Tag: tories

Mediocrity in British politics

By Daviemoo

The British political establishment continues to decline before our eyes, and though at the beginning of 2023 a national revolt or general strike seemed inevitable, confoundingly these rumbles of discontent have ebbed- but the steady stream of stories highlighting Westminster corruption continue, today with the news that ex Attorney General and now deportation enthusiast Suella Braverman has been breaking laws in a “limited and specific way” again.
One must begin to ask at what point we look at the decimation of political standards which, coincidentally, fits hand in glove with the erosion of our standards of life and question when we begin to fight back bodily for a country we know lies under the mire of corruption spilling from our political leaders.

I’ve already had pushback for mentioning the Braverman story. “There’s bigger issues going on than something like speeding” I’m told. But it’s not about that one incident- it’s never been about the one incident.
One thing like this would be enough to sink any other party’s minister: Diane Abbott had weeks of racial abuse for drinking a can on a train, Gordon Brown was decimated in the press for calling a woman bigoted on a hot mic. So the first bone of contention to note is the slavish attitude that terminally mediocre politicians like Braverman are given by the press and even their own party- the double standardisation of who is castigated and when we’re given the old eye rolling forbearance of our complaints. Let’s look to Boris Johnson who weathered the scandal of breaching laws he himself implemented to stop the spread of a virus which took the lives of hundreds of thousands of our countryfolk- Braverman went to bat for him, scoffing at the idea of his law breaching- much as she did during her defence of his “damn them all” Brexit strategy.
Secondly though, it’s not just about the hypocrisy which threads every damn thing the conservatives do- the “I can do it but not you” serfdom wound around their reign, because one instance of hypocrisy is, as the pathetic weasel that is Matt Hancock described of his own disgusting dereliction of duty, “only human”- it’s the never ending, always expanding patina of lawless indecent behaviour which has typified this radical, useless government.

The conservatives hold everyone else to standards they fail to meet. Johnson broke the law not just with Partygate but with PPE contracts, with an arguable churlish attitude over protecting British lives when he ignored a joint EU/UK ventilator scheme, he fell foul of the laws around his flat refurbishment paid for by a tory lobbyist- and what sank Johnson in the end? His flipping appointing of a man he knew was a sexual pervert to his closest aides, with the wink wink dismissal of the man’s propensity for sexually assaulting his colleagues. Then we had months of absolutely no leadership as the conservatives collectively decided to let the country falter under a cost of living and cost of heating crisis. After a juddering competition where even ex-“moderate” tories like Penny Mordaunt gleefully carved up any decency they had and threw it to the pyre of potential governance, Liz Truss inexplicably emerged on top, perhaps winning because of her repeated demonstrations of propensity for throwing her own beliefs in the sewage pipes formerly known as the British coast- an ex republican who paid cringeworthy deference to the royals, an ex remainer who sold out common sense for popularity like so many other awkward dolts, Truss’ time in power was underscored not by myriad small scandals but by the echoing shotgun blast she delivered to the throat of the UK economy.
Truss and Kwarteng’s blazing stupidity will echo across British bill payers’ lives for a generation, as she melted down our banks in one fell swoop. A decent political would have quietly resigned and gone to live somewhere far away. Truss is now attempting to restyle herself as a misunderstood genius, appointed at the wrong time- I personally get the same vibes from Truss’ redemption arc as I do every awkward tweet from Elon Musk from his large and no doubt echoingly empty home. There’s as much collective genius between Truss and Musk as there is sexual chemistry between me and fitness model Ken Bek- and he doesn’t even know I exist.

Finally Truss slunk awkwardly out of the job and the role- the top governance role in the entire UK I may add, the job reserved for the best politicians we have, the most able, brilliant minds we keep on shore- was handed perfunctorily to Rishi Sunak, a man who ostensibly played a role in the Bankers crash that necessitated austerity. Sunak was described as a “winner” by Sky’s Beth Rigby recently- an irony. Can you call it winning when you have every single thing handed to you whilst you lay prostrate, sticking your nose up at the idea of having working class friends?
Sunak fucked up his banking role in tandem with so many others that we had a world wide recession, he married someone else who is eye bogglingly wealthy, as chancellor he open handedly threw public finance into the sea and continues to float on the idea that he came up with the furlough scheme. Whilst the scheme was good, its no less than I’d expect from a mildly talented chancellor and I saw it with a pall of dread, knowing that it would lay the groundwork for more predictable tory gutting of an economy already threadbare since 2009. And what has the illustrious Sunak done with his time in office? Brexit prevarications, bending over for Braverman’s ERG racket, scandal after scandal from the front benches to the back- and of course, a second FPN for his casual lawbreaking in the back of a car, not to mention we’ve never heard the conclusion to his “oops I forgot to declare my actual domiciliary status correctly so my wife and I underpaid our taxes” saga.
It’s said that Sunak is a big fan of the Star Wars movies- one wonders whether he’s rooting for the plucky rebels or sees himself in the shiny bleak surfaces of the empire’s ships – I know which side I think he’s on.
It just seems ironic, doesn’t it: seems to me that the party of law and order has something of a problem in adhering to the law.

The problem with British politics is that we’ve normalised weak, average people in politics. We jeer at the corpse haired dilettantes like Fabricant, we mock the 3 IQ on a good day ruffians like Gullis, we mock 30p Lee and his ridiculous half a weetabix mixed with some dehydrated milk, poor person tears and Kleenex lunches- and the stumbling, stuttering and painfully insincere speeches that Sunak awkwardly meanders through: how sad, though, that these people are meant to be the brightest minds in the UK, the most talented and able of our political leaders. The woman currently in charge of women and equalities thinks women should grin and bear their menopause (lets see how quick your tune changes in a few years by the way Kemi), our current chancellor took an open kick at the backside of our NHS workers in 2015 and 2016, the chancellor before him neglected to pay his taxes- maybe it was this slip of millions of pounds in country revenue that endeared him to Sunak who pulled the same trick?

Our politicians aren’t mediocre. Mediocre would be a dream, a gift, a premium upgrade. We started with mediocre and over the recent years have paved way for establishment dilettantes, clinging to bygone eras where the working class was widely too focused on living to fight back- and they saw those heady days of political betterment on the backs of the workers as an aspiration, not an aberration.

Braverman, Gove, Baker, Dorries, Johnson, Truss, Kwarteng, Badenoch and more- all of these names sit in an ever growing pile of political scandal, every day they tip their hand more to the obvious, indefatigable truth that they cannot handle power because they seek to bend it against those they see as inferior or simply ignore it. The conservatives have had their time, been able to try to prove themselves to us over and over again, had facelifts, shiny new slogans, shuffles and reshuffles, they’ve changed their promises, broken the new ones… they are dead in the water, but still swimming: exactly when do we fish them out, discard them as a bad job and get some new guppies in?

