General Election 2024

[UndercoverElephant]

Maybe the media have been looking for dirt on Reform. Because it was obvious that they would find it.

And maybe they stitched him up, because that was easier. Do you really find it difficult to believe that somebody decided to pose as Reform activist (or to hire a jobbing actor to do so), turned up in Clacton, and then got an undercover C4 team to film them making ludicrously unacceptable comments about race and immigrants? Sounds completely plausible to me. That is exactly how the left operates.

The media are doing their job, for once.

I think you are choosing to believe that because it suits your own narrative. I am not convinced you've even seriously considered the possibility that it is a stitch up. The fact that nobody in the mainstream media is considering it either, even though it is entirely believable, is telling.

What is undeniably true is that this looks very different to me than it does to you. Not only is Farage being stitched up, but the entire mainstream establishment, left and right, is just sucking up the lies and spewing them back out, with a large dose of moral superiority often included. This is just strengthening my support for Reform, and I will not be the only person experiencing this reaction. It is the Brexit mistake being repeated.

[clv101]

Or it could be a 'false flag', setup by Reform themselves! I watched what Farage said on Question Time last night, yes, he might be right. Who knows?

It's interesting how AI generated deep fakes haven't played a role in this campaign - so we're left with old school actors?

[UndercoverElephant]

I can see a possible future timeline taking shape. Here's what I think might happen:

Labour are going to get an enormous majority, the Tories will win fewer than 100 seats, and Reform will win at least 5 and maybe considerably more. Kemi Badenoch will become tory leader -- a figure from the right of the tories, not a centrist like Mordaunt (who will lose her seat). It will then become clear that even with a strong stance on gender ideology and opposition to immigration, the tories are not reclaiming ground from Reform. Instead, Farage's increased profile in as an MP with a radical new Westminster party behind him will lead to Reform staking long-term claim. All attempts to do a deal will fail, because the power structures that still underwrite the tory party are too money-oriented and can't accept Farage's populist appeal to the working class. In other words, Farage will demand ideological control, even if what he is saying is threatening the existing power structure -- that's the whole point in Reform. It's what "Reform" means. This is a schism -- a separation on the right of British politics that cannot be undone.

As it becomes clear that the right is now permanently split, it will become equally clear that Labour has no coherent ideological plan for the future, including no plan to keep the 2024 coalition of voters together (which is anti-tory, not pro-Labour). Starmer will attempt to find a compromise path on the issues of immigration and gender ideology, and it will become clear that this is simply not viable. Similarly on net zero, he will find that however hard he tries to do the right thing on climate, it will not be enough to keep hold of the people who realise it is nothing like enough, but too much for the true believers in economic growth. At this point Labour's support will be relentless falling -- not a Truss-style dive but a clear and relentless downward trend pointing to Labour having no guarantee of a majority in 2029, let alone a second landslide. Various smaller parties will pick up the pieces, especially the Greens, Libdems and Reform, but the Tories will remain stuck where they are or may continue to lose votes. This will be because the 20-odd percent of the population that still supports them is mostly over 70 and getting older all the time, and younger people on the right are much more likely to be attracted to Reform.

As people start thinking about the next election, the issue of electoral reform is then going to take centre stage. Most of the arguments for keeping FPTP will no longer make any sense, and there's already a majority within the Labour Party who want some form of PR. The stage will then be set for the political transformation which this election is just the prelude to. I doubt it will happen before the 2028/29 election, but Labour's sharply reduced majority in that election will focus minds, and making electoral reform a manifesto commitment may be the one thing that ensures they do actually get a second term.

In 2033/34, when it is clear that Labour's project of national renewal hasn't improved most people's life prospects, we will have our first election under a PR system, and neither Labour nor the Tories will ever achieve an overall majority again. At this point Farage will become a serious contender for PM.

[clv101]

Not Farage, he'll be 70 by then.

[UndercoverElephant]

Not Farage, he'll be 70 by then.

OK...you may be right about that. There is plenty of time for an heir to emerge. They'll need to attract some quality candidates in 2028/9, but if we get PR then that might actually happen.

[Potemkin Villager]

Not Farage, he'll be 70 by then.

OK...you may be right about that. There is plenty of time for an heir to emerge. They'll need to attract some quality candidates in 2028/9, but if we get PR then that might actually happen.

Are you considering offering your services?

[UndercoverElephant]

Not Farage, he'll be 70 by then.

OK...you may be right about that. There is plenty of time for an heir to emerge. They'll need to attract some quality candidates in 2028/9, but if we get PR then that might actually happen.

Are you considering offering your services?

I have promised my wife I will never go into politics, so no. I am also too radical for them - Reform do not accept the limits to growth, so it would be impossible for me to be a candidate for them.

[UndercoverElephant]

https://archive.is/F7juY

Britain has challenged the right of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to issue arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, and Yoav Gallant, its defence minister.
The UK claims the ICC does not have jurisdiction over the Israeli nationals, whom its chief prosecutor Karim Khan KC has accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
The ICC will now consider the British challenge – and that will delay the decisions on whether to issue the warrants until at least the end of next month.
Britain’s request to lodge the challenge was made on June 10 in secret but has now been unsealed ahead of the UK’s general election on July 4. The court’s pre-trial chamber has given the UK until July 12 to submit its full claim

In May, Rishi Sunak criticised the ICC for seeking arrest warrants against both Mr Netanyahu and Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, arguing there was no “moral equivalence” between the two sides after the Oct 7 terror attack. He said it would make “absolutely no difference” to wider peace in the Middle East.
However, David Lammy, the shadow foreign secretary, has said that Labour would seek to implement an arrest warrant against Mr Netanyahu if one were issued by the ICC.

