Showing posts with label general election 2024. Show all posts
Showing posts with label general election 2024. Show all posts

Thursday, 21 August 2025

GE2024 – Hopes and Fears

This is the transcript for my YouTube video "GE2024 – Hopes and Fears".

There is precious little to look forward to under Mr Kid Starver’s leadership but there are some shoots of hope to be found.  The Left may have been virtually swept from the party formerly known as Labour’s benches but the increase in the vote share for Left-leaning candidates, the increase in Green Party MPs from one to four and the reduced majorities in formerly safe Labour seats gives the progressives in the electorate some measure of hope.

Mr Kid Starver may be the Prime Minister now but on the Opposition benches is the spectre of the man he helped undermine and tried to destroy in the form of the newly-elected Independent MP for Islington North, Jeremy Corbyn.  Corbyn whilst still a Labour Party member had his hands tied to a significant extent in any attempt to hold the Starmeroids (similar to haemorrhoids, but a significantly bigger pain in the arse) to account.  No longer is Corbyn so restrained and he’ll no doubt make sure that he’s a thorn in their side for the next five years.

Mr Kid Starver will also find himself under greater scrutiny on his pro-Israel stance from the so-called Gaza Block of MPs who were voted into their positions on a pro-Palestinian mandate, a group of MPs that, ironically, he created.  Several more thorns in the side to contend with.

Of course, the landslide in terms of seats was not based on a love or even like of Mr Kid Starver and his party but on the almost total collapse in the Tory vote, the Tories having become so corrupt and toxic that even their voter base couldn’t bring themselves to support their favoured party and either stayed at home wallowing in self-pity or moved their vote to Reform UK or another party although precious few moved to Labour.  The rise of the independent candidates, several of whom were former Labour candidates purged in favour of Starmeroid drones, cut into the Labour vote count, reducing some former Labour majorities to a mere handful of votes, setting the stage for an electoral defeat at the next General Election if the party formerly known as Labour doesn’t deliver real change for the working class and disadvantaged.

At least one positive thing to come out of the political chaos of recent years is that there seems to be very few safe Parliamentary seats of any colour.

Unfortunately, the number of fears we now face are growing.  Apart from the dozens of MPs for the party formerly known as Labour returned to Parliament, which is bad news in itself, some of the more swivel-eyed loons from the Tories also got returned to Parliament including Dr Death himself, Iain Duncan Smith, the man personally responsible for the premature and preventable deaths of 148,000 benefit claimants.  Former Labour MP Ed Balls Up reportedly said that not taking Dr Death’s seat was a price Mr Kid Starver would consider worth paying which shows the level of hostility towards the Left within the Blairites even now but they can voice such odious opinions because they’re not the ones paying the price, are they?

We now have a weather vane as Prime Minister, a man who changes his position depending on the strength of the gust of political wind that does him the most good personally and who seems unable to lead, as evidenced by the fact that he waited for Sunak and Biden to give their positions on anything before he would commit to a position himself.  Not what the UK needs right now.

And who else has influence over Mr Kid Starver?  He started his term in office saying he was going to withdraw the objection to the arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant for war crimes but, a couple of days and a visit to Israel by David Lammy later, the objection was back in place.  Does Netanyahu have influence on UK foreign policy?  And, if so, will the UK be run in the interests of the citizens of the UK or in the interests of the state of Israel?

Mr Kid Starver believes nothing, stands for nothing, promises nothing and that’s what he’ll deliver – nothing.

Mr Kid Starver’s policy position prior to the election was to promise little to nothing and, despite using the word ‘change’ as his slogan, was offering nothing but continuity Tory austerity policy.  Many of his Cabinet members are funded by Big Business, private healthcare companies or pro-Israel lobbyists which means that policy will be formed on the basis of what’s best for their donors and not what’s in the interest of the country.

Wes Streeting, the man now in charge of the NHS, is pro-privatisation of the NHS and, why wouldn’t he be, he’s paid for by private healthcare companies.  Ironically, the party that gave us the NHS and the welfare state, will be the party, albeit a bastardised version, that finally takes it away.  The NHS will falter and die, not due to lack of investment but due to a large percentage being creamed off to pay the profits for the private healthcare companies that Streeting will bring in.  The service will suffer and health outcomes will tank.

Rachel Reeves is unwilling to do what’s necessary to reverse the decline in public services because she has set herself fiscal rules that are meaningless, tying her hands when they don’t need to be tied. 

The sick and disabled benefit claimants so harmed by the last 14 years of Tory cruelty can look forward to more of the same if the pre-election rhetoric from Liz Kendall is to be believed.  She was the person who stated that the Tories were too soft on benefit claimants so it seems that, now she’s in charge of the Department for Work and Pensions, we can expect her to tell Dr Death to hold her beer while she shows him how many benefit claimants she can drive to a premature and preventable death.

And, finally to return to Mr Kid Starver himself, we can look forward to him wringing his hands and complaining that his hands are tied because the Tories crashed the economy and his party has to stick to Reeves’ meaningless fiscal rules.  He’ll say that we can’t afford to lift hundreds of thousands of children out of poverty and that it’s a “difficult decision” or a “tough choice” when that’s not true especially when he’s just decided to send more money and arms to Ukraine.  Where’s the money for Ukraine coming from, Mr Kid Starver?  If we can’t have nice things because there’s no money, how can we send money to Ukraine?