Ultimately, the status quo of British politics is woeful across the board. But even mediocrity would be a huge improvement upon this bunch of collective charlatans. The question isn’t if, but when- and between the haemorrhaging of damning news from the front bench and the slow bleed of taxpayer money to projects like “helping the private companies improve infrastructure” (that’s why you were privatised in the first place?) one has to wonder exactly what the conservatives have to do short of collectively dressing like the hamburgler and going door to door to take our valuables, for us to make the move to oust them once and for all.

None of us needed leaked WhatsApps between a right wing hack and a woeful government minister: zoom out.

By Daviemoo

The Lockdown Files are important- nobody would deny that. Equally, we cannot lose sight of a broader, more terrifying picture in the swell of information from Hancock’s phone. The government continues to attack trans rights, demonise “small boat migrants”, platform ignorance and sow deeper division over Brexit. By all means pay attention to this story- but don’t forget about the rest.

No information in the “lockdown files” has shocked me. So Hancock leaned on the press not to report an influx of cases due to Sunak’s “Eat Out to Help Out” scheme- is anybody shocked that “people mingling during pandemic spread the virus” was a thing? Hancock should be arrested for industrial manslaughter- so should Sunak. Families who lost loved ones due to their hare brained schemes and self indulgent idiocy should be allowed to sue them. They should be castigated, reviled from high to low, never allowed to forget.
But these are not shocking revelations that I don’t think anybody ever expected: I mean, really, dear reader- is it absolutely mind blowing to you that Matt Hancock, a man shallower than a Wilco’s spoon pushed to look after his public image? I already knew the man was a seething moron because I had to listen to his waffling prestiges on the news every day. Are you particularly surprised that our Prime Minister Sunak would watch your nan choke on her pleural fluid if it meant an extra £12 in taxes collected? It’s about as surprising as finding out that, shock horror, Boris Johnson likes to shag a lot of people he’s not married to.

But the government’s behaviour prior to and during this pandemic has demonstrated exactly who they were, are- and will continue to be.

Rather than knuckle down, they buckle- refusing to review economic models that have been thrown into abject chaos with the double fisted throat punch of brexit and the pandemic. Instead of focusing on how to protect and enlighten the British public, to combat disinformation, to improve British lives- they sow culture war seeds then use the sweat of red faced nationalists to water them. If it’s not small boat migrants or trans people or “THE GAYS” it’s people of colour or women, all bothering everyone with our polite requests to be treated with a modicum of respect. The government and a compliant media relentlessly feed us with the idea that we need to pull ourselves up with our bootstraps, that it’s nobody’s fault but ours – unless its migrants or LGBT+ people or our mothers, sisters and daughters.

The most frustrating part of the Lockdown Files is that it’s predictably being used by the media to justify a narrative that we were forced to abide by inhumane conditions. Perhaps we were- but what alternative was there? Should we have all taken the risk, never followed any restrictions and just hoped that getting infected with covid multiple times wouldn’t kill or disable us or our loved ones?

Lockdowns were awful. I grieved for my mother in total isolation, couldn’t even hug my father or touch her coffin to say goodbye to her. I didn’t do it lightly. I did it because my mother’s death from cancer was not a simple passing into the afterlife- her body was failing and, much like covid, her lungs filled up with pleural fluid and she drowned in front of me. And if I knew that there was a one in a million chance of suffering that fate, much less passing it on to someone else, someone with a wife and kids, I’d never have done it. I don’t know how much the government misled us- I’d like to. But I don’t regret being in lockdown if it meant that I didn’t get covid more (I’ve had it twice and am currently trying to find out if I have permanent lung damage from last time) and that I didn’t play a part in making more deaths inevitable.

The tories are scum. I’ve no doubt they manipulated us- because that is the essence of the tories. But they didn’t need to do it by enforcing lockdowns… The sleepwalking public in the UK has allowed them to decimate our protest and strike rights, made barely a peep as they enforced harsh new voting laws which currently have an estimated 2 million people without ID, they have unleashed a hurricane of hatred towards minorities and vulnerable people. All of this in plain sight, all of this widely spoken about.

As the tories continue to firm up on their nonsense plans to “stop” the small boats “crisis” one has to roll their eyes. Today, Braverman was quoted as stating that she hopes to “break the business model of people smugglers” with harsh new directives aimed at punishing… the people they smuggle?
Firstly, if you aren’t going to do anything to the people smugglers one would assume they won’t care. Secondly- people smugglers. Not known to be the nicest of folk. They don’t and won’t care what happens to the people who get here- because they got paid already.
Thirdly- there are ways to easily deal with people crossing on small boats. Opening processing centres in key countries would mean that those seeking asylum could do so from abroad and be retrieved should they be successful.
But the government does not want to solve the “small boats” issue. Because if they did, who would they blame for their uselessness?
The moment the government actually makes a depreciation in small boat crossings it will be hailed as a victory but they will never actually try to solve the root issue- because these crossings make a convenient scapegoat.
The same with every other minority with whom the government is playing chess right now.

From transgender rights and equalities being the subject of casual debate now, to Badenoch, our “women and equalities” minister who ignores myriad studies about benefit schemes for those suffering menopause, who cheers the bravery of a woman who says she would vote against equality for lesbian, gay and bi people- this government is utterly bereft of policy, they are without direction and vision and rather than any attempt to do better, to help the British people – they unfurl new banners to rally behind in culture war after culture war. The conservatives themselves are the rot at the center of our society- Boris Johnson was the first prime minister found guilty of breaking the law in office, Sunak has now broken the law twice. Braverman has been warned her rhetoric is akin to that of Adolf Hitler and she “refuses to apologise for it”. Hancock mocked the British public, saying we needed to be ‘scared into compliance’- treating us as cattle, rather than human beings with whom he could reason.

The conservatives are not good for the British public- they are malignant, a stain on our country. They help nobody, stand for nobody, stand for nothing. They should rightly be punished for every scrap of information leaked in the lockdown files- but this is not their only transgression, their only crime. They have spent years letting us down, severing our ties to a better economy, a brighter future, deepening our immersion in fake news. They play to the basest crowd, ignoring the majority of the UK who are decent people wanting for better. So if we are to hoist them by their own petard, let that petard weigh heavy with the shrapnel of the tories in totality- not a mere sliver of their crimes, neglect and abuse.

Dear Labour…

By Daviemoo

Politics in the UK is in tatters.
Everyone- from the people I hear discuss it in the streets, to Lord Heseltine on TalkTV, can see that. It’s hardly a controversy to point this out, the intellectual equivalent of leaving an apple on your desk for weeks, watching its skin dry, pucker, rot- then, one day, for no particular reason suddenly jumping up & exclaiming “my goodness, this apple is mouldy!” It’s played out in full view. Amongst many problems including the deep and intrinsic winding of the far right around key positions like Home Secretary, that rot has pushed people who used to be more radical in their leftism- when it was easy, in full swing in the political sphere- into centricism.
When you number amongst the dreaded far left who are demonised across the board, what is one to do when the leader of the Labour Party says “like it or lump it”.

