Stability is change: crossing the floor from potato to potahto in uk 2024

Get in here, loons

Very good

Oddly starting this with Mason news.

Breaking: ISLINGTON NORTH Labour shortlist Sem Moema . Praful Nargund

— lee harpin (@lmharpin) May 22, 2024

breaking: stoya cancelling travel plans

From The Guardian blog quoting a tweet by a pol analyst:

Was in Westminster all day. Understand there’s 5 major reasons for @RishiSunak July 4 election gamble

1/ Key aides told PM inflation is now at its “election sweet spot” - 2.3% was today’s print - & warned it may rise again by autumn

2/ No fiscal space for NI cuts in Sept 1/

3/ Concern legal challenges will further delay/block flights to Rwanda taking off

4/ Mess in the English Channel with small boats during the summer months

5/ Nigel Farage hasn’t yet decided whether to front Reform UK, so snap poll may boost Tory prospects

Praful Nargund?

if they won't accept Comrade Mason they should offer a spot to Dunty

https://x.com/IanDunt/status/1793343773667480015

truly the most perfect idiot in the whole world, a brain as smooth as his scalp

Nargund is a private IVF clinic chief executive, who really cares about healthcare inequities

Dunt isn't an idiot, he just plays one for money.

Mason the early Starmer adopter, most consistent apologist/obsequious toady towards him for almost 5 years and all he gets in return is one humiliating rejection after another - which is all he deserves tbf.

I am sorry Tom D you will not be able to vote for this man

I didn't make the shortlist in @IslingtonNorth . Thanks to all those in the CLP who signed up to campaign for me, and to SERA for endorsing me. It's vital that we get out the vote the selected candidate, and keep Islington North red! ✊

— Paul Mason (@paulmasonnews) May 23, 2024

No-one likes him he does care.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtTdQm57_MU

100 empty spots to fill, keep on keeping on Paul

If he wasn't such a weirdo who likes making a shit ton of noise he would've got into one of those.

as well as being a foolish and deeply unlikable man I don't think he's ever been forgiven by the right for his supporting Corbyn years.

Yeah there's no place in today's Labour for people whose politics change with the wind to support their own personal aggrandisement

that's what they'll throw at Starmer, he can offer evidence that he helped finish off Corbyn by quoting the "People's Vote was a conspiracy" parts of the Eagleton book!

he's an embarrassment because he actually believes things, even if he has forced himself to believe them to fit in. I remember a kid like him at school.

No Rwanda flights till after the election. If Reform get their act together its even worse for the Tories.

It also means a very grim debate where Starmer has to promise deportations of sone kind.

Getting suicide-by-cop vibes from all of this, like Sunak is pleading with the election to put him out of his misery.

the guy just wants a long summer break in california so he can pick out a house, move there ASAP, and die horribly in the record-breaking wildfires of 2028 enjoy a long and happy life

maybe it was just a case of lose a suicide-election in the summertime or lose a confidence vote and resign

The calculations are that Rwanda flights will never get off the ground, that inflation might go up (so no interest rate cuts), and that they cannot offer anything but tax rises bcz of the state of public finances.

to gazzara's point, the domiciled tax status laws are getting changed next year yeah?

the way he brought up the furlough scheme yesterday seemed desperate, it was almost like he was inferring he paid it all out of his own pocket.

it was like in the manner of a slimy boss giving you a tiny inconsequential pay rise and then never letting you forget about it

The only time the guy was popular is when he gave lots of people money.

also when he gave us rona dinners

How soon we forget "dishy Rishi".

eat out to help out just a porn video name to most people now

a furlough scheme that was actually proposed and pushed for by McDonnell iirc and which sunak was originally dead set against…

and a furlough scheme which deliberately excluded hundreds of thousands of self-employed people, my wife being among them

xp
to me there's no question that if Corbyn and McDonnell hadn't been at the despatch box in early 2020 we would never have got the furlough measures we did get, flawed as they were

Quietly impressed by The Green Party response here. Has the right people crying about it.

