What are people's thoughts on the political situation of the UK?

[Cubbage]

Since the beginning of the initial lockdown last year, I feel like many Conservative Brits have become more disenchanted than ever with the Tory government that has been in power for over a decade now. Obviously the more left leaning part of the populace has been denouncing the conservatives for years and even had a shot with a truly socialist visionary in the form of Jeremy Corbyn, but his 'failure' in the last election also seems to have set the scene for the catastrophic handling of COVID by the tories and seems to have massively tarnished their reputation even with staunch Conservative voters. However it also seems like Labour (sort of like the UK's Democrats) is appealing more to the right wing with their new leader Keir Starmer, who's values and ideals are a far cry from the left wing attitudes of Labour under Jeremy Corbyn. There is a very clear tug of war between orange and green values within the UK at the minute, but even so, the tories seem to keep coming out on top despite all the bad press and very obvious corruption. I imagine the only thing that could sway the right wings voting power is an elevation in consciousness, much like how it is anywhere, but it's interesting to wonder how and when that could take place, it definitely seems to be happening slowly but surely. Just wondering what anyone else's thoughts are on this and what people from other countries wonder about what's going on. Cheers!

[Enlighten]

It's always the anti-incumbency. Soon, People will be confused even more and might choose to not vote.

[vindicated erudite]

One thing I want to say about UK politics is that Brexit will be remembered as the great mistake. 

620,000 UK lorry drivers are being self-isolate due to COVID-19 which is causing some food shortages in rural England and Scotland.

UK produce is rotting the fields since Eastern Europeans are having their work visas declined due to Brexit. This is will cause a shortage fruit and vegetables in UK supermarkets if this continues. The Government doesn't seem to care about our already overworked farms since their new Australian-Anglo will see the UK import meat produce from the otherside of the world.

Brexit is also making it extremely hard to export and import products in and out of the EU. I wonder where this export crisis will take us. 

COVID-19 has wrecked the UK economy. Inflation is waiting is sneak up on us.

With Brexit, the UK has given up it's greatest weapon. Which is the ability to be the middleman of the world. 

TL;DR: The UK is one matchstick away from completely burning.

Edited August 2, 2021 by vindicated erudite

[lmfao]

@Cubbage I've heard that one reason people vote for Tory is because they want brexit to be done quickly 

[Cubbage]

@lmfao that was definitely one of the factors that won the vote for them, a lot of people over here were jumping on the Brexit bandwagon for purely ideological reasons. There is a big chunk of nationalist-minded people in the UK and lots of them were easily swooned by the Tories "Pro-Britain" mentality.  Labour was vague on its stance regarding Brexit so I imagine that will have lost them a lot of voters when Corbyn was running for PM.

[Cubbage]

@vindicated erudite fully agree with your sentiments mate, it feels like the UK is on the cusp of some radical events occurring 

[Consept]

The thing with the conservatives is that they only care about power, its really a game for them that theyre trying to win, Johnson, Cameron etc have all been groomed from a young age at schools like Eton to play this game, they dont really have an understanding of the average person passed how to manipulate them to vote. Now this can be considered a good and bad thing, bad for obvious reasons but good in the sense that they can be swayed if theres enough support for a cause. The green targets for example are quite forward thinking, there have also been a ton of u-turns on things like free meals for school kids in poverty. So in reality its terrible leadership because theyre just trying to cling on to power but at least they can be pressured into doing what the people want, this is cool when you get want you want but then they can also be pressured into disasters like Brexit. 

Labour is just more of the same, theyve gone more centrist with the new leader but he could be a tory and no one would notice. There needs to be a realistic alternative and there needs to be strong leaders who actually care about the people. A lot of the population has been whipped up into a nationalistic rage because of the fear-creating marketing that was used for Brexit, this unfortunately has created a divide in the UK. So there is a lot to be done, question will be how bad will it have to get before a radical change happens. 

 

[Cubbage]

@Consept awesome response, you really hit the nail on the head there.

[Danioover9000]

   There are some benefits to Brexit, like opposing EU trawlers from coming into British waters and raking out much of the sea life and corals here.