Firstly let’s start with a disclaimer. Yes there are idiots amongst the far left. There are also total muppets amongst the center left, dicks aplenty amongst centrists, wankers galore amongst the centre right- and I dont think we need to go into the far right do we. No, I don’t condone the actions of twitter incels who call themselves far left but act like misogynistic weirdos, who spam people’s comment sections, who slurp at the shaft of weird totalitarian figures of communist atrocities past and present. It’s weird behaviour that I don’t understand and I don’t associate with my politics. If you want to think that because I call myself far left I’m lumped in with them I will not lose one iota of sleep over it.

The article Starmer wrote in the Times is misrepresented in several places- but it’s hard to know that considering it’s insultingly behind a paywall. It’s all well and good saying “if you dislike how I run my party you can leave” then monetising that behind a screen that stops you reading it, hardly a brave callout to clear off if you have to pay the Times of all people for the pleasure.

The times journos and pundits sell it as a kiss off in its entirety to the far left. It’s not that, the article itself is a celebration in strides made against antisemitism in the Labour Party. Whilst I’m happy to hear moves have been made to deal with antisemitism, which is disgusting and must be rooted out in the most aggressive terms, I can’t speak to that- I’m not jewish, nor am I a member of any political party and I prefer to take my notes about how to respond to antisemitism from Jewish people.
The only way to find out if antisemitism has improved in labour is to listen to jewish voices. Some are happy, some are not and that’s entirely their verdict to make.
What I found consternating on a personal level is the self congratulatory tone of a job well done in making strides forward, and yet the complete ignorance of other burgeoning equality issues in the party- and terming yourself the party of equality rankles me deeply.
Firstly, to be a true party of equality you may consider writing for a newspaper other than The Times who, upon the murder of trans teen Brianna Ghey on the weekend, went to pains to deadname Brianna, deny that her murder was linked to her status as a trans individual and who has also played an integral part in the anti-trans culture war- which an ex advisor of the Conservatives has resigned over, claiming that Sunak will fight the next election over culture war nonsense.
I’m not a stupid man. I know that Rosie Duffield is untouchable. If Starmer did give her the boot, the newspapers would practically gum up with front page stories: “SILENCED AND CANCELLED DUFFIELD- KICKED OUT FOR KNOWING WHAT A WOMAN IS”. She’s untouchable because any move to step her down would ratify her deranged movement in their eternally misplaced idea that they are the victims of their perpetual hate movement against trans people.

Nobody who is sane, least of all trans people, deny that women’s lives are awful- especially with the rise and rise of pindick incels like Andrew Tate, though it goes back further than that. Focusing all your anti misogyny energy on excluding trans people instead of men who quite literally want to subjugate women as sex slaves is something I’ll never understand and yet it seems to be the way of things- and lets be honest, who am I to tell women how to deal with misogyny. I just find it weird that the people saying “we’re literally women lets fight misogyny together” are often described as the biggest threat to women over the radicalisation of a huge swath of young men, the rise of date rape culture which has worsened dramatically in the last 4 years and the all but abolishment of rape punishment under a government who refused to make misogyny a hate crime. It’s entirely possible to stand up for women regardless of their gender. How about we do that- because I don’t see that as radical in any way, I see it as the bare fucking minimum.

That’s enough of a dividing line for me. My support of trans people and women in particular is a hard-line and I’m quite literally happy to end friendships and change my political alignment over it. But if that’s not enough for me to be constantly chewing my nails over labour, how about more?

Brexit. Fucking brexit.
Secret upper crust nonpartisan meetings of political leaders discussing how much brexit has decimated our lives.
Do you know how offensive that is- that British politicians retire for a couple of days to chat over just how much of a fuckup our lives are, all whilst turning their collective back to the public eye between reciting “get brexit done, unleash Brexit’s successes, turn on the brexit bonuses levelling up vaccine rollout siren”. It’s so insulting.
Am I saying this little tete a tete shouldn’t have happened? No, I’m saying we should be INVOLVED. If the UK government knows brexit is a failure and they’re happy to discuss that amongst themselves, just remind me who endowed them with the power to do it? The people they’re currently ignoring in favour of chatting to each bloody other!
Even the Times, again, a paper so steeped in the mythology of Brittania being unfettered by leaving the EU has reneged and called Brexit’s time of death. So for British political parties to completely cut out the PEOPLE in this discussion is an egregious betrayal.
Did Starmer know about this summit? Did Lammy get his say- so to attend? And why, why were the British people, especially those of us whose voices are hoarse from shouting about the brexit failures, completely circumvented in consultation? Starmer’s labour continues to promise that upon election they’ll make brexit work- by taking advantage of it, but not by reunifying in any way. This line of edict is just as undemocratic as the Tories tearing us out after harrying us into a yes or no then ignoring any indication of what had come before.
The very leavers who promised we’d stay in the single market and customs union now tell us it’s good we left them too, as the British economy writhes on the floor turning a disturbing shade of purple.
I feel like I’m being gaslit and not just by the ineffable liars in power- but by those I’m supposed to cheerfully vote to replace them. And when I raise that concern, when I say “ah, I dont know how much I like this”, I’m immediately shouted down- Starmer has a plan, Starmer has an ace up his sleeve. I can only go off the words he says- brexit was voted through by people who wanted to vote for a dream and now I’m being told to vote for a dream to undo it! That way lies folly. I just want to vote for reality- is that wrong?

Brexit is an issue we’ve been fighting on for a long time due to its intangibility right? Okay, how about the other culture war bollocks heaped on us by the shovelful every day: Immi-fucking-gration.

“There’s not much between labour and conservatives on immigration”.

Do you know which far left operative said that provocative, dangerous line?

Keir Starmer. On LBC. If that’s the truth, if we have another iteration of labour who are willing to -as Angela Rayner said on TV recently- tag asylum seekers for the crime of COMING HERE TO SEEK ASYLUM then I don’t know, I feel pretty good about not being okay with that. Treating every immigrant and refugee like a criminal when we don’t give them legal recompense to come or assign enough people to help their paperwork process in decent time is not “hard headed common sense” as Sunak calls it, it’s barbaric, a failure ridden system that needs abolishment and replacement with something that does work, is humane, that considers the world that we’re in and that is still suffering from the reverberations of the British empire and our ridiculous colonialist aspirations- people are being displaced from countries WE started wars in then we have the cheek to get mad when they turn up on our shore!

