Manchester mayor Andy Burnham might actually have a chance of saving Labour from itself, which is exactly why Keir Starmer won’t give him a chance, argues Ash Sarkar.
But you can clearly sense that the bird is flapping, because that is the one feature from the handful that is represented strongest in the shadow.
The working poor worried about their jobs is a frequent point every election and xenophobia is a cultural trait that has only recently been carpeted over these last few decades.
Both sides did try to appeal to this either in a “we’ll guarantee your livelihood with taxes and welfare” or “we’ll guarantee your livelihood by (aggressively) reducing foreign labour”. The messages were there, but the media spun one narrative far better and the masses readily swallowed it, giving in to their latent fears. To me, that’s a clear right-shift
I think that still fits in with what @wewbull@feddit.uk is saying. There is a right shift in votes because of extensive promotion by the media, which acknowledges the problem but offers a fascist solution, which is picked up by some voters. However other voters are disenfranchised and end up not voting. The overall shift in votes is to the right but the population itself is not right wing, the votes are not representative of the population because those who disagree don’t vote for alternatives and instead don’t vote at all.
There’s also a relentless propaganda effort to convince voters to abstain from voting unless there’s a party that exactly matches their views in every aspect of the party’s manifesto. If they fail one narrow single-issue purity test, of if their leader looks funny while eating a sandwich: game over.
If both the major parties are wrong on an issue, I ask which one is more likely to do a U-turn. You can never have everything in a democracy. But then, in an authoritarian system, you’ll probably get nothing but a boot in the face. Some people might think those are somehow equivalent. I don’t.
But you can clearly sense that the bird is flapping, because that is the one feature from the handful that is represented strongest in the shadow.
The working poor worried about their jobs is a frequent point every election and xenophobia is a cultural trait that has only recently been carpeted over these last few decades.
Both sides did try to appeal to this either in a “we’ll guarantee your livelihood with taxes and welfare” or “we’ll guarantee your livelihood by (aggressively) reducing foreign labour”. The messages were there, but the media spun one narrative far better and the masses readily swallowed it, giving in to their latent fears. To me, that’s a clear right-shift
I think that still fits in with what @wewbull@feddit.uk is saying. There is a right shift in votes because of extensive promotion by the media, which acknowledges the problem but offers a fascist solution, which is picked up by some voters. However other voters are disenfranchised and end up not voting. The overall shift in votes is to the right but the population itself is not right wing, the votes are not representative of the population because those who disagree don’t vote for alternatives and instead don’t vote at all.
There’s also a relentless propaganda effort to convince voters to abstain from voting unless there’s a party that exactly matches their views in every aspect of the party’s manifesto. If they fail one narrow single-issue purity test, of if their leader looks funny while eating a sandwich: game over.
If both the major parties are wrong on an issue, I ask which one is more likely to do a U-turn. You can never have everything in a democracy. But then, in an authoritarian system, you’ll probably get nothing but a boot in the face. Some people might think those are somehow equivalent. I don’t.
Oh that’s fair, I didn’t really consider the ones who did not vote
…because you were looking at the shadow.
I’m getting real tired of your damn shadow puppets, Plato :-)
Fair. :-)