We're Cooked - UK Elections 2026

[Mexicola]

Sadly that truthful and fair reporting is pretty thin on the ground. If the reporting had been truthful and fair, Corbyn wins an election, rather than some half-fucked haystack.

[jcnporter]

Yeah, absolutely. My hottest take is that we need the next election to be very clearly Greens vs Reform and I think the next election is coming early. That's why the Labour drama doesn't massively concern me - I genuinely think Labour were gone from the moment the Labour right won the party over and the best thing for UK politics would be for them to be buried.
Reform do well by being very vague about what their actual policies are, to an extent they can be what people want them to be.
A Green vs Reform election would mean Reform spelling out their policies, a very clear choice for people and a very clear view of what side our media is on. No hiding from what a Reform win would mean in that scenario.

[Mexicola]

My worry, one of many, is that if Reform win they won't simply hand back power at the ballet box.

If we look across the pond, Trump is clearly attempting every gerrymandering trick in the book in advance of the US mid terms in November and that's before he sends out the ICE goons to intimidate at the ballot-box etc. What MAGA learns, Reform learns from.

Once Reform is in we're through the looking glass and with an LGBTQ daughter and an immigrant partner (albeit one with a UK passport), I'm deeply concerned.

[fujee]

Our checks and balances are a whole lot weaker than the US, which makes the prospect of a turbo Reform mega-majority particularly worrying. But there are still three years to go until the next election and a lot can change in that time. It could get better, but it could also get considerably worse given the economic situation right now.

I err on the less optimistic side, if I'm honest. I have zero faith in this government to do anything other than tinker around the edges. Starmer is fundamentally bad at politics, has no long-term vision or guiding principles. I am not a fan of New Labour but even I can see the achievements of someone like Gordon Brown. Starmer is a million miles from that, and so are his acolytes. I mean, can you imagine a Wes Streeting government? We may as well call it a day for Labour.

For me, the party is in its death throes, similar to the Tories in many respects. It's seemingly out of ideas. Without a return to what it was meant to be - a party for the labour movement - it will quickly become irrelevant. It's already happening.

[Mexicola]

Wes Streeting is a car crash waiting to happen. On that we can agree

I have a horrible feeling things will get a whole lot worse before they get better. And just when you thought it couldn't look bleaker .. here come the tech bros and rampant AI. Just what we need. Narcissists in charge of killer robots.

Irony of ironies, I'm currently reading 'A World Appears' by Michael Pollen and although it only really touches on AI, he alludes to an interesting thought. If AI becomes conscious (and I note this week Richard Dawkins isn't sure Claude isn't..) it may end up taking a higher moral stance than it's human creators. He's an optimist is Mr Pollen.

But I'm digressing.

[Mexicola]

In other news....looks like Starmer may not last the next 24/48 hours. Some fairly big names asking him to go tonight.

[Negamuse]

I would feel so much happier about that if I wasn't sure they're going to replace him with Streeting. The guy who'll happily trade on his own rainbow credentials while selling out the trans community to get clout from the right wing. He's got the same streak Starmer has, the former human rights lawyer who's presided over all this. No ethics, no backbone, just completely spooked by the rise of Reform and dragging a formerly left wing party so far right it's lost all meaning, even though poll after poll clearly shows the reform votes are coming from ex Tories, the people who voted Labour have mostly gone green or lib dem.

Palantir now has access to all national health data, something which nobody but psychopaths wanted, and my friends who work for the NHS have been striking over. More copper leaves the walls, Peter Thiel gets richer. Reform will come along in a minute to blame it on brown people. Everybody loses

[Mexicola]

Not so sure the Reform votes are all ex-Tories. Sure, many, but not all. The Red Wall shift flies in the face of that a bit. Blyth Valley, Sunderland etc. Those are working class, traditional Labour votes crossing to the far-right in droves.

Agree on Streeting though. If anything is likely to seal a Reform win it's him.

[fujee]

Wales as well. Reform taking 34 seats in the Senedd is a bellwether if there ever was one.

