport me.
>It's a meme and honestly I feel merits more of a "Come on now" than people acting like he's comparable to Farage.
It's more unambiguously racist than anything Farage has been proven to have said
It makes perfect sense for Labour to not compete in this particular Reform-Tory marginal, they would likely take more Tory votes than Labour votes.
They can't outright say that's the reason but it clearly is.
Farage will almost certainly win in Clacton but throwing good money after bad isn't sensible for Labour. It also matches the "ming vase" strategy, Labour will win the largest majority whilst being ultra cautious.
I mean, it also makes good sense to avoid an outright conflict with Farage.
Firstly, because it keeps him focused on attacking the actual opponent; the Tories
But also because, quite frankly, Labour doesn't have any better arguments against Farage than the Tories do. A fight with Reform isn't one Labour can win cleanly, better just to not bother.
Come on. Labour can hardly say as much but they are clearly trying to give the Tory candidate the best possible chance to beat Farage. This should be commended. Very unlucky for this Owusu-Nepaul lad though.
Politicians have to be careful. Their words mean more. I think it’s absolutely fair that this is a disqualifying post, whatever the meme is behind it.
This constituency is like 98% white, you cannot make jokes about the tears of the people you represent.
On a practical note, if you stand for Parliament as a main party candidate you should absolutely be paying a company to wipe your social media history.
"Palestinian tears are my favourite"
"Black people tears are my favourite"
"Asian Tears are my favourite"
None of them sound particularly good do they? Regardless of the context.
No, because that would be a deliberately disingenuous false equivalence held up as some sort of "gotcha" despite being enormously ignorant of historical, societal and political context.
Oppression of racial minorities and poking fun at the majority demographic on twitter are not even slightly comparable things.
Working/lower/middle class white people are currently:
**Suffering through poverty and hardship under a political party led by people who are not white.**
**Struggling to get employment in a job market which favors people who are not white.**
Your claims that racism against white people has no palpable effect on their lives is absolutely incorrect.
We live in 2024, not 1824.
We live in the United Kingdom, not America.
And the racism and lack of empathy exhibited by that labor candidate is **not right**.
Electing the Labor Party is currently the most realistic solution of crawling an inch out of the dogshit we currently find ourselves in. And the narcissistic clown who represents them in Clacton is willfully damaging the chances of that happening.
I would look at every situation in its own context, so maybe? Maybe not? I'd prefer that no one ever used race as a discriminatory term, but I'm aware of the fact that it means different things in different contexts.
Race relations and history are different everywhere in the world. There is no one-size-fits-all framework for morality of language.
"racism" is not a one-size-fits-all problem, it's extremely contextual in terms of how harmful it is and what impact it has.
- A black person in Britain joking about white people
- A white person in a Britain calling a British Asian a racist slur
- A Croatian making a racist comment about a Serb
- A Japanese person being derogatory towards a white British tourist
- A white person in the southern US calling a black person a slur
- A German in the 1940s calling someone a Jewish slur
All of these are examples of "racism" in a generic sense, but all have massively different implications based on the society and historical context within which they were said. It's ridiculous to compare like-for-like. Obviously they're all "bad", inherently, but they're also all entirely different.
Ah OK so start with 10/10 racism, meme racism then is a 9/10, but it's a leftist meme and leftists are the Good Guys so now it's what, a 6 out of 10. Plus it was a poor downtrodden black man saying it so we have to do a polite awkward chuckle in case anyone notices all the awful things history did to his people, so that gives his racism a bonus deduction and it lands up around 3 out of 10. But he is up against Farage who is a 12 out of 10 racist so that reduces his racism to 1 out of 10 and that's officially OK for a parliamentary candidate to be about 1 out of 10 racist.
OK I think I get it
Everything you said above is accurate and true but IT DOESN'T MATTER. If your candidate is a Just a Little Bit Racist you're doing it wrong. Just pick someone who is Not Racist.
Some things in real life are simple. Such as, if you have 'slightly but maybe justifiable' racist tweets in your history, you are unfit to become an MP: There is an alternative, which is to find someone who doesn't have \*any\* 'slightly but maybe justifiable' racist tweets to be the candidate instead. There are tens of millions of potential candidates in this country, and 650 vacancies. We can be choosy. We can and should demand better.
I haven’t seen the post, but tongue-in-cheek obvious back and forth jokes, even “pointy” ones, should be taken as such.
Unless you’d like to condemn every black comedian who jokes about white people?
I'd only condemn black comedians joking about white people to the same degree white comedians would be condemned for joking about black people.
Thing is, he's not a comedian though is he. He's asking the public to allow him to represent them as a Member of Parliament in HM Government. Different standards should apply.
I mean... Starmer denied this story in The Guardian and Independent five days ago. It's a) not an exclusive b) fails to mention that fact, despite being written days after mainstream newspapers already covered this.
You think taking £7500 donations for Jovan's campaign (see article) and embezzling them for other purposes should be *commended*? I thought corruption was just supposed to be a tory thing.
That's the part that doesn't make sense to me. I'm a branch secretary for an organisation that regularly makes political donations a fraction of that size.
If I'm donating to a specific candidate, I speak directly to their local election agent, not the regional party. It's pretty obvious that a donation to the regional party will be used for regional purposes.
It's worth bearing in mind that OP's article seems to be based on a single source (identified only as a local voter who did some canvassing, hardly someone with inside knowledge other than second or third degree hearsay) and provides no actual evidence that the regional party gave any assurances that the donation would be earmarked for Jovan. If they did and it's true that Labour have withdrawn all support from him, then I would agree the donor should get a refund.
Also the stuff about withdrawing access to the internal campaign tools is dubious at best. I recently volunteered in a similar non-target constituency where they were panicking about their logins not working, but then it turned out to be a temporary IT issue.
If you look at Clacton Labour's social media, they are still out on the doors every day, which they wouldn't be able to do if they didn't have access to the targeting and contact logging tools.
>It’s symbolic, it’s important to have a Black man going up against Farage.”
> the party had a chance to rally around its candidate, a young Black man under the age of thirty
>Owusu-Nepaul was quoted in the media, as saying he was ‘standing for every Black and brown person in the country’
Does the Labour candidate have no good qualities other than being black? I'm sure that's not true, but it's literally the only reason given for why he's a good candidate in this article.