I sit in myriad group chats now on twitter, on WhatsApp, on instagram and I listen to people disparage me, my politics, people like me and my rage continues to grow. Ah yes, I’m the problem, silly little airhead me thinking that we might be able to forge a way forward that pleases reasonable people, that we don’t have to continually appeal to centricism – and I hasten to add that whilst I don’t personally dislike centrists because they are centrists, I eschew the idea that moderation is important when so many bulwarks of society, politics and culture are haemorrhaging simultaneously- we need radical reform and it may mean uncomfortable changes and far reaching reform- but for those who suffer under the status quo, I’m willing to bear discomfort as they have for so long: And anyway how much more discomfort do you need than skyrocketing bills and mortgages, stagnated wages, debilitating viral spread, people forced to strike and disrupt national services, an NHS in its agonal breaths and political lying utterly normalised?
Now I need to clarify, yes I understand that in this ridiculous broken system in the UK, we DO have to appeal to a broad range of voters. But if that means appealing to the xenophobes, the anti trans, the “acceptable” culture war nonsense then I am also allowed to lodge a very-big-bloody-problem with it.

To my friends who continually slate the hard left- hi, I’m the hard left. Am I a bad person? Do I seem mean? Do my politics terrify you? Or am I similar to you in a lot of ways but no longer knee jerk react to every person who lodges a complaint with labour’s slide away from radical reform with “OH WELL SEE HOW YOU LIKE THE TORIES THEN”. This tired narrative of “get on board and make changes later” never works- because you somehow never actually make the changes. So many people who claim deep rooted interest in politics want things to change- unless they are affected. I can see it now- “He’s only just been elected, he needs time, that would upset people, oh he’s trying, he can’t rock the boat” or, my favourite one: “it’s not the time”. When is the time to fight for our beliefs and aspirations.
It’s a tale as old as time and the people you’re so angry at, AKA the far left, AKA me, are people who have been asking for change for as long as you have and go from being utterly ignored to ridiculed to being told we have no choice but to vote for those who will not enact our will- the difference I see between myself and you is that I haven’t abandoned my more radical views, even if I’ve delayed them to match the crawl of UK political progression. Yes, you will win the next election- and keeping stuff exactly the same is the grossest betrayal of everyone suffering under the mire right now that I can imagine.

Do I think a labour government would do better for many people than the tories? Yes- but that’s not a glowing endorsement of labour and their actions. I have a Donald Trump toilet brush I trust to do a better job than the tories. They are parodies of politics, besuited shills set on benches in parliament to say empty lines about the jobs they’re getting on with and how levelled up we all are, whilst their back pockets positively strain to hold illicit cash. Preferring labour to that isn’t a ringing endorsement- it’s the least one can do.
Do I think some of the moves labour are offering to make are good? Yes, of course. I know things will be better in many ways under labour, but being better than disaster isn’t a ringing endorsement. I have to ask, how many sacrifices of things we dearly want and need are people like me going to be asked to make? How far will you go to demonise us and our aspirations rather than facing the literal hard right who are in power now?
I see so much garbage about the hard left from people who spend their time on twitter. Apparently its anathema to insult capitalism… How’s that capitalism workin’ out for ya though? Yes there are horrible examples of socialism throughout history, terrible crimes committed by those who espouse communism and absolute fools willing to enact authoritarian communist state politics. I also read a story the other day about an American man who now can’t bend his leg at any joint from hip to ankle because it was crushed at work and he’s too poor to have it fixed, or about an American housewife who died because she couldn’t afford to have the chemo needed to treat her cancer so it just grew inside her. Look at the state of the UK- as people turn their literal power off in their houses because they can’t afford their bills you decry those who lodge their issues with living in heavy capitalism?
You want to talk moderation? How about moderating between positive socialist ideals and positive capitalist ideals and finding your moderation there.

I don’t care about Corbyn very much. I know that’ll upset other people who have agreed up to this point. Yes he was monstered in the press, yes I wanted him as PM, some of his actions frustrated me then and they frustrate me now. I don’t think he’s the devil he’s been painted out to be but I don’t think he’s the only hope for leftist discourse and unity in the UK. In fact, I actively refuse to pin my hopes and aspirations on just one person, just one politician because my leftist politics hangs between the hands of every person who believes in it. We are the change, not anyone who sits in parliament.
I’d hope he’d agree with that along with anyone who believes in leftist reform. I believe we need broad, brave change across the UK. I believe we need to confront problems both archaic and new. We need to reform education, resuscitate our public health system and not look to privatisation as a fix considering we’ve seen how that works for energy, water and the public travel systems- we need to confront the sinuous twisting of the far right amongst our highest offices & to dispel the hate of LGBT+ individuals and migrants, we need to build in a societal buffer for women to ensure that men who practice vile misogyny face the harshest stricture.
I believe we can do it. But that involves change- not maintenance. The system is not fit for purpose. I am willing to watch it be chipped at, provided help is given to those suffering under it now purely because I do not believe blowing it up will be any more helpful than holding it in place as it crumbles.
If you ask for me to vote to keep things the same, you’re asking for me to vote for the mire into which we sink- is that what you want? Because It’s not what I want.

I am tired of trying to appease people who do nothing but disparage my politics. Tried of hearing “if the far left don’t like it they can leave”. Fine! This must be the epitome of the abusive political relationship where I’m told to leave my ideas at the door then I can come in and have the obvious stuff everyone wants but nothing else, the bare minimum stuff it shouldn’t even be a thought to ask for.
“But you’re tory enabling if you don’t vote labour”- a huge indictment of our voting system; but how far is labour allowed to stray from my ideals before it’s not my reluctance to vote for them with enthusiasm that’s the issue? I don’t like it, I’m told to leave, but then I’m told leaving is tory enabling so a genuine question: What do you want from me?! You keep asking me to go if I don’t like it then telling me that going makes things worse. Exactly what choices are you offering? Now we’re told “if you don’t like my vision, leave”. And go where? Vote for another party who will never see power? I’m stuck- it’s not for me to change my politics, it’s for you to represent them!

To those who read this and react with rage, I want you to understand that your knee jerk reaction to anyone questioning labour comes from fear of the tories winning and I understand it, but if labour win, and if labour maintain this horrendous status quo in ways that benefit you but not the oppressed who have lodged complaints- do you want change that helps everyone, or do you just want to win and make sure that you’re ok, at the expense of the rest.

It is also not radical to point out the failure of capitalism. Look at how our bills and rent and goods continue to escalate. It is hardly a shocking standpoint to rationally ask if this system that ties us to debt works- does that mean socialism is the answer? No. But it means discussion of alternatives that do work should not be anathema.

I am tired of pretending to be more moderate than I am. My politics make sense to me even if they aren’t perfect, even if they are “airy fairy”. I do not want labour to lose, I am not trying to work against them- rather I am trying to force a confrontation between the front bench and reality. Voters do not want to hear the same tory line about brexit and minorities do not want to see how truly disposable we are in the face of voter shares and polling. And those desperate people who flee the war zones our meddling creates do not deserve to be demonised by every party. Unfortunately these stances alone seem to be radical. A shame and an indictment on the British political status quo, and calling that out is not meant to be a defection against labour. It’s a cry to the wider voting public to ask why we accept these as the terms of engagement for voting- because to me they are all adding up to be a bridge too far. I don’t want to not vote for labour, I don’t want to vote for them through gritted teeth. I want to stand behind the party proudly and vote for better- I want them to win my vote, not take it through lack of options. That is not radical. 

