UK Politics Thread part II

[Rockstar]

Nigel Farage, the man who wants to be the UK’s answer to Donald Trump

Populist politician who formed anti-EU pact with ruling Conservatives is back to engineer party’s demise

Dan Sabbagh
Tue 4 Jun 2024 12.41 EDT

https://amp.theguardian.com/politics...ghtwing-allies

“Thus far, it is the dullest, most boring election campaign we have ever seen in our lives. And it’s funny because the more the two big party leaders tried to be different, the more they actually sound the same,” declared the British anti-immigration populist Nigel Farage as he announced on Monday his intention to stand in the UK’s general election.
The 60-year-old anti-EU party leader has failed seven times to be elected to Britain’s Westminster parliament but his entry into the fray – only a week after he insisted he would not stand so he could help campaign for Donald Trump in the US – has dominated a so far lacklustre election campaign at the start of its second full week.


It is not certain Farage will be elected this time either, but the chief interest in his decision to return to lead Reform, his political vehicle, is the impact it will have on Britain’s ruling but faltering Conservatives. Under the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, they already appear to be heading for a heavy defeat at the hands of the left-leaning Labour opposition, led by Keir Starmer, when the election takes place on 4 July.
At a 40-minute press conference at the Glaziers Hall, a prestigious London venue close to the River Thames, Farage pursued an anti-establishment argument. He claimed Britain faced an “immigration election” – though he exaggerated the numbers coming in to settle, claiming that all those who entered the UK to work or study in the past year intended to remain permanently.
A week earlier, more controversially, Farage in a television interview had declared a “growing number” of young Muslims in the UK do not subscribe to an undefined set of British values. The conclusion was based on a single poll in April commissioned by a rightwing thinktank that highlighted that a quarter of Muslims surveyed believed Hamas had committed murder and rape in its deadly attack on Israel on 7 October.

Other polls of British Muslims, taken earlier this year and not referenced by Farage, report that 86% of respondents believe Britain is a good place to live when it comes to people having the chance to thrive.
In Britain, the Conservatives have been in power since 2010, but under Sunak, they trail Labour by 20 percentage points according to an average of the opinion polls. Translating that accurately into an election result is difficult, but one analysis, released on Monday an hour after Farage’s launch event by the researchers YouGov, suggests the rightwing party would win only 140 out of 650 parliamentary seats – its worst result since 1906.
And this does not take into account Farage’s personal entry into the election campaign. Despite his past electoral failures, Farage, ironically a former member of the European parliament, remains one of the UK’s best-known and polarising politicians, who came to the fore in the early 2010s. By then he was a persistent campaigner for Britain leaving the European Union – resulting, in the now popular shorthand, in Brexit.

While Trump was able to take over the Republicans in the US, Farage’s principal achievement was to exercise pressure on the Conservative party from outside. He helped force the former prime minister David Cameron to call a referendum on the UK’s EU membership, in the belief he would win it.
The Conservatives split over the issue and Cameron misjudged the public mood. Britain narrowly voted out in the summer of 2016, Cameron resigned, and the result was hailed by Trump as “a great victory” a few months before he won the US presidency.
After the Brexit vote, Farage languished, without a guiding cause. He became a presenter on the rightwing news channel GB News in 2021, at that time a media novelty in the UK, and periodically tried to ignite public concerns about migration into the UK via “small boats” across the Channel from France. But it was clear from his remarks over the past couple of days that he sees in the current election situation an opportunity to be near the centre of attention.

“Starmer has won this election,” Farage declared on Monday, as he suggested his Reform party, now polling about 11%, could overtake Sunak’s party on 22%. “I genuinely believe we can get more votes in this election than the Conservative party. They are on the verge of total collapse,” he said, repeatedly accusing the party of failing to reduce immigration to the UK. In other interviews on Tuesday he added that he could stage a reverse takeover of the Conservatives at some unspecified point in the years ahead.
The rhetoric is calibrated to attract publicity and rightwing votes, but the reality is not helped by Britain’s electoral system, based entirely on small single-member constituencies, which favours large well-established parties.
Farage’s plan is to run in Clacton, a modest seaside town in Essex, 55 miles north-east of London, one of the few places that has previously elected a member of parliament for one of his predecessor anti-EU parties. But the Conservative majority he has to overturn is a hefty 24,702. He got off to a shaky start on Tuesday when what appeared to be a banana milkshake was thrown over him on his first day of campaigning as he left a pub in the town.

