General British politics discussion thread

In fairness, the same could be said about Blair. Brown, the grumpy sod, had strong positions.

There is so much wrong with this post that I don't know where to start.

Labour didn't sell itself and the electorate didn't buy Labour either - it got into power off the back of a split rightwing vote. Starmer et al convinced 20% or so of the electorate to vote for them. That's their first major failure.

Moving right to cut off Reform clearly didn't work, in fact Starmer convinced fewer people to vote for Labour in 2024 than Corbyn did in 2019 when Johnson cleverly used Brexit to split the Labour vote; whichever side of the fence Corbyn came down on he was going to lose votes on the other side. It was a master stroke by Johnson, I have to say. But Starmer's Labour party gained even fewer votes.

Somebody posted that we don't know what Starmer stands for - well, that is not true. We know that he stands for Genocide. We know he stands for Censorship. We know he is a rabid zionist. We know he couldn't care less about the British working classes. That's quite a lot of knowledge about what he is.

Well he says he had dinner with him once a year so I don't think it was that close other than the communications seeking Mandelsons advice. He says that his partner worked for Mandelson 25 years ago.

I think in the UK, the Jewish vote has gone to the Tories since Disraeli, the first UK PM to be born Jewish (though he was raised as Church of England) because even after Catholic Emancipation, the parliamentary oath said "on the good faith of a Christian". That oath wasn't changed until late 19th century. Tony Blair did better with them, getting maybe 37%.

Judaism in the UK tends to be Orthodox, unlike in the US where it's more likely to be Reform Judaism. Orthodox Judaism internationally is often correlated with votes for right-wing parties, though there are individual exceptions 75% of American Jews voted for Harris. But one third voted for Romney in 2012. The last US Republican to win the Jewish vote was Ronald Reagan. Bush Sr. only won about 7% of it in 1992.

Theres also a denomination called Conservative Judaism. It will score liberal than Orthodox Judaism though and followers tend to vote Democrat, though not by as much.

Israel has erected obstacles to Reform Judaism domestically. Jewish family law is controlled by the Rabbinate, which is Orthodox. Civil marriage is not recognised in Israel unless conducted outside the country. So Israelis who want civil marriages sometimes have them abroad and then return to Israel. Foreign marriages are recognised in Israel.

Also trade unions have declined in Israel, which I think is an often overlooked factor in the rise of the Right there, as class politics is undermined, being replaced with nationalism.

Also ex Soviet Jews are overwhelmingly Orthodox and vote overwhelmingly for nationalist parties.

The political theory is that the Islamic voter has nowhere to go other than Labour, but that the Jewish voter can be flipped from Tory to Labour. Even if an Islamic voter doesn't go to the polls in a rage at Labour, but Labour get a Jewish voter to flip, then Labour are up on the deal - their vote has stayed constant and the Tories are down one.

As a theory it really only worked in the two-party system though. A different ball-game now that vastly more constituencies are likely to be 4 way contents.

Streeting releasing private messages between him and Mandelson where he thinks Israel is committing war crimes and talks of ethic cleansing and yet the man goes on TV and defends Israels right to do all that…. slippery as they come

Keep in mind that Starmer was a top barrister. Literally his role would be to suss out when people were lying to him or being deceptive. Imagine using the "he lied to me and I was therefore totally deceived by him" thing as an excuse.

Farage has a brass neck considering he hardly works in his place of work. The retired who want to hark back to the good ole days will still vote for him, everyone else has moved on.