In his article, Kier Starmer clearly states “we are not going back”. Good, I don’t want you to. But I do want you to move forward. This is not about going back to the halcyon days of the Corbyn manifesto, it’s about moving through the socio-political quagmire into better days.
We need PR, we need broad reform to politics and we need political leaders who stand for bold progress- not establishment. If it’s a crime to think that, lock me up.

Political lying is Normalised worldwide- it is a travesty

By Daviemoo

From the top job to opposition parties, from the ineffectual reporting of “untruths” and “unlawful actions” by the government in a media who, wholesale, sanitise the actions of the inept in power, the United Kingdom suffers from an insidious sickness: political lies. Here, today, a stark reminder that this should not be normal: that we deserve better from politicians, from our media- and from each other.

Rwanda, ‘The migrant problem’ and fundamental falsehoods

Rishi Sunak’s government is currently trying to re-sanitise itself- not quite a return to the norm; for example, the “party of law and order” is pushing, through sub-standard MP’s like Jonathan Gullis or public liabilities like Suella Braverman, to break human rights laws, and the “party of fiscal responsibility” keeps haemorrhaging leaks about misappropriation and misspending from PPE to fraud write-offs to wasted money on a brexit festival: it’s more of a re-branding. The twin forks of lawfulness and lawlessness, fiscal idiocy and fiscal responsibility show a party divided. And even when you legalise disgusting plans like “the Rwanda plan” otherwise known as government sanctioned human trafficking, its legality takes nothing from its repugnance.
Using the perceived face of the public, MP’s like Gullis push the angry, nonsensical and demonstrably false opinions of a British public that simply does not exist: a majority of the British public, contrary to the home secretary’s claims of yesterday, support refugee protections along with broad reforms in the UK’s operation, including opening further migrant processing centres in the UK. Remember also that at last count around 77% of claims were upheld, meaning deporting to Africa will cost much more as those who are approved are eventually settled regardless.

The furthering of this agenda is more unneeded proof of a government in tailspin: a plan grandiose enough to snare headlines and useless enough that the perceived “problem” with migrancy will continue: for those in doubt of this, let us take a moment to ask whether a roulette spin of possible deportation will deter people so desperate to try that they will climb into a half deflated, crowded boat and sail across a choppy sea, running the risk of an incident much like the one which occurred last week leading to death.

The government is lying about this plan. It will not deter migrants. It will not increase safety. It will not prevent people trafficking, and is, in fact, the legalisation of trafficking persons by a government more wrapped around ideological opposition to refugees than invested in border management. And this is by design: the more the government and media demonise migrants, the more the unthinking masses attribute their issues to these migrants rather than a government who has held power for twelve years, has had an overwhelming majority for three.
If the government truly wished to do so, it could prevent migrancy in almost totality: it does not, because migrants are a useful scapegoat: but how many migrants have voted for your taxes to go up and prevented runaway inflation?
And one must stop for a moment to marvel at the not funny but incredulous laughter inspiring parity and parody of a government who declares its most diverse cabinet in history, whilst preventing families like their own from settling peacefully here.

The government continues to spin the pop-culture issues like mass migration, the culture wars (from trying to strip royal titles from those they perceive as inferior despite this flying in the face of “chosen by God” to blaming the actions of sick, perverted men on transgender women and more) because they must, to maintain power, divert blame.

Braverman, when questioned on the fiscal irresponsibility of her Rwanda deportation scheme along with its general success prospects, accused her opponent, an SNP politician, of becoming “ideological”- an irony. Founded evidence shows that the UK has failed to create safe routes for refugees in key areas across the world- and this was shown in a stark and gut-churning select committee in which Braverman, who has aspired to the Home Secretary role for many months, who left in disgrace after leaking privileged information, who was mysteriously reappointed by Sunak despite this- could not provide a single safe and legal route for a high risk refugee. An ideology is a system of beliefs to which you cling even in the face of evidence that it is incorrect- and Braverman clings to the belief that refugees, not tory ineptitude, are the net cause of UK issues. But this is not unique: other areas of the UK in crisis are easily shown to have been failed continually by the tories in the last years and yet the issues in these areas are continually attributed elsewhere.

One must ask at what point the Conservatives do plan to take account for their leadership.

Failing the NHS-a capitalist choice

The NHS is always going to lose money. It’s clear that you must face that fact: healthcare is not, at its core, a money spinner despite the clear necessity of its’ duties. It is not a luxury, but a fundamental right- and in the UK it is currently neither.

The government’s determination to try to wring profit from the NHS is disturbing. There are pragmatic models of healthcare governance which show that fiscal competition can sometimes be a driver of increased health outcomes- but studies like this fail in totality to account for the humanity – and, worryingly, human cost of life or quality of life- behind these studies.
Outsourcing of healthcare may, as Wes Streeting, labour health secretary, says, help the NHS to function if done on a limited and short term basis- but Streeting’s determined positioning of those ideologically opposed to healthcare privatisation as “the real conservatives” misses out on the fundamental reasons behind why the NHS is lauded as a brilliant institution. Healthcare is not and should not be a for profit model, and ensuring that any costed privatised health brought in has no say in the NHS and simply provides the service at minimal taxpayer cost, should be seen as a sign of the utter dereliction the tories have run the service to.

Whilst tory ineptitude may force us, through lack of options, to outsource- one has to ask whether you can call for wholesale reforms whilst also giving temporary control of NHS services to the highest bidder: to fix problems, one needs a holistic approach; outsourcing services is a blocker on long term observance of those services and their issues, which will prevent resolution.
Worse still, those in direct power are determined to stand in the way of NHS improvement: diverting blame, obfuscating stories about medical staff leaving due to exhaustion and a basic reluctance to fairly compensate highly trained workers in literally lifesaving roles have led us to a crucial moment: the UK’s public must decide whether they stand with workers who somehow dragged us to this stage during the pandemic even with its existing systemic issues, or to capitulate to the double headed hydra of governmental malice and a media whose toe-point-switching of support and demonisation of NHS staff can only be described with a term I normally loathe: gaslighting.

The government has even openly resorted to employing bots on social media to spam disinformation:

Governmental think tanks align around certain core ideas and use social media to openly lie to the public’s face whilst wearing the mask of “one of us”. Where exactly are the people who see these tweets and believe them and are then shown evidence of their falsehood? You would think that being lied to on an industrial scale- as we were by Matt Hancock when a child was treated for illness on the floor of my local hospital which I used to work at, would rankle: but instead the public greedily devours the government line even when it’s proven to be from a poisoned pen: why?

