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forum
The Reform Party and the UK’s lurch towards fascism
I posted an earlier version of this a while back - inspired to do update following THAT discussion about all things ULEZ.
The “manifesto”, in terms of transport, only mentions stopping HS2, but there’s plenty on the usual right-wing obsessions: Brexit, immigration, veterans and climate change. I had another look because I worry about the ongoing decline of the two main political parties.
If the Cons stay wedded to Brexit, then we will go into the next GE with all the widespread impoverishment Brexit has ushered in - not helped by Covid, Putin, etc. People generally vote according to their pockets. I don’t get Labour’s current position on Europe either, but let’s see how that evolves, and even the Cons may also evolve, or even pivot, but time is already running out for them.
Several roads now lead to the horrors of a further lurch to the right in this country. Let’s hope Labour get the GE landslide the polls are predicting - but we’re still at least a year out from the real campaigning beginning.
A cycling angle? With the Reform Party and its ilk, Facebook Steve and Nextdoor Dave attain real political influence. It’s not spelt out in the manifesto, but you can see where this is probably heading and what it is likely to mean for cycling. You can bet that this lot are very much "on the side of hard working drivers" etc.
As you all know, Dave’s going to “sort the traffic” and no doubt show them lazy planners how it’s done: Steve thinks the Council are corrupt, the police blinkered and is, if he can fit it in to his busy schedule he’s going to “teach them Lycra’s a thing or two.” It won’t concern him that his Mondeo is 3 months out of MoT or that Mrs Steve sometimes drives the kids in it uninsured.
As vulnerable road users, vulnerable people, we rely a great deal on the rule of law for protection. The rule of law means that we understand what the laws are, they are in general fair, and how they are applied and to whom is even-handed and consistent.
The fascist position is broadly the opposite - it’s all off-the-cuff to support today’s particular agenda - that’s why the Iain Duncan-Smith “happy to see ULEZ infra vandalised” comment is, as an example, so very worrying. In the Conservatives, here is a party happy to send signals to enable the mob to attack RNLI stations, beat up immigrants, shout at teachers, doctors etc.
This right-wing stuff works by allowing/enabling significant privileged groups to to think of themselves as the downtrodden underdog and here is a way to fight back. The pro Brexit campaign played on people’s ignorance, fears and prejudices exactly as this does.
It’s all about freedom, innit, less regulation, less tax burden, and damn the climate. There’s more polar bears now, so it’s fine. Let’s have open-cast coal mining, lithium mining and fracking. The section on climate change stumbles around like a Friday night drunk, trying to explain he wasn't being racist to the barman - a denier position emerges, unsurprisingly.
In places, the mask really slips: “We must keep divisive woke ideologies such as Critical Race Theory (CRT) and gender ideology out of the classroom.” - to be honest, I don’t even know what those two are.
The standard enemies are put up - the civil service, the BBC. Amid all the thrust and parry, there’s nothing about making a better, more inclusive and cohesive world to live in; arts, sports and culture don’t feature in this barstool view of the world: a dullard’s grim vision.
Don’t be a member of the wrong sort of minority would be my advice, should any of this come to pass.
If you're new please join in and if you have questions pop them below and the forum regulars will answer as best we can.
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- Sriracha 2 sec ago
You seem to be confusing ours for a presidential system. The only people who voted for Starmer were the good people of Holborn and St Pancras
- Professor_Parnassus 55 min 57 sec ago
Pushed off a mountain...?? Please don't feel the need to resort to clickbait
- avogrin 1 hour 1 min ago
I cut the two wires in excess. Maybe there is some current in them so isolate them after cutting....
- don simon fbpe 1 hour 44 min ago
RIP brother.
- Backladder 2 hours 56 min ago
The price of those cleat adaptors is ridiculous, you can buy a decent pair of cycling shoes for less. I like the idea but they would have to be in...
- Cayo 3 hours 29 min ago
To paraphrase Frankie Howerd, "Nose, nose and thrice nose!"...
- Cayo 3 hours 53 min ago
It would take a heck of a lot to drag me away from my Time pedals with their near zero effort engagement. Being forced to buy new shoes because...
- Cyclespeed Tours 4 hours 39 min ago
Just the fact that there are "compatibility charts' tells you everything you need to know; if you don't use the right tyre and pressure you risk a...
- Secret_squirrel 4 hours 57 min ago
Him holding was pretty much inevitable once Labour had their little internal squabbles. Fazia was a loose cannon.
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I wouldn't worry to much about Labour and EU. tories and Farage have already shown us that u-turns are par for the course and wholly acceptable.