Anthony Wells, head of European political and social research at YouGov, argues Farage’s move is all about last-minute timing. “Britons already knew Farage was the leader behind the scenes – the question is what is the short-term impact from the publicity boost from his announcement.
“Most likely it will prevent the Conservatives being able to take his votes, but there is a non-zero chance that if Sunak’s party continues to do badly, there could be a tipping point and Farage gets ahead.”

[Moonlight]

You're starting to piss me off posting this old news Rocky, it's 3 weeks old you bleeding muppet, start checking the time stamps or even better, stick to posting your bollocks in the US Politics thread.

[Rockstar]

Originally Posted by Moonlight

You're starting to piss me off posting this old news Rocky, it's 3 weeks old you bleeding muppet, start checking the time stamps or even better, stick to posting your bollocks in the US Politics thread.

I can’t it help it, we’re in a different time zone here! Like posting an article with 9 month old quotes from Trump ‘in his own words’ that have been taken out of context.

Anyway this is just 3 days old news from the kingdom. Looks really super important I never knew Farage was such an influential dude.

NewsUKUK Politics

Nigel Farage claims Donald Trump ‘learned quite a lot from me’

The Reform UK leader said Donald Trump was watching his speeches in the Euroeapn Parliament before deciding to run for president

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/u...-b2567520.html

Nigel Farage has claimed former US president Donald Trump “learned a lot” from studying his speeches before he ran for office.

But the Reform UK leader has denied he was Britain’s version of Mr Trump, and said: “I think we’re very different but I think we think the same on many things.”

Mr Farage, who was speaking in an interview with ITV’s Tonight programme, added: “He’s learned quite a lot from me, I think it goes both ways … He was watching my speeches in the European Parliament for many years … before he decided to run.”

When asked if the former president had told him this, Mr Farage replied: “I know that to be true.”

Mr Farage is close to and has repeatedly praised Mr Trump.

Prior to his decision to join Reform UK earlier this month, the party’s candidate for Clacton had said he planned to help Mr Trump with his presidential campaign this year.

But he has since admitted: “If I’m elected the MP for Clacton, and I’m there every Friday … it’ll become more difficult but not impossible.”

On the interview, to be aired on Monday night, Mr Farage also repeated again his claim that the West “provoked” Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

The initial remarks from his interview with Nick Robinson on Friday has led to wide criticism from across the political spectrum. Home Secretary James Cleverly accused him of “echoing Putin”.

When asked how he would deal with Mr Putin, Mr Farage told ITV that Western leaders should pursue peace talks.

He said: “I think the number of lives being lost is horrific. There have been no sensible, substantive negotiations of any kind and even if negotiations to try and find a peace, to try and find a way through, fail, I think it’s better to have those negotiations than not.”

Mr Farage also told ITV he has an issue with migrants coming to Britain and continuing to speak their own language.

Mr Farage was giving the interview as his party threatens to inflict further damage on the Tories, with polling suggesting Reform UK is catching up in terms of the share of a vote at the general election

Rishi Sunak has not been helped over the weekend by the growing betting scandal which Michael Gove described as damaging.

[mapuc]

So the establishment see him as a laughing joke this man Mr. Nigel Farage.
(According to the news here)

How high is his chances to win any seats ?
How popular is he among the people in UK ?

Markus

[Jimbuna]

Originally Posted by mapuc

So the establishment see him as a laughing joke this man Mr. Nigel Farage.
(According to the news here)

How high is his chances to win any seats ?
How popular is he among the people in UK ?

Markus

Farage has stood for election to the House of Commons seven times, in five general elections and two by-elections, losing in each.

[Moonlight]

The Establishment don't like change Markus unless they're organising it, Farage knows he's got some screwballs in his party and that's going to concern the voters, we've got enough nutcases in the 2 main parties without adding some Reform nutters to that list.

As for seats in Westminster, Reform will need a huge number of voters to even get one MP elected, I don't think they'll be having a good day come polling day, but you'll not know till the votes are in.
As for popularity, there's more voters that dislike Farage than will like him, he's a marmite character and that will probably go against him.