[Potemkin Villager]

I have promised my wife I will never go into politics, so no. I am also too radical for them - Reform do not accept the limits to growth, so it would be impossible for me to be a candidate for them.

Yes if any political cult want candidates to get elected it is not possible for them to accept limits to growth
when it is their primary, holy grail, get out of jail free card. It might be an interesting exercise to produce a manifesto,
for, let's call it "The Reality Party", that accepts overshoot and that growth is not desirable etc, just to see folks reaction.
I imagine it would not be very positive even amongst those claiming that politicians are liars!

[UndercoverElephant]

I have promised my wife I will never go into politics, so no. I am also too radical for them - Reform do not accept the limits to growth, so it would be impossible for me to be a candidate for them.

Yes if any political cult want candidates to get elected it is not possible for them to accept limits to growth
when it is their primary, holy grail, get out of jail free card. It might be an interesting exercise to produce a manifesto,
for, let's call it "The Reality Party", that accepts overshoot and that growth is not desirable etc, just to see folks reaction.
I imagine it would not be very positive even amongst those claiming that politicians are liars!

Exactly. Which is why the defence of realism must come at a higher structural level than either policy or political ideology. It must be a purely philosophical meta-ideology, which begins from first principles, and is understood by all participants to come (epistemologically) before religion, politics and ethics. We must be able to agree what we know is real, what might be real and might not, and what definitely isn't real, before we even attempt to reach agreement about anything as specific as policy. "Real" here is interchangeable with both "true" and "possible" (ie real possibilities and not fantasies).

For me the frustrating thing is that I am convinced that just such a meta-ideology is available, but I have had almost no success at explaining to people why it is necessary, let alone how it could work.

[Mark]

Maybe WE need to set up a new party ??
Elements of GRN, REF, LD & LAB policy...

Society will have declined to a very dismal state before we could expect to get many votes though...
As a laugh, might be worth scoping out a manifesto ??

[UndercoverElephant]

Maybe WE need to set up a new party ??
Elements of GRN, REF, LD & LAB policy...

Society will have declined to a very dismal state before we could expect to get many votes though...
As a laugh, might be worth scoping out a manifesto ??

We could certainly think about where it would start and what the most basic claims would be. For me, the whole thing must start with a definition of realism and the role of science, including the limitations of that view. Scientific realism is true (ie scientific knowledge tends towards truth about a mind-independent objective reality) but metaphysical materialism (the belief that reality is physical and that nothing else exists) is incoherent. This last part can also be specified in terms of the Hard Problem of Consciousness. So science tends towards truth, but it can't explain consciousness even in principle. Further specifics of this requires delving into the metaphysical interpretations of quantum theory, but we can skip that for now.

This leads to the conclusion that there is only one objective reality, and that we must find a way to share it instead of trying to claim each of us has the right to our own reality or our own truth. And from that it follows that growth-based economics (ie any economic-political system which fails to recognise the physical limits to growth) is intellectually and morally bankrupt. So Principle #1 is that growth must eventually end, and that applies both at the national level and the international level.

Having established that growth must end we then have to start asking questions about what this means for the rest of economics and politics, given that we must maintain our commitment to realism. Well, the next question is "have we already breached the (ecological) limits to growth?" and the answer is clearly yes. Then we can start asking follow-up questions.

For the record, this is why I am so vehemently opposed to "gender ideology". I am not a feminist, but a strict realist. If we take scientific realism seriously, men cannot become women and that's the end of the debate. The gender ideologues start somewhere else entirely -- with something like the claim that "everybody should be allowed to be whatever they want to be, so long as they aren't hurting anybody else" (ie "if in your reality men can become women, then why should anybody be so mean as to deny it?"). This is putting morality/ideology before reality, and must be rejected on principle. In other words, this anti-realistic ideology hurts everybody, because it is one of many giant obstacles to agreeing a coherent political agenda for the real future.

[Ralphw2]

https://medlineplus.gov/genetics/condit ... -syndrome/

All this proves is that there is no absolute scientific certainty that every human is male or female. I am all for scientific realism, but gender identity is a social issue. Not a scientific one. And I speak as a scientist who worked on the human genome mapping project

That is all.

Leave science out of your prejudices

[UndercoverElephant]

https://medlineplus.gov/genetics/condit ... -syndrome/

Why is that link relevant? Please explain.

Sex in humans is binary. Sometimes it goes wrong. This is just one example of how it can go wrong. How do you think that impacts on anything I posted?

EDIT: to be clear, and for anybody else who is interested. I am talking about biological sex. There is no confusion about this -- it is a fully scientific concept about which we should have no grounds for serious disagreement. Male humans cannot become female humans. Gender ideology doesn't restrict itself to biological sex. Instead, it invents a term "gender" and then deliberately muddies the water by using the scientific concept of sex interchangeably with the term "gender". This discussion is about scientific realism, so the question has to be this: what is the scientific meaning of the word "gender"? I submit that there isn't one. If we're talking strictly about science, we do not need any concept of "gender", and thus it is scientifically meaningless to claim that a man (defined in terms of gender) can become a woman (defined in terms of gender). It may have some sort of non-scientific meaning, but even that isn't clear. What is not acceptable is to have two contradictory definitions of "man" and "woman" and to then use them interchangeably so nobody can nail down what is actually being said at any one time.

[UndercoverElephant]

Farage is now refusing to appear on Kuenhsberg's show tomorrow morning, or on the BBC at all, unless the BBC apologises for the seriously biased QT audience. And it was seriously biased. All the questions I saw were coming from the left-liberal viewpoint which dismisses Farage out of hand, and as a result a lot of the questions were loaded/stupid.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/ar ... e-audience

I have the feeling this is all going to get very nasty.