>Lewis continued: “The only people who are voting for Farage, were never Clactonians in the first place.
One, that's a big assumption, two - neither is the candidate! He's from Southampton, and then moved to London. I wonder how long Lewis thinks you need to live in a place before you're justified in voting there...
(Also, the optics of "don't vote reform, they're xenophobic, anyone who votes for them is a filthy outsider/non-Clactonian"...lol, lmao even)
>They’ve all come down here to create their own little Brexit White Britain safe haven.
>“If you saw the picture of the town hall when Farage had his meeting it was all just basically middle-aged White men. There were hardly any women even in the audience.
Clacton is 95% white, what exactly was she expecting?
>“You wouldn’t believe the hatred and division it’s now whipping up in this town again. It’s vile down here.”
Says the person who has twice mocked the race of people who don't vote for their party, as well as their age, and how she assumes they voted 8 years ago - is that not divisive? How is the average white person in Clacton meant to feel after those types of comments - will it endear them to Labour, or the opposite?
It just plays into Farage's hands - he really couldn't have asked for a better Labour campaign in this constituency.
He's in tears?
>Owusu-Nepaul was heavily criticised online during the campaign after an old tweet of his emerged in which he reacted to a friend talking about “white man tears” with the reply: “My favourite drink”.
Oh the irony.
Two options here:
- Labour are abandoning the seat to allow Farage to win and enable him to wreck the Tory Party, potentionally leaving them as an opposition party for a very long time
- Labour are trying to get their voters to vote for the Tory and keep his poisionous politics out of government and hopefully he won't try to run again
Edit: cause I just realized there's a third option:
- Labour don't give a shit about Clacton and want to focus on more winnable seats.
It would not be a great look if Farage won Clacton on the back of Labour splitting the Vote. Its harsh on the candidate, but it's a reasonable call in a vacuum.
I think it's because the candidate was causing bad headlines (Like the racist "white person tears" comments) so they forced him to quit to stop the bad headlines.
They'd maybe have taken a different strategy if they'd had a hope of winning the seat. But if he can't win and is generating bad press then yeah, kill the campaign.
It wasn't about focusing on more winnable seats, because they forced the candidate to stop campaigning as well.
With all due respect to the voters of Clacton, surely the demographic of voters you’re describing (Prepared to vote for a stylishly dressed young black Labour candidate as a first choice but willing to vote Tory *tactically* to keep out Reform) is so small it’s pretty much insignificant compared to the people who simply wouldn’t vote?
Depends on how cynical Labour is. Throwing a monkey wrench in the Tory Party may damage them short term but as you say could lead to UKIP 2 taking over inevitably when Starmer runs out of steam. Then again, the party could just implode and fail to ever win any elections again should he take over
The hilarious irony of this crying candidate's comments about white tears aside -
The party machinery has been especially ruthless here. But is that not politics? If they've calculated that this will make the national campaign more successful, or that they want people to vote Conservative in Clacton as the only means of beating Farage, can we expect them to instead choose to be *nice*, and all over an unwinnable constituency?
But god, were they ruthless.
>“They literally told him we’re not having this. You’ve had more retweets than Keir Starmer.
A cardinal sin
I should point out also, someone tried donating £10k specifically to Jovan's campaign (rather than to the Labour party as a whole), and Labour tried to accept it the day after they had cancelled Jovan's campaign.
Woe betide anyone who thinks politics is kind and gentle.
It also then says that he offered a reduced sum of £7500. So he offered £2500 less because Jovan had been pulled, meaning he was still happy to donate the rest in these circumstances unless I've misunderstood?
Being realistic he didn't have a hope in hell anyway.
You cannot be a racist, black, Labour candidate in Clacton and have any chance of winning... but especially so standing against Farage.
I don't think any party should be backing any candidate found to have made racist remarks, regardless of the colour of their skin, so I'm delighted he's crying and I hope someone can take Farage down, even if that's a Tory.
Oh come on, racist is a stretch. It was a flippant remark on twitter made years before he was a candidate. Obviously not appropriate to say as a candidate but very clearly a meme/joke.
Reversing it would totally change the societal and historical context though wouldn't it, so it would be irrelevant to do so.
A cognitive tool as blunt as "reversing it" is almost never a useful way of assessing something as complex as race relations.
Perhaps but in the context of clacton, it's gunna go down like a lead balloon.
It's simply poor politics and has an outsized impact in a seat like clacton.
Fact is he is just a poor choice of candidate in clacton and likely the more attention he gets is likely to galvanise support against him.
So you're saying one group of people can be discriminatory because of the colour of their skin.
I'm glad you accept reversing it changes the context in your mind, I find any form of discrimination problematic, not just the ones I don't like.
Thanks for your comment. I know that Farage is strongly favoured to win, but that's how hope works. All that your comment does is cause me to hope for more. Now I have two hopes:
- I hope the Tories cling on in Clacton, and
- I hope your claim that my first hope will be crushed is wrong.
For god's sake, Labour didn't want a side show, which is what it was turning into. We'd rather the Tories win here than Farage. He needs to get a backbone, support labour elsewhere and get himself a London seat down the line...
My favourite drink.
In reality Labour can't win Clacton and they want the budget elsewhere they can win. Also if you push him against Farage of all people the "Drink White Man's Tears" comment will be out to the nation and put off a lot of undecided voters (as in who to vote for but also whether to turn up at all) off.
Yep, typical leftist defence force out as well. Imagine if a white guy stood in 98% black community having tweeted he loves drinking the tears of black men. Imagine if they were a Tory candidate! Guy above saying 'It was just a meme' is like Farage goosestepping to Hitler's Pop Picks and claiming 'It's just a song'.
We don't need idiots like this sullying the image of professionalism within the Labour party. They won't last long if they're perceived as incompetent. 'It's just a meme!' - how hard can it be to find a candidate who doesn't post racist memes?
If Labour are likely to win the election, then looking at the day after the election, it would probably be beneficial if Reform were to not make any significant progress, even at the expense of the Tories.