Even here though, lying about the causation of issues does not reach the depths to which the conservatives are sinking when it comes to political lying and it’s enabling.
Jacob Rees-Mogg has now been brought so low as to actively lie to his own supporters about the government’s disastrous attempt to wrench us from the European Union, enabled of course by those denizens of internet nonsense who cannot bring themselves to accept their government of choice’s ineptitude. Rees-Mogg was recently seen on Question Time, belaying the worries of a wine import expert, a lifelong conservative voter, of some 30 years and confirming that the man’s founded experiences and factual stories of increased difficulty negatively impacting his business: even going so far as to openly disregard the man’s qualms. He also confirmed that the NHS was given it’s £350 million a week post brexit and yet no figures attesting to this can be found: one suspects that if £19.2 billion had suddenly been injected into the NHS, we would not be quibbling over a pay rise for nursing staff.

Brexit, of course, is the shibboleth for success for both sides of the government as they try to style themselves as moderates: from the conservatives shouting louder and louder that brexit is a success as the UK slides further and further down and to the right of the Overton window and the fiscal charts of success to the leader of the opposition promising that we will “make a success” of brexit, one has to wonder why everyone fails to mention the terms and conditions attached- with fair winds, good economy, no wars, no governmental malfeasance, it would take about 35 to 40 years for the UK to re-establish itself as a world leading economy outside the EU. I will be 70 to 75 when this happens, and I don’t believe the children in my family, some literally toddlers, should have to wait until they are my age or older just to see some parity with pre-brexit economics.

The mainstreaming of governmental lies, despite popular recitation by those like Peter Osborne in his book, “The Assault on Truth”, far predates this conservative iteration: from the Falklands debacle and pitting the government against the miners to the long established roots of the word “tory” (allegedly coming from an old Irish word meaning “thief”), governmental policy has been long shaped by those willing to lie to and mislead the public. It is tacitly accepted by populations globally that we are lied to on an industrial scale by the government and that they are aided and abetted by media like Sky, like supposedly independent channels like GB News (whose shady donor links should make anyone scorn the word independent)- even by the BBC who are constantly lamented by the right as too left wing and too right wing by the left- the fact is, I do not want the BBC to be “more left wing”, I want it to be more honest. Can the right say the same?

Political lying is as in-your-face-obvious as the chaos that suffuses this current government. Division in the tories is sown openly across the pages of the newspapers, divided now themselves amongst what to report to prevent open rebellion by a beleaguered nation.
To begin to restore political trust, one must begin with political honesty- for one does not trust that which is not honest. So if we hope to regain control of the runaway train of British political discourse and progress someone must wrest the wheel from those who would seek to plow us through more obfuscation.

In the far flung recesses of my mind I long for a government who aligns with me on issues like the mass taxation of the hyper rich, the reformation of the NHS in a “post” pandemic Britain, the forging of strong links to our neighbours, the protection of immigrants- on prevention of landlords abusing the populace and assisting the young in being able to afford property, in modernising education and in standing up to the megaphone dullardry of bigotry who complains about cancellation from multiple mainstream media; but for the moment I look at the status quo, at a nation devouring its own tail just to avoid hunger pangs and I’m willing to settle for a government who just doesn’t lie to me every day, a government who doesn’t throw ideological shrapnel into the face of the population- and most of all, a government committed to bettering the lives of the citizens of the UK.
Once upon a time I’ve never lived, governments supposedly did what was right for their people: currently we subsist under a government determined to recycle money amongst themselves, demonise the innocent, divide the nation and scatter our resources amongst themselves as they angrily ask you why you should have to share with strangers.

Until we begin to steadfastly call out mass political lies, like Mark Francois blithely giving out vaccine misinformation in parliament, to our own allies continuing to push the Big Lie of Brexit (as my good friend Aid Thompsin now calls it), the normalisation of lies will continue- and until people realise that politicians, our representatives, lying to us is not “for our own good” but “at our own detriment”, the United Kingdom will continue to be run like a racket by those whose only success is to pillage the nation whilst blaming the innocent for their bulging pockets.

Stop Normalising Suffering!

By Daviemoo

Britain freezes. Snow is everywhere and temperatures have collectively plummeted across the nation. This is particularly worrisome for poorer people and older people, and especially for poor old people. But for every person speaking up about the conditions we’re being made to survive by governmental malfeasance and the never ending greed of the aggressively capitalist society we’re ever so proud of, there is another person lined up to extoll the virtues of their “living through” the same or worse. Here’s why I’m done with listening to that rhetoric.

Yesterday, a caller on LBC rang in to explain, frankly, that he was worried he would die in the cold. He didn’t have enough money or resources to stay warm and was on the verge of tears that he explained that he didn’t think he would make it through winter. LBC’s twitter account posed the clip of the man explaining his dire situation with Ben Kentish and was, with the predictability of blinking, met with tweets like this:

It’s almost become a fetish for people who somehow stumbled through their appalling childhoods to weaponise them against others. Why shouldn’t we all wake up to frost on our bedroom windows? Why can’t we all cope with an empty stomach for two days at a time? And why don’t we all restrict the only time we feel warmth is from our father’s palm as it slaps us across the face?
Apart from the no doubt shocking fact that a lot of us don’t want to wake up in freezing cold bedrooms left unheated because we can hear the whirring of the energy meter in the cupboard nearby, and other than silly little things like the factual observation that it’s a basic human right to live in comfort and safety, I have a confession.
One of the biggest reasons I don’t want another generation of people to grow up in these miserable conditions (apart, obviously, from the above) is simply that I refuse to foster a world where this ridiculous idolisation of your own victimhood is used as a stick to beat others with. I don’t want another generation of emotionally ruined people rewriting history to pretend they weren’t suffering and making do, to foist their nonsense on future children.

So you survived waking up to ice on your windows: do you want applause? And do you actually want a return to that for people? It’s so ironic, as it’s often statements like these made by people from behind double glazing in long paid off houses worth £100,000 more than they it was bought for- I bet you’d be unwilling to replace your loc-tite windows with plastic sheeting, so ask yourself why you’d foist that living on others if you’re unwilling to endure it yourself. Additionally, it’s always interesting to bring up the disproportionate rates of serious illness and infant mortality rates back in the “frost on yer windows” days to people.

Using your own suffering as a stick to beat people is ridiculous and is indicative of unhealed trauma. I don’t want people to freeze in their houses now any more than I wanted you to then. I want people to be warm now as much as I want you to get therapy for your trauma, a trauma that you’re desperate to foist on others.

When people bully others, it’s usually because their lives are miserable in some way- from a child tripping others in a playground to a cruel co-worker going home to their abusive spouse, misery begets misery and it’s all too clear to see that those who will espouse how they, through luck, survived adverse childhoods, seem to want others to suffer as they did. Nobody should suffer from fuel poverty, food poverty or ANY poverty these days, any more than anyone should have survived cruel winters through luck then.