That's my take on this election, Sunak, Starmer, Davey and Farage, none of them have a good popularity rating so it's difficult to work that one out, and at the end of the day who the hell cares.

[Jimbuna]

The Farage faithful know he’s a fraud but they don’t care

Call it confirmation bias. The media were the ones who wanted endless debates – the public would have been happy with one or two at most – and so it was inevitable that the media would declare them to be important waypoints on the campaign trail. But were they?

Sure, the debates were picked over forensically, but strip out the sound and fury and you’re left with very little we didn’t already know. Rishi Sunak might have been even more thin-skinned and tetchy and Keir Starmer rather more wooden than we might have imagined but this is all surface trivia. Nothing new in concrete policy terms was revealed. Just the familiar half-truths and evasions with which we are all too familiar. Manifesto pledges that almost certainly won’t stand contact with reality.

Time and again, Rish! has played the trust card. The country can rely on him to tell the truth. Sometimes you can only think he is taking the piss. On a masochistic urge to self-destruct. Because within minutes of him bleating on about integrity, the Tory press office was masquerading as “Tax Check UK” on Twitter, pumping out fictitious claims about Labour’s policies. The man who wants to be believed has no regard for the truth. He just looks needy, corrupt and desperate.

Meanwhile Nigel Farage can hardly believe his luck. Having started the campaign as very much the outsider, not even planning to stand as a candidate, he is now living his very best life. Things could hardly have gone better.

With the Tories lurching from crisis to crisis – insulting the vets at the D-day commemorations and then the insider gambling ring – and Labour offering a don’t-rock-the-boat, safety-first approach, the campaign has been low on energy. A low-wattage endurance test. Hell, no one said politics was meant to be fun, but some hope would be nice. Promising to make things a little less **** doesn’t really cut it. And there’s no vacuum into which Nige won’t jump head first. Anything for some attention. He’s learned his narcissism at Donald Trump’s knee.

The queue outside the Rainton Arena in Houghton-Le-Spring, near Sunderland, snaked back at least 100 yards. And that was at 11am, an hour before the start. While Sunak and Starmer have gone out of their way to meet as few members of the public as possible – one or two strictly controlled photo ops per day – Nige adores an old-fashioned rally. And it seems this crowd in the north-east are also more than up for it. They are looking for a politician who will make them feel good about themselves. One who talks to their insecurities and plays on their prejudices. Forget the policies, stay for the LOLs.

After brief warmup acts from two local Reform candidates, Farage takes the stage to some loud techno music pumped out through some ageing speakers, flashing lights and an indoor firework display. The audience rises to its feet to join in with the fun. Nige just stands there, lapping it up. He can’t get enough of the applause. It’s what nourishes him. He’s not here to make a difference. He’s here to feel whole. Without a crowd he’s uncertain whether he actually exists. Deep within what passes for his soul there is an emptiness that can never be filled.

But there is undeniably a connection. One that Sunak and Starmer would kill for. One that allows Nige to get away with almost anything. Because you’d expect a crowd like this to have worked out Farage long ago. A posh, establishment boy with no real interest in the north-east. Just another politician passing through. Yet their scepticism is put on hold. They appear to buy into his act entirely. They know he’s a fraud but they don’t care. At least he’s an entertaining fraud. A voice of disaffection. They like him not for what he is but for what he’s not. He’s not a Tory and he’s not Labour.

Let the show commence. And this is a show more than a speech. Nige’s time working the neocon circuit in the US over the past four years has paid dividends. He now has the air of a televangelist who you know will be arrested for tax evasion in a matter of hours. Asides to people in the front row. Conversational rather than oratorical. You half expect him to interrupt his flow and make an appeal for donations to his favourite charity. The Bank of St Nigel. And it would have been no surprise if half the 1,000-strong audience hadn’t handed over their credit cards.

He talked for well over half an hour. No notes needed because this was a greatest hits event. All to celebrate his own greatness. He couldn’t believe he had packed out the arena in a matter of days. A humblebrag. He’d have been devastated if no one had turned up. He was really connecting with the young people. Only, the crowd looked almost entirely middle-aged or older. He had always been right about everything. Nige is never slow to say I told you so.