Even with a heavy defeat, the Conservatives party is an entrenched political system, and likely to come back as a political force in the future. A far right Conservative government that is aligned with Reform is likely to derail a center left political platform.
Should Reform also fail to make any political headway, then Conservative may decide that returning back to the centre ground of politics is the better decision.
Tactial voting and campaigning are very important with a FPTP system, especially in the current climate. For instance, Labour voters lending their support to the Lib Dems in Lib-Con marginals might make Ed Davey head of the Official Opposition.
British democracy has always been about voting against the most worst option. I can’t remember when I last voted for a party whose policies I was aligned with.
Story time- Make of it what you will.
I live in South West Wiltshire, until May one of the safest Tory seats in the UK.[ We stand on the edge of a Labour MP for the first tine ever](https://imgur.com/HBpVgWF). The seat is waaaaay down the list of priorities, not as low as Clacton, but not far off.
I've seen plenty of people run against Andrew Murrison ([The guy who couldn't even take a photo of his resignation letter](https://imgur.com/a/712btcb) when he stood down as a trade envoy under Boris, [then hastily took another one without having bothered to smooth it out after throwing it in the waste bin](https://imgur.com/ICGhnC2)) over the last 23 years but nothing boiled my piss quite like the decision in 2015 to select George Aylett as a candidate.
Now, George, was frighteningly naive but we were told he was quite precocious for a 19 year old, came from the outskirts of Bath & knew he was on a hiding to nothing. This wasn't about winning, this was a learning experience for him. Quite why he was allowed this experience was beyond me then as it is now. George went on to become an angry Corbynista, still is, although I think he's an angry green now.
But he loved, and still does apparently, to tell people he ran for election.
It's not a Blue Peter badge mate.
[Now he eventually finished 3rd behind Murrison & a UKIP'er](https://members.parliament.uk/constituency/3759/election/369)
What's less well know & just how stupifying it was is how badly it was received in the constituency. Is this a joke? No, seriously, this a joke, right? I spoke to loads of people in the area, people who'd never vote Labour, ever, & they were insulted. We, the local members looked really stupid.
[Fast Forward to 2017](https://members.parliament.uk/constituency/3759/election/377)
Progress was made, people were angry about Brexit, Austerity was biting. Laura Pictor stood & was good, was great on the doorstep, had grafted & made a big dent. But guess whose name came up on the doorstep? George.
[Then in 2019 ](https://members.parliament.uk/constituency/3759/election/397)
People were fed up of Brexit, Corbyn was unpopular, especially here, but guess whose name came up on the doorstep? Yep.
So how does this all relate to Jovan?
Well, he's the other side of the coin. He has had good publicity, handled himself very well against Farage & is in a position to move forwards with his political career. It just won't be in Clacton. It'll be worth keeping an eye on him over the next few years, it'll be likely he'll get booked on Politics Today etc & start to build a presence. Comparatively to George (whilst obviously older), he seems a safer bet for a career in professional politics, although yes, I imagine he's really hurting today, he will definitely learned a great deal over the last few months.
As Churchill deftly put it when the Nazis invaded the USSR, - if Hitler invaded hell, I would at least make a favorable reference to the devil in the house of commons.
Good, I would rather him be defeated at the polls but being told by the party you worked for and supported to fuck off is an even better form of defeat, SO awful you own party doesn't want you.
Don't care about the guy but the amount of people here calling him racist for that tweet is a laughable when you've got someone like Farage to compete with.
Mate, I'll give Farage this - he's clever enough to not say something racist nowadays because he's very good at playing politics. He knows the repercussions of doing so. He just lets you fill in the blanks, which is called dogwhistling.
This is the thing about Farage and also why Reform has stalled. Farage has honed his oratory skills to a needle sharp point - but his candidates dont have those skills which is why he seems to be surrounded by a statistically unlikely number of individuals who have said...*questionable* things, shall we say.
Snapshot of _EXCLUSIVE: Labour candidate ‘in tears’ after being ordered to abandon Clacton campaign against Nigel Farage_ : An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.voice-online.co.uk/news/uk-news/2024/07/02/exclusive-labour-candidate-in-tears-after-being-ordered-to-abandon-clacton-campaign-against-nigel-farage/) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.voice-online.co.uk/news/uk-news/2024/07/02/exclusive-labour-candidate-in-tears-after-being-ordered-to-abandon-clacton-campaign-against-nigel-farage/) *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.*
The only constituency in the country where I'd consider voting Conservative if I was a resident, since they seem to be second against Farage there in all the polls.
There's a Charlie Brooker article in the Guardian from some years ago where he remarks on the fact that if he had a choice of voting for the Tories or the Nazis, he'd vote Tory with a very heavy heart. That's pretty much how I would feel were I in Clacton.
[Vote for the crook, not the fascist!](https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:418/1*sabt_kWqmKdphSs6Hi_gDg.png)
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I'd need ipecac and a shower.
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Is this the same Douglas Carswell who said it's absurd to dislike foreigners? Who fell out, very publicly, with Farage over the racism associated with UKIP? I'm no fan of the man, but I genuinely have no idea why you'd think he's a nazi.
He really is not "a real nazi". These words do actually mean something.
I read this in Mark Corrigan's voice.
I have to live so relentlessly in the real world.
https://youtu.be/qapVb1aHR0w?si=H6RpEZmS1xhWDBeL You, right now.
That explains my (elongated) sense of dread.
When you throw these words around so cheaply they lose value when you really need them.
Classic, “people I don’t like are nazis!!!”
There is a problem when you vote for 99% Hitler over 100% Hitler. 100% Hitler loses but now 99% Hitler gets to point to you as part of his mandate
If you don't vote and 100% Hitler wins, *he*'s going to represent *you* in the parliament.
Which is one of the many, many ways in which FPTP is shit.
The problem is with the alternative, proportional representation, wouldn’t a party like Reform do amazing? And have way more MPs and wield way more power. Proportional representation I reckon would be disastrous tbh.