Nothing to see here. Just @TheGreenParty⁩ leader on Radio 4 failing to condemn one of her fellow Green candidates for liking a post which said "we have to destroy Zionism". And she has the chutzpah to refer to the EHRC report into Labour's antisemitism to boot. What a state. pic.twitter.com/QrAo4fynZz

— Mike Katz (@mikekatz) May 23, 2024

From a locked acc:

"On Politics Weekly, Kiran explains that Sunak would rather get drenched than be compared to noted brolly loser Steve McLaren. Optics discourse is incredible"

Union Jack gazebos are a thing:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/165496541979

behold, the Racism Cube

Don't let Starmer know or he'll be doing his press conferences from inside one.

he already is, psychically

dismal

Keir Starmer needs you to vote for Reform on July 4th.

A vote for Reform is a vote to put Keir Starmer into power. pic.twitter.com/CGVoo5snGc

— Conservatives (@Conservatives) May 23, 2024

in fairness his politics are more or less identical to theirs

And I would have got away with it if it hadn't been for you meddling Conservative Party Central Office political advisers.

A more abstract approach would be better: "vote Labour, you get Starmer as pm" with Starmer getting a Starmer mask yanked off, revealing that this confirms that he is indeed Starmer.

^^
I'm giving this one for free, if my name was saatchi & saatchi I could charge millions for this shit!

I like that, you'll go far in this game

Still an opportunity for Paul Mason

NEW
 
Conservative HQ have emailed asking for candidates in almost 100 seats
 
When candidates ask when the deadline is, they have been told it’s 48 hours, according to 2 I’ve spoken to
 
Some Tory associations are pretty livid at having been left in such an unprepared situation pic.twitter.com/baBLr6TiMK

— Paul McNamara (@PGMcNamara) May 23, 2024

lol, only a matter of time before serial carpetbagger Mason declares that the only way to advance the class struggle is by running as a Tory candidate.

Islington North too, he could run against Corbyn after all!

It’s official!

https://www.islingtontribune.co.uk/article/jeremy-corbyn-why-i-am-standing-as-an-independent-candidate-at-the-general-election

Excited for the Lab right focusing a proportionate amount of time and attention on this.

I think it's from the paywalled Patrick Maguire piece in the The Times today, which Peter Oborne described as "devastating" for Starmer's premiership, love to hear it.

*mad at him xp

Starmer, such a spiteful little man.

Particularly galling to see that unctuous creep Douglas Alexander this morning, trotting out lines about the "dezizhionz of the NEC". Alexander, who along with his useless sister, was thrown out on his ear in Paisley and only managed to sneak back into Parliament over in Edinburgh at the last election.

... now using more boot polish on his hair than Nick Cave.

my very anti-migrant terf-y boss came in today shocked and appalled at the ICE killing over the weekend and I have been able to have a sensible conversation with her about it that may have sowed a few seeds about how Farage is actually p evil. Showed her the racism school stuff and now she has said she is questioning her usually very high views on him, which i think is a new breakthrough. Genuinely didn't know he was a racist, somehow. Didn't like that I showed her him praising ICE. Usually talking to her about absolutely anything remotely close to politics makes me want to bang my head against the wall.

just a reminder that people's views may be malleable and stuff like whats happening in America may be good to help reign in some of the more extreme views of people we can talk to.

Yes I've always thought Trump was Farage and Reform's Achilles heel - though the procession of terrible Tories into their ranks has become a factor too.

Yeah, they absolutely need Trump in place for their con to work. If he goes or there are consequences for people in his executive branch, it threatens the whole project.

"Genuinely didn't know he was a racist, somehow."

I am v suspicious of people who have a passing interest in politics and don't know Farage is a racist even before the school stuff came out.

(xp) They've got problems then because Trump is only going to deteriorate. Of course their golden ticket is Starmer.

my very anti-migrant terf-y boss came in today shocked and appalled at the ICE killing over the weekend

Had a similar conversation a few years ago with sister about how some people she knew were shocked by the US overturning Roe v Wade but didn’t know, or give a fuck, that abortion had been illegal in Ireland less than a decade prior. Needless to say, my opinion on these people is very jaundiced. Your boss sounds like a dipshit. Racism at home and tormenting trans people here is fine, of course. I doubt the malleability of such views; more this person has finally felt some well deserved shame about what she’s endorsing.