[A_Northern_Soul]

Not so sure the Reform votes are all ex-Tories. Sure, many, but not all. The Red Wall shift flies in the face of that a bit. Blyth Valley, Sunderland etc. Those are working class, traditional Labour votes crossing to the far-right in droves.

And these are exactly the people who we should be questioning why they switched.. I remember after the Brexit vote - lots of my family and friends who are from these areas (and still live there) voted to leave and I was annoyed at the time. But I distinctly remember being at a friend's house not long afterwards - bearing in mind the people I was with there are VERY different to the environment I grew up in, socially & economically. There was a group of us all a similar age, fairly similar current demographic - liberal, middle class lifestyle; not rich but not struggling either. One guy - he's a lawyer - going off on a rant about how thick Leave voters were - and one of the reasons being leaving the EU would mean that his daughter would never get the opportunity to study abroad in Europe like he had and how much he resented Leave voters for that - and I remember thinking at the time that you have NO idea about the lives of the people you're ranting about. A year abroad to study Law in Geneva is *SO* far huge swathes of the country's life and it is people like my comfortable liberal lawyer friend who is the problem. It's something I'm sure I've been guilty of too. But I think over the last few years it's getting harder and harder to ignore social problems - the things we buy day to day are more and more expensive while getting noticably worse - there's just a feeling of everything being slightly degraded. And along come Reform saying actually all of this is the fault of immigrants - that feels like an easy solution to lots of people. Immigration IS noticeably higher in many areas at the same time as things ARE getting worse. Correlation doesn't equal causation and immigration isn't the cause of our enshitification, but it becomes an easy sell. So then you have the Greens who say actually the problems are caused by "The Billionaires" - which is another easy sell to a lot of people, but at the same time is a massive over simplification.

I think the reasons we are where we are are varied and complicated - as well as economics (Yes we need to tax "The Billionaires"!) - but there's such a lack of social cohesion and the Left don't help themselves at all on that front by "othering" the huge swathes of people who are leaning towards the likes of Reform; they're making it too easy for the far right.

** - edit to get my 2p in on Starmer etc. I don't see the extreme hate? He's just kind of *there* and I almost feel like that's what the country needs at the moment - some dull competence. He's not my favourite PM but I'd take him over Streeting any day of the week. All this chaos ultimately benefits the likes or Reform/Restore/Whatever other neo-fascists appear along the way. The optimist in me thinks Reform are a bunch of grifters and spivs who will get found out. If Starmer goes, there'll be calls for a general election and we end up with a Reform government, but the longer they can be held off the more likely it is they fall apart by themslves.

[observation]

Quite right, A Northern Soul. And I agree with lots of what has been said up here ^^^ from Mexicola, Negamuse and fujee too. Here in Glasgow there is a simple problem - the local authority have little money and are very poor at administering it. They want to blame the government in Holyrood but it's difficult because <it's the same party> and the "real blame" is with Westminster. That feeds the idea that the whole problem is 'caused' by Starmer, and I expect other areas of the UK have a similar political pathology.

Starmer, IMHO, is exactly what the UK needs right now - a technocrat with no overtly evil intentions. He has made errors, as all PMs do. Domestically, he has led through a severely disrupted global economy, a post-Brexit disaster that unfolds daily, and the aftermath of a disastrous series of Tory PMs. On that final point alone, leave him in peace to try and bring some stability. On the outward looking global front, I think Starmer has been really impressive - standing up to Trump while keeping the USA vaguely onside, trying to mend a few fences with Europe, keeping the UK out of the foreign military expeditions that destroyed the credibility of the Labour Party in the past.

Full disclosure: I used to be a loyal Labour voter. Tony Blair changed that for me, and I was jubilant at his first election win. I didn't vote Labour at any election since 1997, and never will. All that said: Starmer is not the problem here, and I want him to do well. It is noticeable that a leader who won the biggest election majority in history for Labour is seen (by the parliamentary Labour Party) as the problem. I think the PLP is the problem, and their short-sightedness and self-interest is repellant.