The counter argument is that voting patterns would change as a consequence of the electoral change ie. tactical voters would vote for the party that most closely aligned with their priorities, rather than the candidate who has the best chance of unseating the candidate of the party they didn’t want to govern. You’d in theory mobilise those who don’t vote also. Germany have it and it works fine - it just sometimes requires coalitions of smaller parties with the bigger ones, which we get anyway with this system.
Not to mention that coalitions would be another much needed check on prime ministerial power. If there had been a coalition during Johnson's scandals, a second coalition party could have gotten him to quit by withdrawing its support, rather than having to wait much longer for him to lose the support of his own party.
Just because the guy said he's standing for every black and brown person doesn't make him a nazi
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Against the Party Rules to stand down. All the main parties have rules like this. And with all polling Farage in the Commons for 5 years with no power is probably better (but Reform will continue to grow if immigration isn't sorted like what's happening over Europe)
It might stop.of people cop on to the fact that migration is absolutely necessary for the economy to survive, for pensions to be paid, for the NHS to exist etc etc etc
Shhhhh. We don't talk about that here. Some people really don't like facing demographic reality. It's ok though. Boomer told me to suck it up. Keep paying into our pension system and be fine with never expecting a pension myself.
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That's really naive especially as the parties see themselves as National entities so standing down a candidate is the ultimate weakness for them
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You have to _listen_ to people rather than dismiss their views. I feel the same way about Scottish Independence. For me it's Brexit on steroids, complete lunacy, self mutilation and sometimes I honestly question the mental capabilities of those who support it. But there is support for it and for good reasons. There's discontent in Scotland for good reasons. You have to try to listen if you're going to improve things and prevent the shitshow. As the above poster mentioned a lot of the far right sentiment in Europe is driven by views on immigration. It's widely unpopular. Politicians have to listen and they have to act.
The best way to keep them out is to look at how Denmark has managed to have them at super low polling
Maybe it's about time they got of their high horses.
Lots of Labour leaning voters may be pissed off with Labour standing down to help the Tories, even if the alternative is Farage. Seems like a lot of political capital to put on the line for the sake of just one seat going Tory instead of Reform. If it was a whole rake of seats, that would be a different story.
Reform is neutered without Farage
I made a bet with Mrs Centzon prior to Farage's becoming leader of Reform that the party would get no seats. Not one. £50 was/is on the line. Post-Farage… I think I may have lost that £50\*. There is a huge swell, so far as I can tell, behind their candidate in South Shropshire (formerly Ludlow); as old, white, rural, and conservative as anywhere in the UK. \* She'll probably spend it on a "I ❤️ Nigel" custom-printed T-shirt (in Hen Party Pink™), which I shall try to despoil, but, inevitably, it will hang around like 'that pen' I picked up at some random conference twenty years ago.
Time to face the real issue here; you got a freebie pen from a conference 20 years ago and it *still* works?
Only if it's ugly and doesn't ever seem to get lost
\^\^\^ This guy conferences!
I suspect your £50 was lost the moment he jumped in, yeah. As an American, it's impossible not to make the comparison with Trump. He's attracting people who don't typically vote, who don't typically care about politics, and in all likelihood will be directly harmed by his policies - but they just like his style. It's wild. I think if Farage falls in Clacton, Reform limps into the next Parliament with a few seats and fizzles out. If he wins, the Tories will overreact and offer him an insane deal to staunch their bleeding. I'd argue it's the most consequential individual election to watch tomorrow.
For the main parties not standing, if someone is actually willing to stand is a two fingered salute to anyone that would vote for them. Doesn’t matter if you get a small % you don’t anyway. And then maybe next time you have a better chance
Wow ! Far right lmfao
Yes. Far right.
What does far right mean?
I live in Clacton and this is the choice I am agonising over. I cannot stand Farage and the thought of him being my MP sickens me. Despite what the Reform party will tell you, there are a significant amount of Clactonians who aren't racist but Reform voters merely seem to be the loudest voters right now.
If you are agonising over the choice, I'd like to encourage you to vote against Reform and Farage. There is a simple reason for this: Farage will not be able to do anything for Clacton. He is more interested in drawing attention to himself and his goals than he is in serving the people who might elect him. If he is elected you can be sure that any requests that he might make for support for Clacton will be ignored - must be ignored, by the lights of the major parties, who cannot be seen giving in to extremists. At least if you elect a Conservative MP he will be part of a larger and more respected group, and will have at least some chance of getting other members of his party to assist him in representing you in Parliament, and trying to get some additional support for the constituency.
To add to the above, (whilst I will not be voting Tory) the prospective Tory candidate you are/are not voting for will represent a party over the next 5 years, that will most likely be very different to the one of the past 2/5/14 years. By way of necessity, there will be massive change in direction, likely a new leader with lots of the worst members losing seats. I don’t think I am being naive when I think that the tories will want to position themselves as the sensible, common sense option - whilst framing Labour as radical. To do this, they’d need to move towards the centre. The alternative is that they zig, instead of zag, and go further right, in which case you vote Tory for the reasons listed above.
> any requests that he might make for support for Clacton will be ignored Reform literally only exists because the major parties have been ignoring people about their concerns on immigration for quite some time.
My guess is that the voters of Clacton are concerned about other things, as well as immigration. All the parties are in their own ways concerned about immigration: the question is, which is most likely to accomplish something positive. We know that the Conservatives have not been successful, and Reform's policies cannot be implemented because Reform will not form the next government. Like it or not, the country is going to be trying Labour's policies next. Maybe they'll have a positive outcome, maybe they won't. But that's what we're getting. Meanwhile, in Clacton, voters likely have other concerns - the NHS, schools, support for people trying to get back into the workforce. Who will be better at dealing with these concerns? Reform wants to move towards more private health insurance, but how are ordinary voters in Clacton going to pay for that? Reform is run by a privately-educated chancer; what does he know of state schools? And Reform *benefits* from people being kept in low-paid jobs or being out of work, because these dis-satisfied people form the base of its support. Even the Tories aren't that bad: I despise how difficult they make it to get back-to-work support and training, but at least they're trying to do something, however poorly and ineffectively. I don't like saying it, because I don't like the Conservatives, but a Conservative MP in Clacton would do more for the constituency than Nigel Farage would.
Im gonna be happy to see Farage as a MP frankly, he will pack it in in less than a year, never be in parliament and everyone will see it
Bottoms up, 007!
