The "reply" from centrist supporters of Keir Starmer has been insufferably smug. This so-called parody account sums up their social media outpourings to a tee: local authorities don't have the power to stop government resettlement efforts, and therefore Reform are going to be on the hook for wasting council money on pointless and doomed legal challenges. This is a demonstration of stupidity and ideology getting in the way of the serious business of delivering local services, helping ensure they lose support when the public wise up to their antics. The fools!
Unfortunately, the foolishness sits entirely with the centrists. Yusuf and Farage know legal challenges stand next to no chance. They're not embarking on this campaign because they don't know the limits of local government. It's a wheeze to build the party and keep Reform in the news. Every time a challenge is dismissed, they get to posture as the common sense little guy battling the liberal elites on behalf of hard-pressed Britons. It's a recipe for generating more headlines in the right wing press, getting the rest of the media to dance to their tune, and forcing Labour to follow their lead - because the government are uninterested in challenging anti-immigration and anti-asylum prejudices - and embedding Reform as the only real challenge to the status quo come the next election.
Yes, there will be grumbles along the way in Reform's new local government base. It won't be long before the diktats from the centre clash with what Reform-run councils and local authority party groupings want to do. There will be rows about Yusuf's power, and the usual suspensions, expulsions, resignations, and denunciations. Authoritarian politics breeds dissension. But this won't affect Reform's standing. Those who voted for them in the local elections were not convinced by their pledges on potholes and Special Education Need pupils. They're also aware councils don't have much power nor appear to respond well to residents' needs, regardless of the party who runs it. Farage and friends know this, even if super clever centrists do not. For Reform's campaign is an effort by a party serious about winning power in 2029. Something that cannot be said about the choices Labour has made in government.
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2 comments:
A few thoughts:
1) The elite being uninterested in tackling the 'problematic' side of historically unprecedented mass immigration is how we got here. Bluntly, there are too many immigrants from backwards places who come for benefits of living in modern, liberal countries who are less keen on integrating with modern, liberal culture. People paying to be transported from safe countries on small boats is merely a lightning rod.
2) The over-dependence on dishonestly telling people it's racist to notice problems with free-riding and the resulting breakdown of social cohesion is counterproductive. People who notice may, or may not, be racist, but lying about the situation only reinforces Reform.
3) Some of the apologism is downright stupid. That many immigrants are productive and well integrated is not a defence for those who aren't. That's an argument in support of cherry picking. How other countries handle immigration, within their contexts, is a matter for them. Whether what Spain does is relevant to the UK depends on how comparable the economic and social contexts truly are.
4) Reform's lawfare style approach is something they copied from the left.
5) It's the piss-takes that will get Reform support, every time a degenerate is saved from deportation because their 'rights' trump their victims rights Reform get a win. Every time it appears the elite are indulging double standards due to 'cultural sensitivity' or moral relativism it will be evidence for the two-tier claims.
5) Lots of leftist flexes are deeply misguided. There's the 'I'm alright jack' vibe from members of the elite whose wealth insulates them from the third world moving in next door, then there's the virtue signalling useful idiots for whom free-riding isn't a problem because somebody else is paying anyway.
Why does this matter? Well, I think the failure to properly tackle that part of immigration that degrades UK society is building up a backlash against that part which enriches it. This decadent approach is more likely to lead to further authoritarianism, the only question for me is what type of authoritarianism (if you'd told me 10 years ago there would be a serious push for revived blasphemy laws I'd have laughed in your face)?
Another Kamo outburst which suggests that he believes everything that he reads in the Telegraph.
Farageworthy drivel about "the third world moving in next door" needs accompanying by some pretty convincing hard proof to be acceptable to anyone who hasn't been brainwashed by a long, constant stream of the right wing press' deliberate selection bias.
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