Ah, but you see, the fact that it's so negative proves that the UK is much more free and democratic than Chyna, because people are ALLOWED to be negative!
Checkmate 
this post was submitted on 02 Apr 2025
142 points (100.0% liked)
news
23913 readers
726 users here now
Welcome to c/news! Please read the Hexbear Code of Conduct and remember... we're all comrades here.
Rules:
-- PLEASE KEEP POST TITLES INFORMATIVE --
-- Overly editorialized titles, particularly if they link to opinion pieces, may get your post removed. --
-- All posts must include a link to their source. Screenshots are fine IF you include the link in the post body. --
-- If you are citing a twitter post as news please include not just the twitter.com in your links but also nitter.net (or another Nitter instance). There is also a Firefox extension that can redirect Twitter links to a Nitter instance: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/libredirect/ or archive them as you would any other reactionary source using e.g. https://archive.today/ . Twitter screenshots still need to be sourced or they will be removed --
-- Mass tagging comm moderators across multiple posts like a broken markov chain bot will result in a comm ban--
-- Repeated consecutive posting of reactionary sources, fake news, misleading / outdated news, false alarms over ghoul deaths, and/or shitposts will result in a comm ban.--
-- Neglecting to use content warnings or NSFW when dealing with disturbing content will be removed until in compliance. Users who are consecutively reported due to failing to use content warnings or NSFW tags when commenting on or posting disturbing content will result in the user being banned. --
-- Using April 1st as an excuse to post fake headlines, like the resurrection of Kissinger while he is still fortunately dead, will result in the poster being thrown in the gamer gulag and be sentenced to play and beat trashy mobile games like 'Raid: Shadow Legends' in order to be rehabilitated back into general society. --
founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
Let me choose to be unhappy 
No
Interesting how the greatest democracies in the world literally never at any point in time ever have anything remotely close to approval from a majority of the population
Except for china of course
that's the genius of having a procedural democracy
Once you get over 50% approval you enter dictatorship territory, every 1% over 50% is 2% more dictatorial.
(This is just a smug anecdote because I rarely get the opportunity to do so in Hellworld-on-Sea) 
People were talking about the Starmer government seeming to be following the Trump one 'a bit too closely on some things' in the pub this weekend and I pointed out it was much more than that. It's on almost everything.
On slashing government, on foreign policy, on welfare demonisation, on AI boondoggles, on deportation & immigration, on the prosecution of protesters and anti-genocide activists, begging for tarrif excemptions in exchange for cutting all tax on American tech companies instead of arguing against them, and on and on.
Even the still active Labour people (including an assistant to an MP) were basically like, 'yeah, that's depressingly true but what else are we gonna do' (faux, there is no alternative self-pitying bullshit naturally) instead of even trying to fight the point or do the party line.
I was kind of surprised how fucking deep in the toilet even their morale is apparently.
In fact, they only got a little bit indignant when I concluded by pointing out that the major difference between the Starmer admin and Trump's is that Trump is still popular with his base and Starmer's got exactly fuck all.
Even then they didn't have much will to push back beyond some harrumphing and 'come on now'.
I enjoyed it tremendously. 
Even the still active Labour people (including an assistant to an MP) were basically like, 'yeah, that's depressingly true but what else are we gonna do' (faux, there is no alternative self-pitying bullshit naturally) instead of even trying to fight the point or do the party line.
I want to see their posts from the time around the Corbyn purge.
Supporters were mostly oblivious, 'Keir seems like a man of his word' types who reacted like I was telling them Santa Claus was a member of the Bilderberg Group when I would mention his craven, shady, intelligence-linked wrecker career before joining the Corbyn leadership.
The two active career Labour guys (including the assistant) weren't full 
Corbyn is a terrorist, but we're definitely 'the public agrees he's too divisive and radical' type wreckers who consistently put the boot in but stopped short of the more extreme stuff in case it the party takeover didn't work out. Ghouls-lite basically.
They are extremely full of shit and while I've gotten into it with a bit in the past, I was happy to just turn the screw a little bit and bask in their misery for once while grinning into my pint.