[LastThursday]

What the country lacks is choice. It's basically a two party system, and power flip-flops between the two. The Lib Dems are out of the picture now. One solution is to have more even power sharing and proportional representation (PR) so that alternative parties are more accurately represented. This is the norm in a lot of European countries. The Green Party would immediately get a boost in MPs if PR was in place, for example.

Brexit itself is a calamity, both in terms of firmly dividing the populace, and for costing the economy billions for no apparent gain (and probably mostly loss). But it's not a surprise, we live on an island, and that isolationist streak runs through the British mindset. The irony being we invented globalism. France is only 20 miles away, and yet we couldn't be more different.

Edited August 8, 2021 by LastThursday

[snowyowl]

1 hour ago, LastThursday said:

The Green Party would immediately get a boost in MPs if PR was in place, for example.

Also probably UKIP / Brexit party which did quite well in EU elections ironically, which were more proportional than general elections as I understand. There were far more parties standing in EU elections so more choice at both ends of the spectrum, less of a race to the centre. 

1 hour ago, LastThursday said:

Brexit itself is a calamity, both in terms of firmly dividing the populace, and for costing the economy billions for no apparent gain (and probably mostly loss).

We've been divided ever since we joined the Common Market, probably before then.  The main reason for the referendum was to try and end the internal division within the Conservative party. What else can we expect, politics is all about trying to find a practical and peaceful way through disagreements and different stages. Maybe it's the stage blue vs orange split behind this - you can't force the pace of development too fast - I should know, I feel a tension between blue & orange in myself lol! 

[Danioover9000]

@LastThursday

5 hours ago, LastThursday said:

What the country lacks is choice. It's basically a two party system, and power flip-flops between the two. The Lib Dems are out of the picture now. One solution is to have more even power sharing and proportional representation (PR) so that alternative parties are more accurately represented. This is the norm in a lot of European countries. The Green Party would immediately get a boost in MPs if PR was in place, for example.

Brexit itself is a calamity, both in terms of firmly dividing the populace, and for costing the economy billions for no apparent gain (and probably mostly loss). But it's not a surprise, we live on an island, and that isolationist streak runs through the British mindset. The irony being we invented globalism. France is only 20 miles away, and yet we couldn't be more different.

   Actually, Brexit is not such a calamity, because as it turns out, if we had remained in the EU, we would have had a higher rate of covid infections, and the production of vaccines would have been slower as EU would take more priority over the UK. Instead, because we separated from the EU, we were more secured against further spreading of the virus, and we had more initiative in creating the vaccine that is slightly out performing the EU'S version.

   I would also agree with even power sharing and proportional representation, however, this is not incentivized as France, Germany, Brussels are not willing to drop their historical rivalry with the UK, and vice versa. Most cultures and countries are just not ready for higher forms of socialism, as this is threatening for the survival of the collective ego of that culture. 

[LastThursday]

Yeah PR is about as sexy as climate disaster, I hope there's an upswell eventually and the system changes.

As with any sort of major shift, there's always pros and cons. The Brexit/pandemic timing is just serendipitous (if I can use that word) in terms of vaccine performance, it's blind luck. There may be eventual upsides to Brexit, but in the short to medium term it's pain all the way. Anyway, half my heritage is European so I can't talk calmly about Brexit without my blood pressure increasing. Call me biased.

5 hours ago, snowyowl said:

Maybe it's the stage blue vs orange split behind this

That's a good observation and probably some truth to that.

Edited August 8, 2021 by LastThursday

[Danioover9000]

@LastThursday

4 hours ago, LastThursday said:

Yeah PR is about as sexy as climate disaster, I hope there's an upswell eventually and the system changes.

As with any sort of major shift, there's always pros and cons. The Brexit/pandemic timing is just serendipitous (if I can use that word) in terms of vaccine performance, it's blind luck. There may be eventual upsides to Brexit, but in the short to medium term it's pain all the way. Anyway, half my heritage is European so I can't talk calmly about Brexit without my blood pressure increasing. Call me biased.

That's a good observation and probably some truth to that.

   And that is why there won't be any good compromises between the EU and UK, that feeling isn't just limited to you, it exists here and over there.

  And it's not blind luck, it's intelligent design, for both the vaccine research and the virus itself.