Starmer's U-turns are apparently quite dangerous though:
https://road.cc/content/news/witness-starmer-was-making-u-turn-when-he-hit-cyclist-278313
I didn't even remember but we had a vote in 2011 on whether to have stv but 2/3 rejected the idea.
I wonder if it is time to rethink.
Mind you I'm a bit dubious of the ability of the average person to cope with it.
NO NO NO we had a referendum* on AV, THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE is clear you ARE SUBVERTING DEMOCRACY TAKING AWAY OUR FPTP DREAM
* I'd forgotten too
Last night I was taking photos of flower beds for 'Bloom' down at the village hall where the Polling Station was. Despite a turnout of only 58%, it was very busy with an incessant turnover of cars queing up, voters coming out of them and then driving off again. I saw no other cyclists and very few pedestrians. There's no Active Travel at all up here- it's midsummer and I rarely see any cyclists.
I went to vote on my way home from work. The voting station was at the village hall, right in the middle of my village. I saw two people pedestrianising (with their dogs) and the car park was full (ten cars, maybe?). I was the only cyclist.
Happened to walk there since close to me. Station by the local college so plenty cycle parking. No bikes to be seen, despite this being accessible via a "quieter street".
Edinburgh so some "active travel" but it's pretty slow progress - it's on the agenda now but certainly no urgency. I think it's a bit "cycling just one of lots of competing lobby groups that the council are acting as referee between". Plus "we've already got some thanks" - namely the shared paths which have been there for decades (and they're looking at repurposing for trams).
In much of the town the dominant form of cycling is for takeaway delivery.
dominant form of cycling is for takeaway delivery
Yes, with all this purposeful cycling going on, you wonder why there's the NHS diabetes time-bomb and the obesity crisis!
I don't think there was any car parking at my polling station or the closer two that I wasn't allocated to. I walked the 1.6miles though as I wouldnt trust leaving a bike in Hampton Hargate (Pottyboro). The turn out across the constituency was only 58.5%, and I'm surprised it was as high as that.
C13 seats for Reform, says the Exit poll.
Good to see plenty of support in Wales for Labour. Pleased to see Rees-Mogg out. Good to see a handful (4) of Green MPs.
4 Reform returned. 4 examples of where the Conservative "we're not right-wing enough" actually played out - Conservative candidates' losses were their direct gains. (Edit: 5 Reform MPs - let's see what it is in six months.)
Wellingborough & Rushden, a belwether in which Ben Habib stood, is an example of Reform arguably splitting the cons vote and Labour being the beneficiary - but when you look at the UK map this morning, the "no enthusiasm for Labour" argument looks pretty hollow.
Now can we get active travel and Europe back on the agenda please?
Finally for now, what do you and your merry men actually stand for, Nigel?
Taking aim at the Conservatives, Mr Farage said: "There is a massive gap on the centre-right of British politics and my job is to fill it."
Speaking to reporters after the result, he suggested "this is the beginning of the end of the Conservative Party".
Mr Farage said Reform would "now be targeting Labour votes".
"What is interesting is, there's no enthusiasm for Labour, there's no enthusiasm for [Keir] Starmer whatsoever. In fact, about half of the vote is simply an anti-Conservative vote," he said.
"We're coming for Labour, be in no doubt about that."
[Reform - presumably Farage will reprise his EU parliament performance, merely showing up to decry the existence of Westminster and alledge that other MPs have never has a real job. Before putting in expenses claims and drawing a pension.
Well you know the answer to the 2nd is "no", and currently it looks like even moving to Scotland won't change that anytime soon.
I'd love to believe the first would be the case, I hope that the high water mark for another generation wasn't a couple of years back with Active Travel England being set up (before being defunded, in favour of "supporting drivers")
Luckily things can progress locally despite Westminster indifference.
He thinks that he is centre right, does he?
The map merely reflects the distortions of 1st past the post.
The no enthusiasm argument is based on Labour only managing to attract 1 in 3 votes yet being rewarded with an enormous majority.
No lover of 1PP and noting the particular distortions this time round... but also one of those distortions is tactical voting. You could say another is "I'm just temporarily unhappy with the job my usually-favoured tribe are doing"!
Of course I doubt there was much tactical voting *for* Reform. Don't know though.
It isn't that the Conservatives had this system sprung on them either. Everyone had to play with the rules as understood.
The Party system isn't necessarily to the voter's advantage either - but we seem stuck with that. So perhaps we can open up the discussion about proportional again? Or indeed any other means of getting more people to engage with it - which seems an issue.
