Ken Haylock

I for one think the Epstein Ballroom will be magnificent. I love the decor theme of “what if Uday Hussein ran a Ramada Inn.” And giving it a theme song everyone will associate with it is a stroke of brilliance! “Thank Heaven for Little Girls” is very catchy.

I bet they do quite well with small drone bombs & small kamikaze drones - that's a lot of stand off from the pressure vessels. But no help at all if either the drone or the payload is big enough, or has enough kinetic energy.

It’s not ideal (understatement) but people who embrace racism as an end in itself are the minority compared to people who will vote for an offered alleged racist ‘solution’ to personal economic problems that nobody else makes a credible attempt to solve if they even admit they exist, are redeemable.

I think the point here is that this is a policy question - it is all eminently doable given the will - & you can do it badly or do it well, but that’s not a useful question if you don’t want to do it at all…

Something that would cause a collective howl of rage amongst billionaires & have ordinary people hi-fiving….

Oh, & defence.

But you see, I woukd say catharsis coukd be gained by a Chancellor surprise-windfall-taxing billionaires & multi-millionaires an enormous sum to invest in a social housing building program (I.e. council houses) & some renationalisation (on the cheap - e.g. wait for water to go bust then repo it).

Yes, agreed. The only purpose in engaging with Reform voters is surely to peel the redeemable away from them by hook or by crook..

So where were they all hiding during the economic boom of the 1980s & 1990s up to 2008?

If you believe the economics had something to do with this worldwide explosion of fascist demagogues (add Franco in Spain & the Portuguese bloke), you have to explain why extreme poverty makes you racist. I find it easier to believe it makes you turn a blind eye to racistm than it makes you racist.

Hitler & Mussolini grew out of the Great Depression, as did the French fascists who made France fragile enough to collapse when invaded, & Mosely's blackshirts. The US nearly embraced fascism, led by the Elon of his day, Henry Ford - who literally published 'The Protocols of the Elders of Zion'...

Wes Streeting gives me bigot vibes, yes.

If you create a generation that can't afford to heat their homes & feed themselves, or even rent a home at all, & then you treble down on telling them however they vote, nothing can ever or will ever get better & then you progressively make them ever poorer, you get angry populists. Cause & effect.

Anti trans hate is a real thing at the moment, probably because all that most people [think they] know about Trans people they learned partly from the hate groups. But ignorance & fear of the unknown is fixable.

When there was a national political consensus that racism was bad, you'd expect protest votes for the racists. I know institutional racism affects everything everywhere every day in ways that I as a white person never see or notice, but something has changed when racists are winning elections, no?

s/don't care about racism/care more about their personal economic circumstances than they care about racism/. So if you can offer them some real actual change in economic policy that might improve their lot _without_ the racism there's a good chance they will grab it with both hands.

Are you genuinely saying that 25% of the UK population has turned racist overnight? Or that they were always racist but they couldn't find the BNP or Britain First to vote for them until now?

By-election performances of racists/xenophobes in the UK since 1985:

1985–1992 NF remnants only <1%

1993–1999 Early UKIP, BNP > 1–2%

2000–2009 BNP peak + growing UKIP 3–6%

2010–2015 UKIP surge + BNP collapse 10–15%

2016–2019 Brexit Party (2019), UKIP remnants 10–20%

2020–2025 Reform UK 5–10%

No, for me it's a hard line. But I feel like I can empathise with people for whom it isn't after 18 years of being told to eat sh!t by those who tell them that their only actual permitted choices are eating sh!t & liking it or embracing racism. Because eventually some will switch sides...

You absolutely do tell them they have a point, just that that point isn’t the bigotry. Pandering to the bigotry & ignoring the economic distress is just stupid. Who is out there saying ‘I like racism but only a bit of racism so Labour has won me over’? Nobody…

I get the thing about everybody who voted for Hitler to restore German National Pride or to reduce inflation was still labelled a Nazi, but it is no coincidence that racist parties get a max of 12% of the vote in a few by-elections between 1985 & 2008 & Reform now has 38% of voters nationally.

Absolutely. Labour’s response though has been ‘no joy on the home or the living wage/cost of living thing but we can be racist, but just a bit less Racist than Reform, if that would help somehow?’…

The converse of that is a message to the Waitrose shoppers who want to lecture them along the lines of ‘If you do not want me to vote for these knuckle draggers who say they will ensure I will have a home & a well paid job then go on, offer me a home & well paid job without the racism, or STFU!’

Do you want to shame them as they vote in Fascists or convince them that the racists won’t make their lives better economically the way they hope they will?

We’re 17 years in & counting to a ‘no argument or alternative economic approach permitted’ Tory/Labour economic orthodoxy after 2008 that continues to enrich billionaires at the expense of everybody else & may do forever. People get desperate. After the event they live to regret it (see Brexit)…

So _I’m_ a racist because _I_ don’t want to drive non-racist Reform voters deeper into their arms on the theory that the only reason anybody votes for the racist Nigel Farage is racism?

Neither will I. But it’s hard to win over the ‘I can’t feed my kids & heat my home unless austerity ends so I have to vote to smash the system’ part of Reform’s base by calling them racists. And even some of the racists might be won over by a credible positive economic message!

It’s not about you & me voting for the racists, obviously - F that! It’s about bringing the people who aren’t racist but are prepared to vote for racists to get something else they want back from the dark side. Starmer seems to think doing Racism Lite will win Reform voters over somehow…

If you only vote for people who don’t do anything you dislike then you’ll only ever vote for yourself & even that is doubtful.. I’m not going to vote for racists myself because they disgust me but I have the luxury of my ability to feed my family not depending on Rachel Reed…

It’s like that portion of the Trump vote that would/did back Bernie or AOC or Obama because they want to burn a system that hurts them to the ground rather than because they love racism & bigotry…