It's interesting to watch from across the pond. These people are trapped in a mental paper bag, scratching their own faces because they don't know what to do. It's so funny and sad because there is tons of capital, real infrastructure, and an educated workforce in the UK - they have everything they need to build a great society.
The thing is that they're true Thatcherites - they genuinely don't believe in society.
They see the neoliberal project as emancipatory (for them) because it theoretically broke a more aristocratic political power structure into a corporatist one where they could be lower-middle class (or occasionally 'working class' in the sense their mum was a teacher and they were quite comfortable or whatever) and through having the right grades and the right jobs and importantly the right opinions they can reach the heady heights of middle-managers for capital and the remnants of that aristocratic political power structure.
And they can justify whatever evil needs to be done as hatchetmen for billionaires and eugenicists and the US global hegemon because they 'made it' (although often only high enough up the ladder to make the same as, say, a private dentist who owns a practice or two), which conversely means that they can rationalise their reactionary cruelty by believing that everyone who didn't can be written off as lazy, shiftless types or unfortunate but necessary collateral of their supposed greater good.
The other thing that's pretty much universal amongst them is that they fucking love America. Sure, they grumble about Trump like they grumble about Bush, and tactically invoke very selective, mild indignation about British sovereignty vs being an obvious vassal when needed. But they nearly all dream of exiting British politics by getting a bullshit job that lets them live in the US. This lot of MPs (and previous on the right of the party) in particular are absolutely obsessed with this, because they're often close enough they can taste it when they're actually in government and connecting with think tanks etc. Them and their staff are constantly clambering all over one another to secure spots on various paid trips to the states from lobbyists, think tanks, Dem working committees etc.
In the months running up to the 2024 US presidential election when some Labour MPs and staff went to the US to put their forensic Midas touch on the Kamala campaign absolutely eating shit, one of them was sending selfies to our local non-league football team watching pub chat from three different MLS games they'd been given hospitality tickets for in the one week they were there before coming back and talking about how they spent 12 hour days campaigning and strategizing for the Kamala campaign.
One of them has a subscription to The Atlantic and started reading it in the pub a couple of times before I started taking the piss out of them for it.
You have no idea how deep the burgerland simping goes.
14% approval 88% disapproval 100% fash
the math checks out if you think about it a bit 
You can't make me do maths 
Could there be a flaw in the stand for nothing and wait to win by protest vote strategy?
Unsure, try cutting the NHS again and see if people like that
Coulda had a bad bitch 
Listened to the Deprogram today and apparently the uk media made a concerted effort to minimize discussion of him whenever possible. So I think Boris Johnson got a huge boost from not only simply being a Tory, but also being “the guy that’s on TV.”
I think this was always the game plan, the Tory government had run out of popular support that Labour was picking up, but if there was a real left wing opposition they may actually make people’s lives better which might make left wing policy popular - can’t be having that now, can we?
So Starmer is paradropped in with Wes Streeting and Rachel Reaves in tow to continue the glorious work of Osborne in transfering wealth from poor to rich using austerity, reduced workers rights and protections, slashing the safety net for people and beating down dissent with culture war cudgels. And in so doing they essentially provide no functional change from the Tories before them.
This is perfect for capital, they can continue their project uninterrupted, and it has the masterstroke of meaning when it comes round to election time again Labour will be miserably unpopular for continuing Tory politics, the Tory’s will still be the Tories. The people will want change - and so they should, it’s quite clear life isn’t getting better here, quite the opposite - and the only party (with any real support) seriously offering actual genuine change is Reform, which is serving serious hard right accelerated change.
This reactionary shift isn’t going to make anyone’s life better (if you aren’t a CEO or merchant banker at least), in fact far worse, but it is at least marketable as a change from the interchangeable Tory/Labour identical duopoly. So I should imagine with this message and the backing of the media machine they will sweep into power.
Then as the contradictions of capitalism on a dying planet become more unbearable, we can hurry along with our right wing facist government towards the eventual death cult ending as greater and greater populations of scapegoats need to be sacrificed on the alter of capitalism to fend off the inevitable collapse.
Don't worry, if they just keep making things worse eventually people will come around.
Ordinary bloke
Extraordinary job
How’s that third way triangulation going buddy? 