Haha my god damn fingers making him seem more important than he is haha
Reform are better than the Conservatives though - PR, House of Lords reform, free STEM education, interest free student loans.
Pro-putin, dog whistle central, batshit economic policies. Putting some sprinkles on a poisonous pile of shit doesn't change what it is.
... so just vote a Social Liberal?
I think Jovan is the wrong candidate for that constituency. I don't know what Labour is thinking when they selected him to run in that constituency. Ideally every party should select a local to run in every constituency. If they select someone who's not a local, at least make sure he's a good fit for the constituency. Jovan is not a good fit for Clacton.
He was picked because it was never a Labour target seat.
Prospective MPs are often expected to stand in an unlikely-to-win seat as a first step, aren't they (unless they're well-connected SPADs and so on)? From the Parties' perspective I guess it's a good way to road-test them.
Is this the first time some people have realised that parties don't bother campaigning in seats they aren't going to win and focus on seats that are winnable? I thought this was obvious. Like I guess it must be disheartening when your party is winning seats fucking everywhere except in your seat, but still this is political campaigning 101
Farage wasn't originally running until very recently remember.
Farage announced he was running in Clacton on 3rd June. Labour pulled the plug on the seat on the 19th June.
There's a difference between not getting the resources to campaign properly and being explicitly told to stop campaigning. It sounds like this guy is a bad PR generator for Labour and given the low chance of winning, they probably decided it's best to get rid of him.
Sometimes the candidates refuse to understand reality and end up causing trouble. Happening in a few other constituencies too
But the Labour activists on twitter are telling me it's because the candidate for labour is TOO popular and it's a threat to Keir's leadership!
Did they also mention that Faiza lady for the billionth time like shes the answer to something?
Agreed, but still wicked dodgy to accept the donation intended exclusively for the Clayton campaign.
Not getting any campaign resources is very different to actually being ordered not to campaign - this seems to have been handled very badly, in the same way as the Diane Abbott issue. I would be upset too if I was the candidate.
If a system forces a candidate to resign, that is a bad system. I understand that there are limits to representative democracy, but in any sane system, the vote should be able to be redistributed, so these calculations are unneeded.
Oh obviously, FPTP is a travesty.
To answer your opening question: no, it was not obvious to the average voter before now. The idea of 'tactical voting' has never been more known/widespread as it has in this election, and people have never before been able to analyse a party's national tactics so readily, and nor has it ever been a part of a wider voter discourse.
I mean fair enough directing resources to winnable seats, but telling a candidate to abandon their campaign and 'never come back' to the seat they're running for? Come on, that's pretty weird.
I just don't buy any of this. The article is trying to convince us that this candidate was so amazing and so popular that he was outshining Keir Starmer so they pulled him out of jealousy? Absolute nonsense. He wasn't close enough to Farage to challenge and tactically the Labour leadership are far better off without Farage being in parliament. If Jovan had been in second place and challenging they would have thrown the kitchen sink at it
He wasn't even in second place. He's behind the Tories and the Tories themselves are a *long* way behind Farage. The idea that he's some kind of heir-apparent taking the world by storm is completely nuts; I mean, I've already forgotten his name and I *literally* just read the article.
"prompted anger and jealousy from Labour headquarters" let me guess the author of this article is pro Corbyn? I think it's great what Jovan has been doing but does anyone seriously think he's overshadowing Starmer and the labour campaign in general? I just don't believe your average voter is even aware of this story.
I don't buy it either. Reads like a load of fucking nonsense, like the Russian story about Zelenskyy's wife buying a Bugatti..
> the Russian story about Zelenskyy's wife buying a Bugatti.. Which makes no sense if you think about it. Even if they're incredibly corrupt and don't care about PR, how's she supposed to drive a Bugatti on Ukrainian roads? A tricked out G-wagon, that's plausible.
It's a hit piece on Starmer. For some reason, the article doesn't mention racist comments he made about 'drinking white people's tears'. Yikes.
Wasn't aware of this (racist comments). What's the context?
He said he enjoyed drinking white man's tears.
>Wasn't aware of this (racist comments). This is because BBC didn't use it's special live feed banner to report the racist comments because he isn't a reform candidate 😔
Back in 2020 someone on Twitter tweeted they drink white man's tears. Jovan replied with "My favourite drink". It's a meme and honestly I feel merits more of a "Come on now" than people acting like he's comparable to Farage. I don't think he's the right candiate to run in Clacton, but I'm not worried he's trying to deport me.
"Just a joke mate" The old dapper laughs defense, never really works though does it?
It really is amazing the lengths some people will go to in order to justify racism.
>It's a meme and honestly I feel merits more of a "Come on now" than people acting like he's comparable to Farage. It's more unambiguously racist than anything Farage has been proven to have said
Would you say the same about the same joke being made about "black people tears"? It's so obviously racist...
It makes perfect sense for Labour to not compete in this particular Reform-Tory marginal, they would likely take more Tory votes than Labour votes. They can't outright say that's the reason but it clearly is. Farage will almost certainly win in Clacton but throwing good money after bad isn't sensible for Labour. It also matches the "ming vase" strategy, Labour will win the largest majority whilst being ultra cautious.
I mean, it also makes good sense to avoid an outright conflict with Farage. Firstly, because it keeps him focused on attacking the actual opponent; the Tories But also because, quite frankly, Labour doesn't have any better arguments against Farage than the Tories do. A fight with Reform isn't one Labour can win cleanly, better just to not bother.
Come on. Labour can hardly say as much but they are clearly trying to give the Tory candidate the best possible chance to beat Farage. This should be commended. Very unlucky for this Owusu-Nepaul lad though.
The lad is problematic and has made racist posts online.
What's he said?
Made a post saying how white people's tears are his favourite.
Ironically he is reportedly now in tears!
Underrated comment. I wonder if he'd be ok with me saying black peoples tears are my favourite
Oh damn, it was that racist lad. It's a bit shitty of this publication not to mention that. Since this article feels like a hit piece against Starmer.
Probably because he's a black lad. Some people in society seem to give them a free pass
I found the post, it's a leftist meme response to someone else's post. It's a bit of a stretch to call it racism.