Additionally, what’s the point of inventing technology to keep people thriving if we reserve it? Why invent double glazing and central heating, inventions that have saved untold numbers of human life, if we don’t use it or if we attach price tags that quite literally freeze people out? Humanity must adapt and progress to thrive, and refusing technology that ensures people do not fall ill, become disabled or die is a vile and massively normalised aspect of modern society, that allows a distorted society- one we’re currently living through.

The mass normalisation of living through adverse conditions, where “survival” is the end goal was made clear through the pandemic. So what if you spent 2 weeks sick with a virus, now your lung capacity is ruined, you get out of breath just sitting still and you have arrhythmia- you survived didn’t you? You should be grateful! Societal madness writ large.

Survival being a goal is a failure of any society that pushes it- every society should be encouraging you to achieve, and providing the framework for, thriving.

Anything less is humanity failing to reach its potential and in a country like the UK where this has been baked into legislation like austerity, it is state sponsored failure of its citizens.

There is an almost straight split of people who hold values about austerity being positive, “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps” and those who actively wish to either have people “suffer” their way out of adverse situations or suffer through them as they did.
To those who push the lie that one must suffer to build character, ask yourself why you fail to relate to other humans, why you wish for them to push through negative situations they should not have to “just because you did” and wonder to yourself whether, perhaps, the sentence “and I turned out just fine” might be the biggest lie you ever told.

Get Off Your Knees

By Daviemoo

Today’s interview between unelected cockroach Liz Truss and worlds most servile client journalist Laura Kuenssberg was the inexorable tearing point. The blithe dismissal of a key question about who actually voted for any of this broke something within me that has been fraying for many years. Now we must ask ourselves, as citizens of the UK, whether we are prepared to continue to lie on the floor as they waterboard us with gasoline, all the while impetuously telling us it is for our own good.
The time to stand against this government is at hand, and to the folk of the UK at large, I ask- if not now, why?

“How many people voted for your plan” Kuenssberg asked, in a rare show of something approaching criticism of the people who have allowed her unfettered access because of her creeping protection of them. A trademarked pause, a dismissive smirk and an offhand “what do you mean by that”, replied Truss.
In that response, I heard the tangible *RRRRIP* of the last of my patience. The phrase “the straw that broke the camel’s back” was never more relevant than today. It was an innocuous response at best but summed up everything that has led to this moment: a direct question, an exhortation to explain who it is that actually wants this- and Truss can’t answer honestly. Even the gaggle of conservative voters who voted Truss in did not choose this haemmorrhagic attack on the UK’s long troubled economy, and any of them with sense and without bank accounts stacked high with money would not have done so. Truss’ determination to leave a lasting impact on the UK left her with a Putin-esque wish to wreak destruction upon us, and Britain’s glib concurrence with anti-democracy has handed her the remit to do so: our silence, our long compliance with a government we hate- that is the mandate Truss and her useless cabinet cling to. And so, in that moment where Truss tipped her hand that she believes she does not need a remit to have savaged our futures, I lost my temper in a way I have not done in the years preceding.

I’ve said this so many times that it tastes dry on the tongue: in my youth I was raised by a grandfather with a history of national service, a man who believed to his core that the UK was sacrosanct, that it’s citizens would take no nonsense, worked hard, deserved the best.
The UK is not beyond scrutiny. Yes, there are benefit scroungers who sit at home all day watching tv and smoking cigarettes.
I don’t care- at least, I don’t care about those people as much as I do about people who get away with ruining the UK’s economy with the smirking assent of the government. People coming away with £17k of benefits a year aren’t as much of a problem to me as the people defrauding us of millions of pounds of taxation, not the least because the benefit people put that money back into the system when they buy whatever they buy with it, but the millionaires use shady bank accounts and purposely badly written legislation to keep their money away from public investment.

And every stupid tory voter loves the idea of not paying more tax- as if tax goes directly into the back pocket of some illusory immigrant rather than into the roads, the schools, the hospitals we all use. As if paying high tax isn’t one of the most brazen solutions to fix a country in decline- to fix infrastrucure. Of course paying more tax under the tories is a bad idea, because they’d privatise their bowel movements if they could. They funnel tax money into their friends and families limited companies, to the detriment of the public, all the while using the willing press to jab jewelled accusatory fingers at imaginary enemies. It’s not years of open idiocy that has resulted in the public decline of the country: it’s trans people! Or foreigners! No, it’s those bloody politically correct teachers, those lefty institutions.
Need I remind you people the tories have been in power with various majorities for THIRTEEN YEARS.
If the tories actually thought foreigners, or trans people, or benefit scroungers were the problem- they could fix it in a matter of weeks to months. They don’t fix these problems because if they did act against those minorities, it would show how little threat they pose- and because these minorities serve as scapegoats for people desperate to hate anyone but the arbiters of their misery! When’s the last time a trans woman from Iraq raised your taxes and spent that extra money on “Selfish.LTD” who made 30000 pieces of defective PPE? Is it more than, or equal to, never?

The UK’s population has lain prostrate for years under a government without a real terms majority, without a competent modus operandi, without a plan as they did nothing to aid us. They have stood above us, implementing austerity measures, holding transparently manipulated referenda based on lies, blaming us for our own quality of life declining- and at all times they have held the reins. The conservatives transparently fail to hold themselves accountable for their myriad failures, constantly dodging and diving- but the advent of the post- Cameron politics pre-to-post brexit also added in a Trumpian insistence on doubling down on nonsense unashamedly, an art that Boris Johnson refined and Liz Truss in her short tenure has perfected.
We cannot hold to scrutiny people who are pathologically unable to feel shame: and the time to try has passed.

Not Liz Truss, nor any tory, are the people to guide us through encroaching brexit fallout (it’s still not done by the way), through economic and domestic crises, health crises, through the no doubt impending world war. We need decisive ,competent and bold leadership who does not maintain the well worn lines of the status quo- because the status quo has not worked for one day of my life- the tangible decline of the last 13 years is proof ignored by millions of people numbed to the slow decimation of our country: people ignore the cracks just barely hidden by union jacks plastered on every surface.

When it comes to the semi-immediate future, I expect a labour government to take root. But labour must be bolder than it is. It must root out its own problems, the problems which are wielded against it. Labour at its heart is meant to be the broad church of the left: and it must not fall into support of extremists who believe in “kind” authoritarianism rather than the blatant sort of the tories. Democracy must be held sacrosanct. It must start to deal with the nagging issues it has continued to shush its critics over, from allowing shills like Rosie Duffield to ascend to, and keep, power to ousting those who say disgraceful nonsense like Rupa Huq. But most of all, Labour must promise to steer the country in a different direction to the tories. We deserve better. Labour must offer better.

Any incremental change is crumbs- and perhaps, in the face of history, it is time to let us eat cake.