Certainly I would be surprised to see the Conservatives embrace some kind of proportional system given they undermined the Lib Dems' efforts to bring one in. (That was time ago though and the Alternative Vote might not have been the best implementation of such a system).
AFAIK Labour aren't either, being the other of the pair. Why let in other competitors?
The candidate with the most votes (Conservative) won in my constituency. I have a local MP. The same thing happened 650 times over.
Whats your point?
My point was that the "no enthusiasm" for Labour argument is valid.
Labour's vote share relative to its seat count is, I believe, the most distorted in UK history.
Only 1/3 people voted for Labour and they were incredibly vague about their policies yet they will now be able to push through any policy they choose.
Given your previous posts on the subject of British democratic votes I'm rather surprised you are ok with the situation.
Vote share numbers are a by-product of FPTP, they aren't the result. I guess if we're moving the goalposts, are you OK with is this?
https://www.indy100.com/news/brexit-leave-remain-52-48-per-cent-voter-tu...
That's share of population. Not vote share.
On that measure what would Labour's share have looked like?
If you want to make an argument about enthusiasm, focusing on vote share is probably missing the wood for the trees. Look at raw votes - the number of people voting for Labour was down on what it was at the last election, so at the least we can say that enthusiasm for them is less now than it was then.
(Same goes for the Lib Dems, btw)
Of course, by that reckoning there was less than half as much enthusiasm for Reform as there was for Labour, though.
People were more enthusiastic for Labour than any other party in this election but they were less enthusiastic for the winning party then in any other post war election.
The fact that this lack of enthusiasm has been combined with an enormous majority simply exposes the failures of FPTP to produce representative government.
Well exactly. But it's much worse than the 33.7% makes it look. If you're talking about enthusiasm, you need to look not at share of the vote, but at either raw vote numbers or share of the electorate. And since turnout was also down to 60%, that means only about 20% of people were motivated to vote for them, which compares even less favourably with past results. And obviously even less for each of their opponents. Basically, there's not much enthusiasm for politicians generally (Reform included).
I don't think we've ever had a parliamentary majority on this scale delivered by such a low vote share before.
The scale of victory in seats is quite removed from the share of the vote.
Reform got about 40% of Labour's votes yet their reward was a handful of seats.
The system is what the system is and there'll certainly be no appetite for reform of the voting system in this parliament.
I hope this will be the nadir for FPTP though, it's clearly no longer fit for purpose.
All true, but an argument about the inadequacy of FPTP is a sidetrack from the original question of a lack of enthusiasm for Labour. They're both valid cases, but mixing the two together muddies the waters.
Lowest share of vote for governing party delivering honking majority demonstrates brokenness of FPTP.
Lowest share of electorate demonstrates lack of enthusiasm for them (or anyone else).
I'd agree that they can be considered separately but in this context the lack of enthusiasm for the Labour government juxtaposes perfectly with the super majority that very same government enjoys.
Under a different system a political party that failed to garner enthusiasm would be forced into consensus and coalition building, better representing the votes cast.
Under FPTP Starker can now essentially rule by decree.
I'll put this down to disappointment but ... Remind me how previous governments with majorities haven't been able to "rule by decree"? Or have I missed something and we've been living in Switzerland?
An "enthusiasm"- based system sounds like reality TV...
Living in Scotland I have seen there certainly can be some pros to a more "coalition-biased" system. I can't see the turkeys voting for Christmas (particularly with the likes of Reform demanding change...) but I do think PR at the very least would be a good idea.
The real problem comes when people simply disengage from the system. But that is a two-way street - people's expectations of getting exactly the changes they want, right now, may be an issue...
Also "supermajority" isn't really "a thing" in the UK (yet), but you know that's just pedantry.
https://fullfact.org/election-2024/supermajority-parliament-explained/
Small majorities mean that you need consensus in your own party/group. When that isn't achievable, see Theresa May & John Major, the cabinet are limited as to the policies they can introduce.
The same holds true for a formal coalition, see Cameron/Clegg.
Large majorities usually means the cabinet can impose policies despite opposition from their own party, the larger the majority the more 'by decree' it becomes.
That works in theory, but not always in practice. Often, having a fragile majority can encourage even critical backbenchers to be more compliant, for fear of the potential danger of causing trouble, whereas those with large majorities can end up getting distracted by trying to manage their diverse and fractious coalitions.
I can't think of any small minorities in recent memory that have behaved in that way!
You will get factions in a large majority but they can mostly be ignored, see Corbyn et al under Blair/Brown. They repeatedly defied the whip and created mischief but the cabinet just ploughed on regardless.
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