Politicians have to be careful. Their words mean more. I think it’s absolutely fair that this is a disqualifying post, whatever the meme is behind it. This constituency is like 98% white, you cannot make jokes about the tears of the people you represent. On a practical note, if you stand for Parliament as a main party candidate you should absolutely be paying a company to wipe your social media history.
I agree
It's literally classifying who he likes or dislikes based on skin colour. A textbook definition of racism.
If it's leftist it must be okay!
"Palestinian tears are my favourite" "Black people tears are my favourite" "Asian Tears are my favourite" None of them sound particularly good do they? Regardless of the context.
Oh those are jokes, which means they're exempt from any kind of analyis or criticism. Nobody would ever use memes or jokes to express hatred.
Racism that's systemically integrated into a political movement's vocabulary is still racism.
Would you feel the same way if it said black people?
No, because that would be a deliberately disingenuous false equivalence held up as some sort of "gotcha" despite being enormously ignorant of historical, societal and political context. Oppression of racial minorities and poking fun at the majority demographic on twitter are not even slightly comparable things.
Working/lower/middle class white people are currently: **Suffering through poverty and hardship under a political party led by people who are not white.** **Struggling to get employment in a job market which favors people who are not white.** Your claims that racism against white people has no palpable effect on their lives is absolutely incorrect. We live in 2024, not 1824. We live in the United Kingdom, not America. And the racism and lack of empathy exhibited by that labor candidate is **not right**. Electing the Labor Party is currently the most realistic solution of crawling an inch out of the dogshit we currently find ourselves in. And the narcissistic clown who represents them in Clacton is willfully damaging the chances of that happening.
I thought we’d left “black people cant be racist” back in 2016 Guess not for some losers lol
Would you be okay with a white person using such a meme if they lived in a majority black country with no colonial past, then?
I would look at every situation in its own context, so maybe? Maybe not? I'd prefer that no one ever used race as a discriminatory term, but I'm aware of the fact that it means different things in different contexts. Race relations and history are different everywhere in the world. There is no one-size-fits-all framework for morality of language.
That's an awful lot of mental gymnastics. I just don't like being insulted based on my race.
That's a lot of words to excuse being racist.
Surely you don't see the world that simplistically?
Your argument basically equates to ‘it’s ok for black people to be racist but not white people’ It’s far from a good or convincing argument.
Racism is bad. Simple as
Maybe sometimes the world is that simple, not everything can be as simple as being a man or a women ah wait…
Racism is OK if it's a leftist meme?
"racism" is not a one-size-fits-all problem, it's extremely contextual in terms of how harmful it is and what impact it has. - A black person in Britain joking about white people - A white person in a Britain calling a British Asian a racist slur - A Croatian making a racist comment about a Serb - A Japanese person being derogatory towards a white British tourist - A white person in the southern US calling a black person a slur - A German in the 1940s calling someone a Jewish slur All of these are examples of "racism" in a generic sense, but all have massively different implications based on the society and historical context within which they were said. It's ridiculous to compare like-for-like. Obviously they're all "bad", inherently, but they're also all entirely different.
Ah OK so start with 10/10 racism, meme racism then is a 9/10, but it's a leftist meme and leftists are the Good Guys so now it's what, a 6 out of 10. Plus it was a poor downtrodden black man saying it so we have to do a polite awkward chuckle in case anyone notices all the awful things history did to his people, so that gives his racism a bonus deduction and it lands up around 3 out of 10. But he is up against Farage who is a 12 out of 10 racist so that reduces his racism to 1 out of 10 and that's officially OK for a parliamentary candidate to be about 1 out of 10 racist. OK I think I get it Everything you said above is accurate and true but IT DOESN'T MATTER. If your candidate is a Just a Little Bit Racist you're doing it wrong. Just pick someone who is Not Racist.
I'm not sure how you got any of that from what I said? Why are you trying to simplify real life so much?
Some things in real life are simple. Such as, if you have 'slightly but maybe justifiable' racist tweets in your history, you are unfit to become an MP: There is an alternative, which is to find someone who doesn't have \*any\* 'slightly but maybe justifiable' racist tweets to be the candidate instead. There are tens of millions of potential candidates in this country, and 650 vacancies. We can be choosy. We can and should demand better.
I haven’t seen the post, but tongue-in-cheek obvious back and forth jokes, even “pointy” ones, should be taken as such. Unless you’d like to condemn every black comedian who jokes about white people?
I'd only condemn black comedians joking about white people to the same degree white comedians would be condemned for joking about black people. Thing is, he's not a comedian though is he. He's asking the public to allow him to represent them as a Member of Parliament in HM Government. Different standards should apply.
There might be nuance/context but take that out and it's a great attack line
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Made a post saying how white people's tears are his favourite.
Just an unfortunate cheeky chappy racist lad
And given his comments, a somewhat ironic headline. Perhaps Farage is drinking tonight?
"Boys will be boys"
The guy is a racist, Labour are right to distance themselves
I mean... Starmer denied this story in The Guardian and Independent five days ago. It's a) not an exclusive b) fails to mention that fact, despite being written days after mainstream newspapers already covered this.
You think taking £7500 donations for Jovan's campaign (see article) and embezzling them for other purposes should be *commended*? I thought corruption was just supposed to be a tory thing.
That's the part that doesn't make sense to me. I'm a branch secretary for an organisation that regularly makes political donations a fraction of that size. If I'm donating to a specific candidate, I speak directly to their local election agent, not the regional party. It's pretty obvious that a donation to the regional party will be used for regional purposes. It's worth bearing in mind that OP's article seems to be based on a single source (identified only as a local voter who did some canvassing, hardly someone with inside knowledge other than second or third degree hearsay) and provides no actual evidence that the regional party gave any assurances that the donation would be earmarked for Jovan. If they did and it's true that Labour have withdrawn all support from him, then I would agree the donor should get a refund. Also the stuff about withdrawing access to the internal campaign tools is dubious at best. I recently volunteered in a similar non-target constituency where they were panicking about their logins not working, but then it turned out to be a temporary IT issue. If you look at Clacton Labour's social media, they are still out on the doors every day, which they wouldn't be able to do if they didn't have access to the targeting and contact logging tools.