Then into his familiar tropes. The country wasn’t working. You couldn’t move without someone wanting to rob or kill you. Probably a foreigner. Farage would be devastated to find out that most people aren’t afraid to walk the streets. People should be proud of their history, he said. Though not confident enough in it to question it. Nige doesn’t do critical thinking. Not his style. Keep your prejudices and hatreds mainstream.

Immigrants. Too many of them. He’d always said so. Even when there had been very few. Leave the ECHR. Join Russia and Belarus. “We must not set people apart from one another,” he said. That’s literally what he does. Then a few vague promises. Pay less tax. Though no mention of how he would pay for anything. Brexit, though with no apology for his part in its failure. Double down on Ukraine, though skip over his apparent support for Putin (although he has denied this, saying he dislikes Putin and is opposed to the invasion). It was all deeply unpleasant stuff. Nige in his element. The thrill of power with no responsibility. He’d be devastated to find himself prime minister.

Come the end there were no questions. Nige likes it best that way. And so does the audience. Because questions might puncture the mood. Because very little of what he says bears examination. In that respect, he’s even worse than the career politicians he claims to despise. At least Starmer and Sunak try not to deal in fantasies. Well, not all of the time.

But you can’t deny the numbers. You may hate it, but Nige is reaching parts of the country that no other party is. And it is all about him. If Dicky Tice were still in charge, Reform would be also-rans. People like him because he legitimises their anger. Gives voice to their discontent. He tears things down with no thought for a rebuilt future. Next week he will be in parliament. Don’t say you haven’t been warned.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknew...4a27e52&ei=100

[Rockstar]

BREAKING: U.K. is becoming a third world country.

[Kptlt. Neuerburg]

[Jimbuna]

@ Kptlt. Neuerburg

I enjoyed that

[Rockstar]

'Record' number sleeping on streets of London

Published: 27 Jun 2024 - 03:43 pm | Last Updated: 27 Jun 2024 - 03:45 pm

https://m.thepeninsulaqatar.com/arti...eets-of-london

London: The number of people sleeping on the streets of London has hit a record high of nearly 12,000, latest figures showed Thursday, as the impact of the UK's cost-of-living crisis bites.

Britain, the world's sixth-biggest economy, saw decades-high inflation in 2023 and a shortage of affordable rental properties over recent years.

Some 11,993 people were seen rough-sleeping in the capital in the year to March -- up 58 percent in a decade and the highest number recorded in a single year, according to Homeless Link, the body for groups dealing with homelessness in England.

In 2013-14, the number of people sleeping on the streets stood at 7,581.

Homeless Link chief executive Rick Henderson called the figures "appalling" and said the government that comes out of a July 4 general election should form a cross-party plan to tackle the problem.

He said "genuinely affordable and secure homes" need to be delivered quickly with properly-funded services to "help people address the root causes of their destitution and move on from rough sleeping for good".

At a medical centre for the homeless in east London, the demand for services had "definitely... increased in the past couple of months", said Mimi Hassan, an administrator at Health E1.

However, Hassan said she had not seen the issue raised enough by politicians during the election campaign. "We are helping as much as we can", Hassan told AFP.

"But how much can we do?"

UK nationals made up 45 percent of those sleeping rough, according to Homeless Link figures. Of the rest, nearly a third came from countries in Africa, Asia, the Americas and Australasia, while about a quarter were from Europe.

Homelessness charity Crisis said the overall figures were "deeply shameful and highlight the desperate need for the next government to get a grip on this crisis".

Charities and campaigners have long called for a government commitment to build 90,000 social rent homes a year.

[Jimbuna]

Conservative leader Rishi Sunak has condemned a racist term used about him by a Reform UK campaigner, saying: "It hurts and it makes me angry"

A Reform UK campaigner working to get Reform leader Nigel Farage elected as an MP was filmed by an undercover Channel 4 team making a racist comment about the PM

Reform said those making "unacceptable comments" would no longer be part of Farage's campaign.

Earlier Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer was challenged by voters on his party's plans to impose VAT on private school fees, as well as pensions and the NHS, during a phone-in on BBC Radio 5 Live.

With less than a week to go until polling day, the Lib Dems are focusing on dentistry, while the SNP's John Swinney says he "would work with Labour" on the Scottish gender bill if Labour is elected.

