Comment by flir

What one might contribute to malice can normally be attributed to ignorance. I think the political class in the UK is just completely bifurcated from the public (not as much as the Tories were, but more than I though Labour would be), such that every decision senior Labour leaders are making is lauded in progressively smaller circles they keep and they're oblivious to the reality of the situation. They just don't feel the condemnation of the general public. I think current Labour genuinely thinks their popularity is higher than it is polling, and that they're doing what people want.

To caveate this, I am a Labour member (with the goal of advising tech policy such that they don't send our tech industry off a sharp cliff). I've spoken to a few in the cabinet now about growth and industrial policy, and there's no appetite for engagement outside of their think-tanks. I go to the conferences today, and in contrast to the Tory government days where the main topic of conversation was "what do people want" and "how do we gain seats in the election", it's now all navel-gazing about how "well" their policies poll (vs how well the party does, as if they're the same thing). It's baffling how out of touch the current power brokers are regarding the danger Labour are in. There's rose-tinted glasses, and then there's obsidian-tinted horse blinders.

If Starmer were trying to do this alone, then what are the other ministers doing? The UK is a parliamentary democracy, not a presidential government, so it's not just him, it's the rest of the Labour stooges too.

> It's very hard to explain why things happen in UK politics without assuming he is trying to tank Labour.

Or they just focused on getting into government with very little plan about what to do when there, and with a particularly inexperienced team (few former cabinet ministers in the elected Labour MPs).

The Starmer Cabinet's entire history points to the fact they they were engineered to take over in order to deliver 2 things: 1. The Holocaust of Gaza 2. A red carpet for Foreign Agent Traitor Langley Farage to take over.

If they cared about the country - they don't, they have complete contempt for the public - they would step down, dissolve the party and those in the party with a remaining qubit of morality put their efforts into atoning for their sins and crimes against freedom by working to get a Green/YP/LibDem coalition elected.

Every day they lolligag with this dead party is another vote for Reform - they know this.

something I think that needs to be taken into account here is that for 14 years the Tories made decisions far more harmful, far more disconnected, and--in isolation--far less popular with the public than anything Labour has even considered doing, and yet for most of that time actually gained in popularity. why? because most voters in this country read and read news sources in favour of right-wing politics, and even the news sources that are more "left-wing"--The Mirror and The Guardian--aren't as sycophantic anyway. if Labour had the sycophantic media support that the Tories or even Reform do, none of you in this thread would be saying any of this. you may ask "who even reads newspapers these days", but this is not really a useful point, as many people may not read them directly, but they still broadly set the narrative, the tone and the cycle, even if you're hearing it second or third hand via social media

this isn't to say that Keir Starmer is doing an amazing job. he's not. he's far too comfortable with authoritarianism and far too establishmentarian, and I would much rather someone like Andy Burnham in charge--even if you can trust his policy positions just as much as Starmer's from when he won the leadership--just because he has some energy and charisma about him, and you feel like he might be able to counteract Farage somewhat, but, at the same time, the level of scrutiny of Labour is incredibly unfair and before you criticise them yourself, you have to try and remember that you're viewing it all through that filter

I still don't understand how someone is supposed to benefit from such a thing. If I want to use some service, I'll sign up for an account with it. The only thing a centralized ID is going to do is let the service correlate me with a different account on a different service, which is exactly the thing that I don't want.

How is someone supposed to benefit from a thing whose only function is to reduce the friction against forcing them to correlate their otherwise-independent activity against their will?

That would require trusting a government such as the British one to implement it well. That's far too big an ask for them, so the current situation is preferable.

The annual cost is about 150 million, and they have a war chest of half a billion? If I remember correctly. Yeah, I don't think anything will do a dent, unless like everyone decides to never donate again.

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising/2023-24_Report

Best I can find

    $    132,466.01  Africa
    $  4,902,373.13  Asia
    $ 49,423,340.29  Europe
    $106,546,895.77  N.America
    $  2,509,299.46  Other
    $  6,082,217.76  Oceania
    $    944,844.22  S.America

The ironic thing is that in the UK/imgur case:

>The ICO also confirmed that companies could not avoid accountability by withdrawing their services in the UK.

Wonder if it could also apply to American news sites (and Japan's 5ch/2channel, I was told they engage in this as well).

https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2025-04-28/debates/2E7...

Rather than jump into the raging press coverage or as some see it raging press coverup - here is a link to debate in UK Parliament that indicates there is an issue.

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