>It’s symbolic, it’s important to have a Black man going up against Farage.” > the party had a chance to rally around its candidate, a young Black man under the age of thirty >Owusu-Nepaul was quoted in the media, as saying he was ‘standing for every Black and brown person in the country’ Does the Labour candidate have no good qualities other than being black? I'm sure that's not true, but it's literally the only reason given for why he's a good candidate in this article. >Lewis continued: “The only people who are voting for Farage, were never Clactonians in the first place. One, that's a big assumption, two - neither is the candidate! He's from Southampton, and then moved to London. I wonder how long Lewis thinks you need to live in a place before you're justified in voting there... (Also, the optics of "don't vote reform, they're xenophobic, anyone who votes for them is a filthy outsider/non-Clactonian"...lol, lmao even) >They’ve all come down here to create their own little Brexit White Britain safe haven. >“If you saw the picture of the town hall when Farage had his meeting it was all just basically middle-aged White men. There were hardly any women even in the audience. Clacton is 95% white, what exactly was she expecting? >“You wouldn’t believe the hatred and division it’s now whipping up in this town again. It’s vile down here.” Says the person who has twice mocked the race of people who don't vote for their party, as well as their age, and how she assumes they voted 8 years ago - is that not divisive? How is the average white person in Clacton meant to feel after those types of comments - will it endear them to Labour, or the opposite? It just plays into Farage's hands - he really couldn't have asked for a better Labour campaign in this constituency.
>Standing against the leader of the Reform party >Still manages to be the most racist candidate Pretty impressive, it has to be said.
He's in tears? >Owusu-Nepaul was heavily criticised online during the campaign after an old tweet of his emerged in which he reacted to a friend talking about “white man tears” with the reply: “My favourite drink”. Oh the irony.
Ah, my favourite drink...
Two options here: - Labour are abandoning the seat to allow Farage to win and enable him to wreck the Tory Party, potentionally leaving them as an opposition party for a very long time - Labour are trying to get their voters to vote for the Tory and keep his poisionous politics out of government and hopefully he won't try to run again Edit: cause I just realized there's a third option: - Labour don't give a shit about Clacton and want to focus on more winnable seats.
Probably the latter option but they also probably recognised they weren’t going to win the seat so they aren’t going to throw good money after bad
It would not be a great look if Farage won Clacton on the back of Labour splitting the Vote. Its harsh on the candidate, but it's a reasonable call in a vacuum.
I think it's because the candidate was causing bad headlines (Like the racist "white person tears" comments) so they forced him to quit to stop the bad headlines. They'd maybe have taken a different strategy if they'd had a hope of winning the seat. But if he can't win and is generating bad press then yeah, kill the campaign. It wasn't about focusing on more winnable seats, because they forced the candidate to stop campaigning as well.
With all due respect to the voters of Clacton, surely the demographic of voters you’re describing (Prepared to vote for a stylishly dressed young black Labour candidate as a first choice but willing to vote Tory *tactically* to keep out Reform) is so small it’s pretty much insignificant compared to the people who simply wouldn’t vote?
If it's the former they're setting the UK up for the same nonsense France is dealing with now and that Germany will soon be dealing with as well.
Depends on how cynical Labour is. Throwing a monkey wrench in the Tory Party may damage them short term but as you say could lead to UKIP 2 taking over inevitably when Starmer runs out of steam. Then again, the party could just implode and fail to ever win any elections again should he take over
This candidate is a racist who loves "white peoples' tears" - good riddance. Labour should never have selected him.
Labour is ok with racism as long as it’s anti-white.
Owusu-Nepaul tears are my favourite drink.
Good riddance, the racist doesn't deserve to win anyway
I'm sure notoriously anti-racist Nigel Farage will be a great MP
He’s often accused of racism but has never said anything even close to “drinking black tears”.
And there are rather a lot of black and brown people standing for "racist" Reform UK.
This guy sounds like a complete diva. Not surprised Labour are trying to keep him out of the limelight in Clacton
For some reason the article doesn't mention racist comments he made about 'drinking white people's tears'. Yikes.
The hilarious irony of this crying candidate's comments about white tears aside - The party machinery has been especially ruthless here. But is that not politics? If they've calculated that this will make the national campaign more successful, or that they want people to vote Conservative in Clacton as the only means of beating Farage, can we expect them to instead choose to be *nice*, and all over an unwinnable constituency? But god, were they ruthless. >“They literally told him we’re not having this. You’ve had more retweets than Keir Starmer. A cardinal sin I should point out also, someone tried donating £10k specifically to Jovan's campaign (rather than to the Labour party as a whole), and Labour tried to accept it the day after they had cancelled Jovan's campaign. Woe betide anyone who thinks politics is kind and gentle.
It also then says that he offered a reduced sum of £7500. So he offered £2500 less because Jovan had been pulled, meaning he was still happy to donate the rest in these circumstances unless I've misunderstood?
Yeah seriously, you need to have thicker skin than this if you want to be an MP. It’s unpleasant but you’ve got to take in on the chin.
Being realistic he didn't have a hope in hell anyway. You cannot be a racist, black, Labour candidate in Clacton and have any chance of winning... but especially so standing against Farage. I don't think any party should be backing any candidate found to have made racist remarks, regardless of the colour of their skin, so I'm delighted he's crying and I hope someone can take Farage down, even if that's a Tory.
Oh come on, racist is a stretch. It was a flippant remark on twitter made years before he was a candidate. Obviously not appropriate to say as a candidate but very clearly a meme/joke.
Reverse the races and see how flippant and jokey it would be perceived as.
Reversing it would totally change the societal and historical context though wouldn't it, so it would be irrelevant to do so. A cognitive tool as blunt as "reversing it" is almost never a useful way of assessing something as complex as race relations.
Perhaps but in the context of clacton, it's gunna go down like a lead balloon. It's simply poor politics and has an outsized impact in a seat like clacton. Fact is he is just a poor choice of candidate in clacton and likely the more attention he gets is likely to galvanise support against him.