[mapuc]

Originally Posted by Jimbuna

the SNP's John Swinney says he "would work with Labour" on the Scottish gender bill if Labour is elected.

Smells like they would work with the devil himself if they can get a second referendum.
(If this sentence is too strong then delete it)

Markus

[Moonlight]

^Nothing wrong with it Markus.

Yep, that Scottish gender bill will have the warning bells ringing in Starmer's ears, they can join the warning klaxons over recognizing Palestine as a state as well, it will be a rocky road he'll be travelling on if he's going to go down that route and his tyres are going to get punctured.......a lot.

[Rockstar]

BBC spent £30k of licence fee payers' money on audience members for election debate

By FRAN WINSTON, Showbiz Reporter

The BBC spent more than £30,000 of licence fee payers' money hiring audience members who were asked not to heckle during the TV election debate between Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer.

The Express can exclusively reveal that Wednesday's fiery debate, which saw the Prime Minister and Labour leader go head-to-head, was completely made up of paid-for audience members provided by a marketing company.

The 150-strong group, who were told not to heckle, were each paid £150 "disturbance money" and £30 towards their expenses, meaning at least £27,000 of licence payers' money was used.

Alongside those in the studio, there were 15-20 more in reserve who did not make it on screen but were equally compensated, meaning up to another £3,600 was spent.

The BBC said the payments are standard for such events to cover people’s travel costs and time.

The money dished out to audience members is believed to be part of what the BBC paid the third-party polling company Savanta for it to recruit an audience for the debate.

Savanta then outsourced the job to another market research company called Roots.

A source who was in the debate audience explained to the Express how they were approached. They said they have previously been paid to work on projects for Roots so they were on the company mailing list.

They said: "I got an email asking if I would be interested and I said yes.

"I think they wanted people who lived in the Midlands, basically. They got back to me and asked me lots and lots and lots of questions. I'd had to fill in a questionnaire before they spoke to me," they said.

After answering questions and having a screening over the phone the source was told they were booked but also that they might not make the audience. "They warned me that I was being booked I might not actually get him to the venue," they said.

"So, when we arrived, quite a few people were given wristbands, and they were told that that meant that there was a chance that they will not be attending live. I think it's the same with a lot of these things that they oversubscribe because they know that they're going to get dropouts."

Asked how many people in the audience were paid, they said: "Everybody, every single person in the audience was paid either by Roots or Savanta." They said, this included the people who did not make the cut.

"They were getting exactly the same money. They could remain in the holding area and continue to have food and drink or they could just go home. It was entirely up to up to them. But we were all treated absolutely equally whether we got into the venue or not," they said.

Once inside phones and handbags were taken away from the audience. The source said they were told "in no uncertain terms" not to heckle. "We were allowed to clap, we were allowed to mutter but we were not allowed to heckle," they said.

"The fact that they paid this money was to make sure that we turned up. They're making it worth your while. If you're not being paid anything and you get a better offer you're gonna take it but by paying us that money, then we are going to commit. So I completely understood why we were being paid. I actually thought that was a good way of doing it."

A BBC spokesman said: “The Prime Ministerial debate had an equal number of people who intend to vote Conservative and Labour, as well as some undecided voters. The audiences for our debates – between Rishi Sunak and Sir Keir Starmer last night and for the seven-party debate earlier in the campaign – were selected by our third-party supplier Savanta to reflect a broad range of political perspectives.”

The spokesman pointed out it is standard for these types of debates to offer audience members a flat disturbance fee to cover travel costs and their time.

The spokesperson said: “Audiences for our election debate programmes are managed by a third party supplier, Savanta, and as such we are unable to disclose their costs due to commercial confidentiality. We always have value for money firmly in mind when delivering our programmes for audiences and keep costs low where possible.”

They added: "Audiences for our election debate programmes are managed by a third party supplier, Savanta, and as such we are unable to disclose their costs due to commercial confidentiality. We always have value for money firmly in mind when delivering our programmes for audiences and keep costs low where possible."

The spokesman added that the BBC went through a "rigorous" procurement process before engaging Savanta as a supplier.

Tickets for BBC programmes are available to apply for online and currently viewers in Scotland can fill out an online form to be part of the Debate Night audience.

The Express contacted Roots about the recruitment process but we were told they "aren't allowed" to give out information. Savanta was also contacted for comment.