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Comment by foldr

13 hours ago

Even leaving aside the unsavory views of the party you mention, it’s quite misleading (to readers who don’t follow UK politics) to suggest that there’s any hope of it winning an election.

> it’s quite misleading (to readers who don’t follow UK politics) to suggest that there’s any hope of it winning an election.

I wish.

Brexit was pretty unthinkable even just a few years before the referendum. And now… well, toss-up between the top 5(!) parties, because somehow the Greens and Lib Dems are polling at similar levels to Conservative and Labour, all a bit behind Reform who didn't exist a few years back.

And when bad times come, insular nationalism (both in the sense of xenophobia and autarky) poll well.

The world-wide bad-times storm is getting super-charged right now, though I can't tell how much this is malice vs. incompetence from the White House.

  • You can’t seriously be suggesting that a political party that most Brits haven’t even heard of has any chance of winning the next election.

    • "an election" (what you wrote first time) != "the next election" (what you write now).

      Next-but-one, perhaps. Although even for the next one, everyone's so weak I'd only put mild odds against them.

      I don't want them to win ever*, but failing to plan is planning to fail, and there's big money getting involved here, and the UK political system still hasn't caught up with the impact of social networks and foreign influence through them at all.

      And one of those social networks is run by someone who sees no problem calling for civil war in the UK, though he's currently supporting one of the other "I wish it was a joke party" parties.

      * Although I can also say that about Reform, where, if I still lived in the UK, if my options were them or the actual literal Monster Raving Loony Party, I'd pick the latter. Then again, that doesn't say much as I'd pick the Monster Raving Loony Party over the Conservatives, too.

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This defeatist attitude causes the situation we’re in.

Voting against someone rather than for someone is a sure-fire way to get some of the worst politicians in power as possible, they only need to be marginally less bad than the other candidate after all.

Restore Britain is a populist joke btw. Greens might be my side of the fence but they’re also populist. Hard to get air time as a small party without some form of sweeping emotional appeals and “common sense” thinking, even if it’s internally inconsistent and very broad.

  • Have you realised those in power right now are against you? And it seems to work very well for them.

    • No, I live in Sweden where coalition governments are pretty common and people tend to vote for the party they agree with.

      Same is true in the EU elections, since their system is more democratic than the UK one.

      I’m intimately familiar with the shortcomings of the election system in the UK as I am British, but I’ve experienced other formulations and I can see that this line of thinking enables the abuse you claim to be dispelling by allowing it to continue..?