Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Josquius]

A totally splintered political scene and first-past-the-post electoral system is going to lead to some wacky election results......its going to be interesting but in a disturbing way.

If they do break through just watch how quick Reform drop their claimed support for voting reform.

It will be a real Prisoners Dilemma in deciding which way to vote for many.

[Richard Hakluyt]

It will be a very interesting election in my town. At the moment the constituency is still Labour, but the local Labour party is far more left wing than Starmer and co; as was Attila the Hun to be fair. In second place was a fellow called Michael Lavalette (Independent but left wing and , I think it is fair to say, a Marxist).

Lavalette has strong views on Gaza, for which he has been cautioned by the police ("In July 2025 Lavalette was questioned under caution, by police over potential Public Order charges for his outspoken support for Palestine and the people of Gaza" taken from wikipedia) so I suspect he mopped up a substantial part of the muslim vote.

The General Election results for Preston https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election/2024/uk/constituencies/E14001433

So it looks like I will be voting in a very interesting election next time round.

[Josquius]

On the hotel protesters bit I saw a great one today....


https://www.reddit.com/r/NewcastleUponTyne/comments/1n6cnbv/new_bridge_hotel_protests/



A reply in this thread....

Used to work with that woman in the picture She wasn't very nice..chronicle article

Clicky on the linky...
https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/sick-gateshead-couple-forced-children-1408626

A picture of this woman and a story confirming sometimes outer matches inner beauty.

Sick Gateshead couple forced children to fight

Protect our kids eh.

[Valmy]

Well the sooner the break between progressive leftists and conservative Muslims come the better. It is an unholy alliance.

Amazing how green/progressive parties are such willing vectors for reactionary islam. It's as if they don't understand that they'll hang like the rest of us as soon as they're no longer useful to the islamics

I guess this is a Euro thing. The right wing continually passes more and more laws granting power and economic advantages to religious institutions. Islam is basically untouchable because of them. Even if we leftists wanted to seriously challenge the worst reactionary actions by radical Islam, the Republicans have build giant legal protections around them that are insurmountable. We face the same problem with a whole host of insane culty religions. There is almost no legal angle to go after them thanks to the right wing in the US. Over here Muslims can basically just make a compound and keep their kids from ever leaving and it is all fine and legal. Because they are religious.

However anybody hoping to reduce the political influence of conservative Islam in your country, you have a powerful ally. Cultural Muslims and ex-Muslims have the sort of insider information to fight their influence and ideas while not being compromised by racism against Muslims as people.

[Sheilbh]

I guess this is a Euro thing. The right wing continually passes more and more laws granting power and economic advantages to religious institutions. Islam is basically untouchable because of them. Even if we leftists wanted to seriously challenge the worst reactionary actions by radical Islam, the Republicans have build giant legal protections around them that are insurmountable. We face the same problem with a whole host of insane culty religions. There is almost no legal angle to go after them thanks to the right wing in the US. Over here Muslims can basically just make a compound and keep their kids from ever leaving and it is all fine and legal. Because they are religious.

There's definitely been some similar issues in the US. I remember reading a story in the NYT about a town in Michigan which elected a majority Muslim council and Muslim mayor with the support of progressive activists, who then felt very betrayed when the council voted to ban flying the Pride flag on council buildings.

There are challenges in the UK because we have state funded faith schools, including Muslim schools (often very good) who still have to follow the national curriculum including on issues like LGBT rights etc. There have been tensions around that in the past - there were protests in Birmingham over the curriculum a couple of years ago. I mentioned it at the time but in 2024 the areas that saw the largest fall in Labour vote was directly correlated with the size of the Muslim community in that constituency and I think it is almost impossible to understate the impact of Gaza on that but also on the splits and energy on the left in general.

I'd add this is more than just Muslims. I've mentioned before but on all sorts of social issues - homosexuality, sex before marriage etc - the most socially conservative part of the country is London, by a country mile. That's because it's most diverse area with the largest immigrant population who are often coming from and living in communities that are not aligned with cutting edge of Western progressivism - whether that's Latin American evangelical or African churches or Bangladeshi Muslims. The White British population is one of the least religious in the world (I think in the latest census, the UK is second only to the Czechs in size of "no religious" and "atheist" population). London is a vastly more religious city than anywhere else in the country.