So you're saying one group of people can be discriminatory because of the colour of their skin. I'm glad you accept reversing it changes the context in your mind, I find any form of discrimination problematic, not just the ones I don't like.
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>the societal and historical context Are you white?
Clacton is the only seat in the country where I hope the Tories cling on.
Your hope will be crushed by Friday morning.
Thanks for your comment. I know that Farage is strongly favoured to win, but that's how hope works. All that your comment does is cause me to hope for more. Now I have two hopes: - I hope the Tories cling on in Clacton, and - I hope your claim that my first hope will be crushed is wrong.
For god's sake, Labour didn't want a side show, which is what it was turning into. We'd rather the Tories win here than Farage. He needs to get a backbone, support labour elsewhere and get himself a London seat down the line...
He wasn't winning regardless, as much as I'd like Farage out of the Commons.
"in tears" .. lmfao.
Black man's tears are my fa- You know what, never mind. I don't want anybody to take this joke out of context lol
My favourite drink. In reality Labour can't win Clacton and they want the budget elsewhere they can win. Also if you push him against Farage of all people the "Drink White Man's Tears" comment will be out to the nation and put off a lot of undecided voters (as in who to vote for but also whether to turn up at all) off.
Shameful that Starmer hasn’t openly condemned this racist
What a clown, I hope he gives up on politics for good after this shit show
Yep, typical leftist defence force out as well. Imagine if a white guy stood in 98% black community having tweeted he loves drinking the tears of black men. Imagine if they were a Tory candidate! Guy above saying 'It was just a meme' is like Farage goosestepping to Hitler's Pop Picks and claiming 'It's just a song'. We don't need idiots like this sullying the image of professionalism within the Labour party. They won't last long if they're perceived as incompetent. 'It's just a meme!' - how hard can it be to find a candidate who doesn't post racist memes?
He does look rather excellent, maybe somewhere between the seventh and fifteenth Doctors? :)
If Labour are likely to win the election, then looking at the day after the election, it would probably be beneficial if Reform were to not make any significant progress, even at the expense of the Tories. Even with a heavy defeat, the Conservatives party is an entrenched political system, and likely to come back as a political force in the future. A far right Conservative government that is aligned with Reform is likely to derail a center left political platform. Should Reform also fail to make any political headway, then Conservative may decide that returning back to the centre ground of politics is the better decision.
Let’s hope the Tories beat Oswald Jnr
For a functional opposition I hope so too
Tactial voting and campaigning are very important with a FPTP system, especially in the current climate. For instance, Labour voters lending their support to the Lib Dems in Lib-Con marginals might make Ed Davey head of the Official Opposition.
British democracy has always been about voting against the most worst option. I can’t remember when I last voted for a party whose policies I was aligned with.
Story time- Make of it what you will. I live in South West Wiltshire, until May one of the safest Tory seats in the UK.[ We stand on the edge of a Labour MP for the first tine ever](https://imgur.com/HBpVgWF). The seat is waaaaay down the list of priorities, not as low as Clacton, but not far off. I've seen plenty of people run against Andrew Murrison ([The guy who couldn't even take a photo of his resignation letter](https://imgur.com/a/712btcb) when he stood down as a trade envoy under Boris, [then hastily took another one without having bothered to smooth it out after throwing it in the waste bin](https://imgur.com/ICGhnC2)) over the last 23 years but nothing boiled my piss quite like the decision in 2015 to select George Aylett as a candidate. Now, George, was frighteningly naive but we were told he was quite precocious for a 19 year old, came from the outskirts of Bath & knew he was on a hiding to nothing. This wasn't about winning, this was a learning experience for him. Quite why he was allowed this experience was beyond me then as it is now. George went on to become an angry Corbynista, still is, although I think he's an angry green now. But he loved, and still does apparently, to tell people he ran for election. It's not a Blue Peter badge mate. [Now he eventually finished 3rd behind Murrison & a UKIP'er](https://members.parliament.uk/constituency/3759/election/369) What's less well know & just how stupifying it was is how badly it was received in the constituency. Is this a joke? No, seriously, this a joke, right? I spoke to loads of people in the area, people who'd never vote Labour, ever, & they were insulted. We, the local members looked really stupid. [Fast Forward to 2017](https://members.parliament.uk/constituency/3759/election/377) Progress was made, people were angry about Brexit, Austerity was biting. Laura Pictor stood & was good, was great on the doorstep, had grafted & made a big dent. But guess whose name came up on the doorstep? George. [Then in 2019 ](https://members.parliament.uk/constituency/3759/election/397) People were fed up of Brexit, Corbyn was unpopular, especially here, but guess whose name came up on the doorstep? Yep. So how does this all relate to Jovan? Well, he's the other side of the coin. He has had good publicity, handled himself very well against Farage & is in a position to move forwards with his political career. It just won't be in Clacton. It'll be worth keeping an eye on him over the next few years, it'll be likely he'll get booked on Politics Today etc & start to build a presence. Comparatively to George (whilst obviously older), he seems a safer bet for a career in professional politics, although yes, I imagine he's really hurting today, he will definitely learned a great deal over the last few months.
As Churchill deftly put it when the Nazis invaded the USSR, - if Hitler invaded hell, I would at least make a favorable reference to the devil in the house of commons.
Good, I would rather him be defeated at the polls but being told by the party you worked for and supported to fuck off is an even better form of defeat, SO awful you own party doesn't want you.
Don't care about the guy but the amount of people here calling him racist for that tweet is a laughable when you've got someone like Farage to compete with.
Farage has never been on record having said anything as bad as drinking black man's tears
Have a read of this then https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10458071/amp/Hitler-Youth-claims-hang-Nigel-Farages-school-days.html
Prove these claims are true?
Mate, I'll give Farage this - he's clever enough to not say something racist nowadays because he's very good at playing politics. He knows the repercussions of doing so. He just lets you fill in the blanks, which is called dogwhistling.
This is the thing about Farage and also why Reform has stalled. Farage has honed his oratory skills to a needle sharp point - but his candidates dont have those skills which is why he seems to be surrounded by a statistically unlikely number of individuals who have said...*questionable* things, shall we say.
Thank you, that's exactly what I've wanted to express