Racism is such an iceberg to so many of those giving Farage or whoever the benefit, they only know of the small tip perceptible to them. Idk how many (as opposed to the 'he was right to say it' lot) tho tbh

it's such a feeb position of privilege and i srsly doubt people are honest about it. you didn't know Reform are a racist endeavour? nah, just didn't care is what you mean

It’s fucking bullshit is what it is. People know what he is and what he stands for. They dont like the company that places them in? Tough.

I still believe in all that racist stuff but, this week, it's making me look bad.

I think people respond more to the tone and delivery than to the words, which they replace with their own. They didn't know these things because they don't know things.

The thing here is that very few people in 2025 view themselves as racist, the things you or I would say are racist they're gonna view as common sense, legitimate concerns, etc.

So no I don't think the boss in this example was never exposed to Farrage's racism before, she just wasn't exposed to extreme enough examples of it for it to qualify as such in her head. Sadly because of this I also doubt she's starting to feel shame about her views; those she will continue to view as reasonable and nothing to do with the stuff she's angry about.

it's very impressive how many of these cunts still get pissy about being called far right, i wonder if there were lots of bourgie Nazis in 1930s Germany giving it the old "how dare you accuse me of being a Nazi?" shtick

"Oh everything's called Nazi these days."

"i suppose you think aggressive nationalism and utter contempt for the humanity of non white people is far right now?"

lol wait Braverman's joined Reform

just sneaking in before the embargo on Tories starts

"i don't know her"

Yes I've always thought Trump was Farage and Reform's Achilles heel - though the procession of terrible Tories into their ranks has become a factor too.

― Wearing red lipstick and maintaining a neutral expression (Tom D.), Monday, 26 January 2026 10:59 (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

truly the Mr Snrub of UK politics

Braverman "I feel like I've come home."

just literally surrounded by the Rishi Sunak ministry

i wonder if there were lots of bourgie Nazis in 1930s Germany giving it the old "how dare you accuse me of being a Nazi?" shtick

I've been thinking about this too, I'm sure there must have been spurious distinctions bourgeois Hitler supporters would have used to distance themselves from the hooligans, but I don't think nazi would have been the term at stake.

One of the good things about the postwar era is the words nazi and, to some extent, racist have become universally signifiers of evil, we are taught they are bad in school and by the culture at large.

The troubling part is how these words have been hollowed out, being racist is Bad and thus for yer average racist's self image it is essential that he not be racist. So when a blatant bigot says they're not racist, they're not just trolling - they are as invested in deluding themselves as they are in tricking anyone else.

Easy target I know but couple years when the fash came to march in central London there was this viral video of two dudes shouting at each other, one going "white lives matter" the other "all lives matter". Feels emblematic of this, a person genuinely upset that there could be white supremacy at the white supremacy march they enthusiastically signed up for.

Probably someone in academia has gone deeper on this topic than my surface level analysis.

Is the above partly because of people not having that much of a coherent worldview or really understanding much of anything? I think there can be an overestimation of how much people know or even think.

I agree the deluding is quite distinct from the trolling, these are distinct personality types - but deluding implies knowing a bunch of things and hiding some of them from self. There's also just not knowing anything about anything

"One of the good things about the postwar era is the words nazi and, to some extent, racist have become universally signifiers of evil, we are taught they are bad in school and by the culture at large."

Its good but part of the reason this was accepted so easily was because the consequences were turned onto white people in Europe.

A lot of anti-racist work is very much along the lines of: KKK and Nazis are really, really bad and evil but there is no education on how that works in our anti immigration politics, to take an example, or how to connect the dots from Labour issues (except via unions but they don't exist much in the private sector), housing and other socoal issues, etc. So a space is then taken up by the media and we can see the consequences.

I mean it’s highly debatable how much “we” as in white Europeans really learned from the Holocaust. It’s not really understood widely as a problem with fascism so much as a problem with the Nazis. I was astounded recently to find out that the UK interned German Jewish refugees during the Holocaust because they were German, despite the fact the country they were born into was trying to actively exterminate them. Same with the Kindertransport and the UK asking the Jewish community to fund the housing and costs of the child refugees themselves. It seems to be taught as a discrete point in a story, rather than a nuanced one that acknowledges how it started and that it wasn’t a neat little problem resolved when the war ended, but was just one point in the history of fascism that we happen to have a lot of data for. But it suits an awful lot of people to pretend it’s the former, because white supremacy gets people to the ballot box the whole continent over.