However anybody hoping to reduce the political influence of conservative Islam in your country, you have a powerful ally. Cultural Muslims and ex-Muslims have the sort of insider information to fight their influence and ideas while not being compromised by racism against Muslims as people.

To be really clear - this isn't conservative Islam or Islamism. These are left-wingers who happen to be Muslim and have socially conservative values that are very much in line with absolute mainstream Islam.

I've no issue with Muslims being more socially conservative and part of our social, cultural and political life any more than I do with African Christian communities or Hindus.

And for what it's worth I actually totally agree and really like Mothin Ali's refusal to sign any pledges:

Mothin Ali
@MothinAli
I've been sent pledges and hustings invitations from a number of Special Interest and Liberation Groups (such as the Vegan Greens, LGBTQIA+ Greens, Feminist Greens etc.), officially recognised and not.

I've chosen not to sign any – not because I don't support their causes, but because I wanted my messages to come directly from me, ideally sitting down in conversation, and not via third parties.

I believe the "pledge" system runs a risk of undermining our internal democratic processes. I did get this message to one of the groups in advance, but I recognise that my communication on this could have been better.

As a Party, we already have a constitution and policies voted on by members. That's where our collective decisions are made. Adding extra pledges creates a parallel system that can feel like purity tests, something I've never been in favour of. They shift focus away from the policies we've agreed together

Pledges can create pressure, turn allyship into performance politics, and even exclude those who are already doing the work. For me, solidarity is proven through trust, dialogue, and showing up – not ticking boxes.

With regards to hustings, due to availability, the only two I will be attending are the GO hustings and the GPEW hustings. The organisers reached out to me weeks in advance to agree dates and times.

I'll continue standing shoulder to shoulder with marginalised communities against oppression.

Let's put our energy where it counts: action, organising, and delivering the future we all believe in – together.

[Savonarola]

There's definitely been some similar issues in the US. I remember reading a story in the NYT about a town in Michigan which elected a majority Muslim council and Muslim mayor with the support of progressive activists, who then felt very betrayed when the council voted to ban flying the Pride flag on council buildings.

Hamtramck, which is one of two cities to be entirely surrounded by Detroit (the other is Highland Park.) The city is almost 50% first generation immigrants today mostly from Yemen and Bangladesh. Previously it had been Detroit's Polish enclave leading to such oddities as The Center for Islamic Studies right next door to the Kowalski Sausage Factory.

[Sheilbh]

A totally splintered political scene and first-past-the-post electoral system is going to lead to some wacky election results......its going to be interesting but in a disturbing way.

I think we'll get a preview next year in Scotland and Wales. Obviously they have PR - but looking at the polling right now and I think in both cases there will be huge challenges in forming a government.

(The Tories won't hold the balance of power - but hopefully they will have learned the lesson from 2007 when they supported a minority SNP government to hurt Scottish Labour )

And having said all this I think voters are incredibly sophisticated. I think there's been fairly nuanced results - despite FPTP - which actually reflect public opinion in recent years. Even last year's mile wide, inch deep victory for Starmer.

[Sheilbh]

Brilliant Pythonesque - what has the ECHR ever done for us



https://www.instagram.com/reel/DOAmhDbCMQV/?igsh=NHh1MHI5Ymw0Y2Vx

Well the ECHR became part of British domestic law in 1998 and I'm not sure it was quite such a seismic moment of Britain from the darkness into the light through the ECHR (I also couldn't help but notice that democracy didn't come up in the lift). There are, astonishingly, even places that have developed those rights without the the ECHR

I think there are real problems with it. A lot, I actually think is down to how British courts have interpreted some of those rights - particularly privacy. But also the way they balance, which is part of the ECHR - in my view they vastly underweight the public interest. Although I think there are also some really serious problems with the ECHR more broadly - there are some cases recently that I really profoundly object to and think are overstepping into what should be the place of democratic politics.

