No, just the readers of the reactionary black-top press.
What's infuriating is erosion of civil liberties that has happened under both Labour and Conservative governments in the past 30+ years - I blame it on the fundamental design of the office of the Home Secretary - whose job-description is seemingly to always put matters of national security (and the reactionaries' opinions...) above such trivial concerns as privacy or liberty. Fortunately this trend can be reversed if an equivalent opposing office, a hypothetical "Secretary of Sensibleness", existed with veto rights over the Home Secretary.
I thought we came close with the new Secretary for Culture, Media and Sport, but it seems like a holding position for unwanted or up-and-coming MPs than a position of any consequence (London Olympics notwithstanding).
Is it really so much to ask for a democratic Socialist party that favours protecting civil liberties? One would think it's in the interest of the proletariat. Oscar Wilde would be in favour of it.
The issue here is that Labour governments under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown were decidedly NOT leftist. They were very much a Tory-lite neoliberal party. Remnants of those priests of a dying religion still plague the PLP today and spent the better part of Corbyn's leadership attempting to undermine him.
My MP is Angela Eagle. A self-described socially progressive lesbian that you would imagine would be on the side of civil liberties and democracy, yet her record speaks for itself;
- Refused to vote against Tory welfare cuts
- Voted in favour of the war in Iraq
- Voted in favour of the bombing of Libya
- Voted three times to block investigations into the decision to go war in Iraq
- Voted in favour of national identity cards
- Voted in favour of Theresa May's Investigatory Powers Bill (legalised mass surveillance of Britain)
She is the kind of 'leftist' that made the Labour party utterly right-wing.
If I lived in England (I don't), I'd be pissed I couldn't vote for the SNP. They seem to be the only sane party there. It would be interesting to see them gain seats south of the border.
It's a real shame what the options have been in terms of electable leftist parties and policies in the past few years, so I'd very much agree with you. As to what Corbyn is going to do about it, I don't know, but I'm not a pessimist in this regard.
These would be drawings of child pornography, just to clarify.
In terms of the principle, the actual content shouldn't matter in the slightest.
From the outside, hilariously, it looks like both sides claim the same ultimate goal.
But then again they might say the same about my wish to remain part of the union.
I value effective regulation, worker protections, considerations of civil liberties and democracy and I made a choice to vote remain in the EU knowing full well that it is far from perfect.
I trust the EU to act in my interests a hell of a lot more than my own country's shit-show of career-politician Eton schoolboys, unelected Lords and sycophantic royalists embodying the very notion of hereditary privilege.
The agitators mostly seemed to come from the second group but were happy enough to stoke the fears of the first.
Neither group appeared to have any coherent arguments to me.
Those on the (far) left in the UK see the EU as a fundamentally a capitalist enterprise as it is about free trade and ensuring supplies of cheap labour to keep wages depressed.
The UK is a mixed economy, we have both Capitalism and Socialism and we like it - our safety-net welfare state and the NHS save lives everyday.
EU membership is a shield for former soviet satellite states to join the West and escape Russian influence.
The main leave "argument" was £350,000,000 was being given to the EU and could save the beloved NHS - this turned out to be a downright lie.
Many of the other popular arguments were equally false and fearmongery about out of control EUrocrats legislating on the curvature of bannanas and attacks on the British sausage and that farmers would be better off outside the common market - all very jingoistic.
It has emerged that there was a lot of carefully crafted individually targeted Facebook adverts that played on voters fears derived from personal data held outside the UK (and outside UK data laws), sadly these went undocumented so we may never know the extent of the falsehoods or their level of influence.
The UK electoral commission has expressed concern over this type of campaigning as no-one knows what is being promised or how much was spent on it.
There has been an effort to try to document these dark ads for the recent election where they seem to have been much less effective.
Many Brits feel conned as the referendum was pitched as being only advisory but is now being taken as iron-clad and a 4% majority of those who offered an opinion is very little mandate to enact such major constitutional change.
As the realities for science funding, farming subsidies have kicked polls are reporting many Brexiters have changed their tune. Goldman Sax's relocation to Europe is a bellweather for the realities for the financial industry which is close enough to Tory hearts that one hopes they'll snap out of their dreams of Empire and Commonwealth.
Hopefully the staggering level of incompetence so far demonstrated by David Davis' negotiating team will be the rope that hangs them and we'll get a second real referendum.
The alternative Red White and Blue Hard Brexit promised by Teresa May is not good for anyone in the UK unless they are shorting the pound.
This is not really accurate.
Firstly, the majority that initially voted to leave was 37% of the population. As far as I am aware that number has slightly decreased in terms of supporters, but even if the opposite were true it is still less than half of the population that actively support leaving.
Secondly, these MP's are only 'pro-Brexit' insofar as they know it has to happen regardless of their own beliefs and coming out against it now would be political suicide. No matter what you think here, in this last General Election people did not vote for parties based on their Brexit stance. They voted based on whether they wanted 5 more years of Tory rule. Tht issue was a far higher priority than Brexit.
I'd have voted LibDem but you only get one vote and my main concern was "try to halt NHS privatisation" leaving me to vote against the Tories and so for whoever has most chance of winning against them.
There's no scope in General Elections for any nuance in voting.
LibDems openly supported this line, "vote against the Tory party".
Meanwhile in Scotland it seems SNP lost votes not because of their governance, per se, but because people were using it as a proxy for voting against a further Scottish referendum.
This doesn't work so well under the UK's First Past The Post system.
If you wanted to get the Tories out then feeling one was throwing away a vote for the Lib-Dems in a seat were they are too far behind is one argument for proportional representation.
Also the Lib-Dems lost a lot of trust with the coalition with the Tories, many left the Lib Dems as they felt betrayed by this.
That last assumption may end up not to hold water in the longer term.
Homegrown oppression over foreign freedom.
The only repeat referenda seem to be ones where: 1) a motion was denied 2) ammendments were made to change or garuantee parts of the motion 3) the motion was subsequently passed
In the anti-EU crowd, this has morphed into "repeatedly re-run a referendum until they get the result they want"
I'd be interested to see what authority creep you think is happening in the UK right now. I can see no evidence of it.
The UK has never suffered occupation under National Socialism or Soviet Union like most of Europe did so we don't have the same fear of authority creep, which is unfortunate because it absolutely is happening here.
People in the UK are infuriatingly trusting of their rulers.