Its good but part of the reason this was accepted so easily was because the consequences were turned onto white people in Europe.

A lot of anti-racist work is very much along the lines of: KKK and Nazis are really, really bad and evil but there is no education on how that works in our anti immigration politics, to take an example, or how to connect the dots from Labour issues (except via unions but they don't exist much in the private sector), housing and other socoal issues, etc. So a space is then taken up by the media and we can see the consequences.

Yes, that is pretty much what I was getting at re: "hollowed out". The terms themselves are universally viewed as terms for bad people but the actions and behaviours that actually define ppl as such are up for grabs. Which is how a Reform (or Labour) voter can distance themselves from the label.

And also of course, the emphasis on Racist People as opposed to Racist Actions, leading away from thinking systematically and making it all a matter of personal morality.

the Kindertransport is often cited (by lousy politicians that don't know shit about history) as an example of what a welcoming, hospitable country this was while the barbarism and slaughter went on in Europe. Just an absolute lie. Ordinary, non-rich Jews had no chance of getting asylum in the UK. There was an anecdote in the Nikolaus Wachsmann book about the camps, about a Jewish German who somehow managed to get to the UK to claim asylum in the 30's and was promptly deported straight back to Germany by the UK home office. They didn't want to know what danger he was in and didn't give a toss.

Will never forget Michael Rosen talking about what went on on Jersey during the war and being shouted down by Ian Austin at a select committee because this country is not like that.

I mean the whole dark horror of the Kindertransport is “sure we’ll take the kids (if you pay us to do so) but their parents can die”. Better than nothing isn’t that exonerating

A lot of kids "converted" to Christianity as well I've heard, not something that's highlighted

i was not in any way defending my boss and she is quite abhorrent in many ways. i think her only connection to politics is tiktok and "legitimate concerns" that others migrants, treating them as an unknown threat and she doesn't think that makes her racist or that she will have any concerns from the people pushing that agenda. its beggars belief that her cognitive reasoning ends there but it did. and seeing the ice shooting this weekend seemed to be the first time a bubble was burst for her, opening up more questions outside of her algorithm.

UK secret services never infiltrated the British Union of Fascists but had a long history of infiltrating and surveiling all left-wing organisations. Because the fascists were pro-monarchy, pro-landed gentry patriots and considered a more welcome, counterinsurgent type of presence than the lefties and commies obv. The UK elites are a tiny minority, but just an absolute blight on this country and one of the main reasons good things are not permitted. It's a crying shame they never got put into gulags or holes in the ground during the early 20th century period of revolutions.

Undercover officers infiltrated 124 left-wing groups but only three far-right groups, ignoring the National Front in the 1970s.

Many xposts, but this is a very good intro (and book recommendation) on the stigma, or lack thereof, of being a Nazi in 1930s Germany.

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1i97ira/did_nazis_in_1933_try_to_pretend_that_they_werent/

great link, thanks Maggy

also Comrade Alph absolutely bang on about how the bogeymanning of open racists has served to divert discussion from the mechanics of how white supremacy still underpins western politics

Reform Picks Former Academic Matt Goodwin As Candidate For Gorton And Denton
https://www.politicshome.com/news/article/reform-pick-matt-goodwin-candidate-gorton-denton

Eat another book time, I guess?

now I see why Farage accepted Suella Braverman into Reform, it was because she's so fucking horrifically evil that she makes Matt Goodwin seem like an almost personable and benign image of a constituency MP.

The gruesomeness of this gallery he's collecting is really something

Why haven't those clips of Farage praising Putin been exploited more? It looks like career suicide but somehow managed to fly under most people's radar.

Same reason the clips of him praising Trump and ICE haven't been exploited more, or his history of racism and antisemitism, or his personal finances. So many things that the media could use to end him if they just kept the heat on for three weeks.

Not sure how much the Trump will surprise people, he used Trump in the intro to his radio show

the portion of the UK electorate Farage appeals to mostly are spiteful old coffin dodgers that still buy paper newspapers. There was a brief period when parts of UK media were trying to wish into existence the idea that this rejuvenated Farage is appealing to young ppl, backed up by zero evidence. He polls horribly with young people. Even if the spiteful old bastards don't like Trump they will still vote for him. And since the death of the CONLAB Uniparty that's a big enough voting cohort to win a majority.