I think with the FT and former Labour Home Secretaries saying the ECHR needs "reform" (very, very difficult/borderline impossible) or to de-couple from the ECHR we are sort of entering the point when "respectable"/"sensible" opinion is starting to acknowledge there's an issue which is a start.

This is where we're missing the next step, of stopping people from going to Libya et al in the first place.
Where are the campaigns telling Sub Saharan Africans how bad life actually is in the UK? - I've mentioned before the chat I had with some Rwandan teachers where they were genuinely shocked to hear how expensive things were in Europe and how little teachers were paid, and that they were actually financially considerably better off at home.
Why aren't we doing more to spread the word of how bad the crossing is?

I know this is hard to believe but life in the UK is better for most people in most of the world.

Maybe not one to be expected right this instant, and rather more one for Europe than the UK, but also how about encouraging development in African countries?- link standards of democracy and human rights to favourable trade deals.

This is lovely in theory - and I think what Europeans have described as their aid efforts. I would note that receiving aid from the EU is conditional on accepting deportations of migrants and taking steps to prevent migration to Europe.

But I think there are two fundamental problems with it now - which I slightly bang on about.

In the West we do not have a development model. We cannot point to a country and say this is how we can help you develop. The best we've got is possibly South Korea or Taiwan and sadly "be a strategically essential Asian country while America fights in Vietnam" is not a replicable model. By contrast China can point to their experience and say, accurately, that they have lifted more people out of poverty in a shorter space of time than any other country in history. They have also developed and strengthened their position as a country.

In part I think that is linked to the second issue which is that I don't think Africans need Europeans lecturing them any more. We've been doing it for a long time and it's time to listen. I don't think it's even about a development offer, I think it's about "voice" and I don't think there's anywhere in the world as solipsistic as Europe. There is no reason the rest of the world should care about European issues, we're not in a position to dictate and we need to develop real partnerships as equals - which means treating the rest of the world as equals (again I'd flag very recent comments by Lula and Widodo on Europe's "neo-colonial" attitudes in negotiations). We're not the metropole any more. Related to that and our theory of development - I think we have majored on "rule of law" and "governance" plus some other slightly fluctuating priorities and we have not had a great development success. China's focus is on physical infrastructure which seems to be getting better results.

I've mentioned before but I have a friend who worked in a very aid-dependent, sub-Saharan African state with civil conflict for several years. And his recurring theme was that speaking to government and speaking to local leaders - Chinese authorities ask what they need (e.g. a road, an airport, a port) and offer to build that plus the thing China want. Western authorities and aid agencies talk about wanting partnership but it tends to be actually they set out what their policy goals are - these fluctuate depending on the political focus back home. He has supported on trying to get funding for refugees and displaced people in that country and explains that a lot of that job is basically re-purposing a project. So how do you make "pay for a refugee camp" tie into sustainability and energy transition goals for DfID this year, and then make the same project ("pay for a refugee camp") into a project with clear violence against women and girls goals the next year.

It's not to say those policy goals are bad but they change regularly and are being dictated by us. I also think there probably needs to be a conversation about international development aid (the UK was genuinely a world leader on this - sadly no more). Is it there to help develop countries, is it there to advance our interests or is it there to aid the most needy? As I think those all look quite different.

If we're continuing to boost up asylum and turn it into this overly important issue then that is fighting on ground of Reform's choosing. Its a mistake to go too deep into this. Damage can be limited but Labour will never win.
The focus should be on delivering what people want in areas where Reform doesn't have a hope in hell of competing.

I don't think it's a choice. But I don't think you can do politics by content moderation or just not talking about things. I think you always have to make your case and in government show you're able to do it. As I say I don't think it's about immigration I think it's about control and the sense that things are not in control/the state can't control things. I think it's similar to the low-level crime and anti-social behaviour and I think it's really corrosive. (But again - state capacity is my explanation for everything )

I think the US is instructive on this as I think it's where we're going if the mainstream parties don't grip it. I think we're reaching a point where there's little to no tolerance for illegal border crossings.

edit- just read a fact today. Immigration is down by half in the past year.... but politics has moved the other way.