We can look forward to the UK’s reputation on Human Rights and international law descend to the depths of Hell with his unwavering support for the genocide being perpetrated by Israel on the people of Gaza and the blind eye he’s turned on any racism other than anti-Semitism. 

Given his extremely thin skin and his abhorrence of dissent, we can look forward to the cracking down on our right to protest and there’ll be further attacks on democratic processes if his anti-democratic actions within his party are any indication.

What we have in government now is a vain, Narcissistic, power-crazed, control freak with a hair-trigger temper who’s economically illiterate, lacks compassion and empathy and has absolutely no backbone.  A Prime Minister who is so weak he can’t take criticism or opposing views and who’ll have his hand on the red button controlling our nuclear arsenal.  Let’s hope no other leader upsets him or he might nuke them in a fit of pique.

If I’ve painted a bleak picture of the future it’s because it is bleak.  Care to join me on the fringes and watch the UK burn?

GE2024 – Final Thoughts

This is the transcript of my YouTube video "GE2024 – Final Thoughts". 

This year’s General Election truly was the culmination of the last few decades, the slow rightward drift of UK politics until reasonable political stances are considered extreme Left and the extreme Right is now considered standard operating procedure for the Tories. On top of that, lies that were always a part of politics, regardless of the country, have become so prevalent that no one bothers to push back on obvious untruths in political discourse.  Once upon a time you could barely spot the lies until they were pointed out to you but now the lies are so barefaced and blatant that they are accompanied by flashing neon signs and a klaxon declaring “BULLSHIT” at top volume yet they are still ignored as just something politicians do.

The Rightward drift of politics and the constant lies have also brought us to the point where there is no trust left in politics, not that there was much to begin with.  There’s little left of the thin veneer of democracy that we laughingly considered we had and the electoral system we have has delivered a result that is hardly representative of the electorate.

The Tories are gone.  Too bad, so sad, don’t let the door hit you on the way out.  The party formerly known as Labour has taken power on what seems to be a landslide until you realise that the so-called landslide victory has merely highlighted the corrupt and broken nature of the UK’s electoral system.  The massive majority now held by the party formerly known as Labour is based on the lowest voter turnout for 20 years, fewer votes than Corbyn’s Labour got in 2019 and a smaller vote share than Corbyn received in 2017.  The fact that Corbyn’s Labour got more votes in 2019 yet resulted in a massive defeat and loss of seats whilst the party formerly known as Labour received fewer votes that results in a massive win and a large majority is an artefact of the First-Past-The-Post system that we have been lumbered with for years because it has produced a system that favours the two main parties, led to increasingly disproportionate allocation of Parliamentary seats and penalised the smaller parties who have to get a disproportionately high number of votes per Parliamentary seat compared with the main parties.

It’s time that the First-Past-The-Post system was changed to allow a truly representative Parliament even if that means more Members of Parliament from the Far Right or Far Left.  Proportional Representation would be a far more democratic system and now that the Tories have been almost wiped out even they are moving towards a pro-PR stance with only the party formerly known as Labour against the idea.

We need a better political system and better people for our politicians neither of which will happen unless we demand them.  What we have isn’t working but what we need isn’t in the interests of career politicians so we have a fight on our hands or my fears will be only too real, however, that’s the subject of my next video.

GE2024 – Excuse me but haven’t you forgotten something?

This is the transcript for my YouTube video "GE2024 – Excuse me but haven’t you forgotten something?". 

I don’t know about you but I’ve been watching a lot of coverage of the bun fight that we call the General Election (or at least I had until a couple of days ago) and I noticed a glaring omission in the offers put forward by the main parties.

I’ve heard culture war crap from the Tories (Blue and Red) and I’ve heard a lot about the Rights of different demographics of voters that they are vying for with one exception – the disabled.  Now I agree that the Rights of the LGBT (and whatever new letters have been added this week) and BAME communities are important as are the Rights of the groups I haven’t listed to keep this video as short as possible but, I’m sorry, the Trans community is a small one, dwarfed by the size of the disabled community, yet I have seen Trans Rights highlighted but not Disabled Rights. 

It hurts me to buy into a hierarchy of Rights position especially as I have a Trans Facebook friend and Facebook friends from the wider LGBT and BAME communities but I’m disabled and I despise the fact that my community which cuts across all the other demographics is being ignored in this election (if I’ve missed any coverage on disabled Rights, please let me know in the comments with as much detail as possible so I can look it up for myself).

The Tories have scapegoated, tortured and killed many people over their 14 year reign of terror but the rhetoric coming from The Kid Starver Party suggests that it’s a situation that may continue or even worsen under a government under their control.  Disabled Rights have been trampled on by the Tories, especially if you happen to be a disability benefit claimant, and those Rights will all but disappear under another 5 years if they win the election.  The situation doesn’t look as if it will change under the Red Tories either.

It would be nice if the disabled could be offered something other than more of the treatment they’ve been getting over the last 14 years but no one seems to want to talk about the disabled except in a negative light if they’re mentioned at all.  Isn’t it about time that changed?