TL/DR; The Labour Party should leave Starmer alone and judge him by his mistakes and successes after a decent period in office - it's not even two years since the election. To the media: Yes, he may not be very exciting to comment upon, but we do not need excitement from a PM, we need stability and competence. Churnalism is the motivating force behind the urge to unseat prime ministers and football managers alike - the media needs a story. Dull competence is not a story. Dull incompetence is a story nobody wants to read. Fratricidal mania, anger, rivals with knives out - if journalists can't have conflict, they sometimes try to provoke it.

Yeah, we're cooked. And the chef went to the toilet and didn't wash his hands.

[Mexicola]

So let's start from the ground up.

(1) Can we all at least agree that Nigel Farage is a frog-faced-see-you-next-Tuesday that should be fed into a wood chipper? Can we all get on board with that at least?

[A_Northern_Soul]

So let's start from the ground up.

(1) Can we all at least agree that Nigel Farage is a frog-faced-see-you-next-Tuesday that should be fed into a wood chipper? Can we all get on board with that at least?

See - this is exactly what we need as a nation. A moral cause we can all rally behind...

[fujee]

Starmer, IMHO, is exactly what the UK needs right now - a technocrat with no overtly evil intentions. He has made errors, as all PMs do.

This is incredibly charitable.

Stability means nothing when you've been hugely ineffective in power. His errors are insane considering the majority he has in the Commons. Reinstating the two-child benefit cap, cutting winter fuel allowance, restricting the right to free assembly and protest, allowing the US to launch planes from RAF bases to strike Iran, hiring Peter Mandelson with full knowledge of his track record. There's more of course.

He's not really hated outside of rabid Reformers and the bot farms. But his widespread unpopularity is not unfounded, and some of those decisions above could easily be described as punitive, if not evil.

In any case, I am pleased to see it all fall apart quickly. People like me were called 'fleas' by those in his inner circle and we were told the door was open. If you're going to treat instinctive Labour voters like that, don't be surprised when they go elsewhere.

Corbyn was criticised to much greater extent for failing to unite the party, despite a great deal of his own PLP briefing against him. But Starmer's been even worse in this respect. I'll be pleased to see him go, even if it means we get someone awful like Streeting in the meantime. Yes, it's cynical but the right of the Labour party wanted it this way. More fool them.

[fujee]

Also, I really value that we can all have a respectful, good faith debate about this shit sandwich. It's a rarity on the internet.

I hope my previous post doesn't come across as dismissive or aggressive @observation. I really have no time for today's Labour party, but I do understand where you're coming from. It's a really prickly topic for me that I waste too much energy on, to be honest. I always try make a clear distinction between those who still support Labour and those administering the party.

And yes, Farage is a cunt. Of that there can be no doubt.

[Mexicola]

On reflection, I retract calling him a cunt.

He lacks both the warmth and the depth.

[Negamuse]

There's a word in my head and it rhymes with "hill o'beans".

Unrelated, of course, I'm just thinking of words.

[jcnporter]

Starmer, IMHO, is exactly what the UK needs right now - a technocrat with no overtly evil intentions. He has made errors, as all PMs do.

This is incredibly charitable.

I have to agree, to me the evidence shows that Starmer is a serial liar and a petty authoritarian bureaucrat with zero political instincts and little understanding of the role of Prime Minister.

[jcnporter]

(1) Can we all at least agree that Nigel Farage is a frog-faced-see-you-next-Tuesday that should be fed into a wood chipper? Can we all get on board with that at least?

Again, have to agree!

[jcnporter]

It's a really prickly topic for me that I waste too much energy on, to be honest. I always try make a clear distinction between those who still support Labour and those administering the party.

Same here, to be honest. I see the last decade as utterly wasted because the Labour right threw a hissy fit and drove us into PM Johnston and a hard Bexit, just so they could be in charge of the party.
Then once they had power, did absolutely nothing with it other than indulge their natural instincts for attacking the left, minority-bashing and flag-shagging.