Yeah I've flagged and it's largely changes from Sunak - but it's moved from the highest ever year, to the second highest ever year.

Though I'd also raise the point that this is just the tip of the ice berg. A tiny fraction of a fraction of stuff on twitter faces any consequence. I'd wager odds are good the amount of twitter-hate that gets prosecuted is nothing next to the more conventional crimes people moan about.

I can't see centralised stats on this. But as a comparison shoplifting is increasing rapidly - it's at record levels now and the British Retail Consortium say the stats of reports of shoplifting is significantly undercounting (because people don't believe the police will do anything).

This is not a good comparison as only one police force. But best I can do. In the five years to 2023 there were in total 15,000 arrests by the Met for shoplifting.

Another example is bicycle theft (focused in London but not London-specific) - the Lib Dems did some research and found that in 2023 there were about 80,000 reports and around 1,000 arrests.

[Valmy]

There's definitely been some similar issues in the US. I remember reading a story in the NYT about a town in Michigan which elected a majority Muslim council and Muslim mayor with the support of progressive activists, who then felt very betrayed when the council voted to ban flying the Pride flag on council buildings.

Well there is always that one town that is the exception.

But as Sav pointed out...the town was over 50%+ immigrants largely from Muslim countries. That is a very specific scenario.

And it doesn't seem like that particular alliance between progressive activists and Islamic conservatives lasted longer than one local election.

But on a national and systematic level all dangerous religions of all sorts are dangerously empowered by conservative policies.

[Razgovory]

There's definitely been some similar issues in the US. I remember reading a story in the NYT about a town in Michigan which elected a majority Muslim council and Muslim mayor with the support of progressive activists, who then felt very betrayed when the council voted to ban flying the Pride flag on council buildings.

Well there is always that one town that is the exception.

But as Sav pointed out...the town was over 50%+ immigrants largely from Muslim countries. That is a very specific scenario.

And it doesn't seem like that particular alliance between progressive activists and Islamic conservatives lasted longer than one local election.

But on a national and systematic level all dangerous religions of all sorts are dangerously empowered by conservative policies.

I mean there is the Palestine thing.

[Valmy]

There's definitely been some similar issues in the US. I remember reading a story in the NYT about a town in Michigan which elected a majority Muslim council and Muslim mayor with the support of progressive activists, who then felt very betrayed when the council voted to ban flying the Pride flag on council buildings.

Well there is always that one town that is the exception.

But as Sav pointed out...the town was over 50%+ immigrants largely from Muslim countries. That is a very specific scenario.

And it doesn't seem like that particular alliance between progressive activists and Islamic conservatives lasted longer than one local election.

But on a national and systematic level all dangerous religions of all sorts are dangerously empowered by conservative policies.

I mean there is the Palestine thing.

Well I am also opposed to killing civilians. Not really a value specific or even particularly characteristic of conservative Islam.

[garbon]

Feels like running stories on Nadine Dorries going to Reform are just serving to assist Reform. Who cares about that irrelevant dumpster fire?

[Josquius]

Sorry to bang the "biased right wing media" drum again....

But it's curious every time farage glances at something it is a news story but now all attention is on Rayners tax situation, when Farage does it far worse?
Barely a peep.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/sep/05/nigel-farage-uses-private-company-to-pay-less-tax-on-gb-news-earnings

Farage claimed last year to have "bought a house" in his constituency, but the property is actually owned in the name of his partner, meaning he legally avoided higher-rate stamp duty on the purchase of an additional home – given that he already owns other properties.

[garbon]

How is that worse? Sounds like a legal way to get around tax.

[Richard Hakluyt]

It looks like Rayner may have engaged in tax evasion, she is also a government minister. Farage is just an MP and is doing standard tax avoidance. I don't like him either but there is a huge difference between the two.