We will not escape the coming civil upheaval without casualties, and that thought itself is enough to instil a fear of it into a great many of us: lest we forget those who have already been let down to die by this government: the people who lost their lives due to austerity, who froze in their homes even before the energy crisis, those whose benefits were frozen under the now head of the NHS Therese Coffey, our brothers and sisters who died alone because of a flippancy over the severity of covid. We aren’t headed towards a clash where some of us will die- we have been lined up against a wall for years as the tories took potshots at us from afar. But now the blindfolds are falling away. There is no alternative for us but to rise up together, as one, and declare ‘no more’.

Scotland will have its independence referendum. Deservedly so. Wales will leave, Ireland will reunify. The tories have besmirched the union to the point of farcicality. But more than tearing the union asunder, they have made us suffer together, huddled in the wreckage of their maledictions. Together the UK must impart a fear of the masses into politicians that will persist long after the death of the unions. Together the people of each country must stand arm to arm, shoulder to shoulder against this government and against any other that comes to power after. For too long we have been silent when we should have been screaming, and now we’ve started may the echoes of our rage ring in the ears of every political party from now to eternity. And down the line may we each remember that we failed, time after time after time, to hold these villains to account, and may we say “never again can we let this come to pass”.

We have the chance now to live on our feet instead of at the feet of the Conservatives. Let us take it.

Daviemoo is a 34 year old independent writer, radicalised into blogging about the political state of the world by Brexit and the election of serial failures like Trump and Johnson. Please check out the rest of the blog, check out Politically Enraged, the podcast available on all streaming platforms and share with your like minded friends! Also check him out on ko-fi where you can keep him caffeinated whilst he writes.

“Finally, a Conservative government” – they’ve been in power for NEARLY THIRTEEN YEARS

By Daviemoo

I’ve no doubt that I’m biased, I see things through my own lens and what I believe is not always necessarily correct, but the open flippancy the tories continue to display to the British public at large is a point of utter rage inspiration at this point: Kwarteng, fresh off of making a total arse of himself at a funeral, has now decided to create a budget that’s tantamount to whipping out a bruised red areola and shoving it into the mouth of the already milk sozzled rich, once again and always at the expense of the poor in the UK. When will tory loving lunatics learn that when they say things like “you won’t like this budget if you care more about the poor”, they don’t mean some theoretical string vest wearing cousin of Hyacinth Bucket, they mean YOU!

Truss recently… Can I really call it “hit out at” when she is the physical doppelgänger of Pinocchio in a wig… “futilely flailed at” the idea that we’re putting future generations into debt to slightly ease the energy crisis now. Ironically this performance was even more milquetoast than tory fans had predicted: Like eager football fans, “they’re keeping it close to their chest, they’ll pop out with a plan last second and do something spectacular, it’s coming! Any second now!” they cheered- only to be met with the ooooOOOOOOOAAAAAaaaaaah of a ball sailing nowhere near an open goal.
Ursula Von De Leyen, every brexit hard man’s secret wank fetish had recently declared that repeated windfall taxes and harsh scrutiny of energy companies was one of the key ways to help the average person through the crisis facing most countries. Germany is forcing returned ownership of an energy company to the state to ensure that pricing does not spiral. Spain, France, all of these countries working hard to ensure the prosperity of their citizens as economic conditions decline.

The tories have created a budget that gently trouser-strokes the swollen gland of the rich with the callused fingers of the poor, once again leaving us to foot a bill so astronomical that it would even make Jeff Bezos’ brows crease should it land on his door. Wealthy people are set to make a fortune just from not paying the taxes they’re due, and of course poor people are set to pay equal to or more than what the rich will pay; because it’s fair to have someone earning £17.25 an hour pay the same tax percentile as someone who has a flat screen tv screwed into the ceiling over their fucking bath tub isn’t it.

And all the while the seething rage that we all once felt towards the tories is slowly being reflected backwards now, because we always knew these petulant, coke fuelled shysters were, as Angela Rayner said, scum: But honestly British public WAKE THE FUCK UP, give your head a shake and get the placards out! Enough with the vague promises of shouties and frowns via the Enough is Enough campaign, enough is bloody enough but I don’t need endless rallies, I need tory ministers to be PETRIFIED to leave their houses for fear of being dogged every step by people asking them why they should pay for the tories’ bakers dozen and then some years of idiocy.

I’m tired, reader. I’m tired of every day switching on the tv or opening social media to another frosty faced tory minister grim-facedly defending another sex scandal (lest we forget the “anonymous” rapist that’s still working happily in the government or Pinchy Pincher the literal pervert), another misstep in policy and every single time, enabled by media commentators who don’t even look shocked any more when politicians say bollocks like “the cost of living crisis is less significant than the death of a 96 year old” (cheers Lindsey). I’m tired of listening to people saying they love the tory party because they’ll sort out this WOKE NONSENSE- they’ve been running the show for 12.8 years now and their greatest joy is that you’re more arsed about pronouns and who shits where than their reverse-Robin-Hood cuntery.

But most of all, I’m tired of living in a country where the citizens will grumble, and shuffle, foot stamp and huff and keep taking the hits. Our government should be petrified of us. Our government should be treating us like a dog, teeth bared, tail wagging, straining at the lead to get to them. They work for us- but they don’t fear us. The nation is supernanny and the tories are a bratty little toddler, completely unaware of the power dynamic that could, that should sweep over them as we tell them to fuck off to the naughty step for breaking the economy.

What’s wrong with us?

So many times I’ve had the usual union jack masturbatorial idiots tell me their grandfather didn’t die for me to kiss another man. Well, too bad but your grandfathers sure as shit didn’t die so everyones businesses could fold and we can’t afford to put the big fucking light on either.
The UK was supposedly a proud nation of people who would never take anything lying down once, and yet here we are, supine underneath a government giving us a caustic golden shower. The UK badly needs a wakeup call- the tories aren’t going to change, aren’t going to get better- they’re the perpetually pissed-up spouse ready to come home and slur out some blame for why they’re so depressed and much like anyone in that situation it’s time to pack their shit and kick them the fuck out.

Stand up for yourselves, Britons!

Daviemoo is a 34 year old independent writer, radicalised into blogging about the political state of the world by Brexit and the election of serial failures like Trump and Johnson. Please check out the rest of the blog, check out Politically Enraged, the podcast available on all streaming platforms and share with your like minded friends! Also check him out on ko-fi where you can keep him caffeinated whilst he writes.

Daviemoo is on hiatus: or, why the left in the UK doesn’t deserve to win right now.

By Daviemoo – who is posting this and running far away from social media for the foreseeable.

My last post was my hundredth, though it’s not the hundredth article I’ve written for politically enraged- I cleared out 23 drafts the other day. Thank you to everyone who reads what I write and enjoys what I do but I have to be honest, of late everything has become somewhat exhausting– and not because of the always growing wankery of tories and their voters, of the arm waving gammonry of the politically dumb- because leftists in the UK are, as a whole- acting like fucking dickheads.

I wasn’t aware of the shitstorm ignited by commentary on a video which emerged recently until last night, and truth be told I was not sober when I was made aware. I read with abject horror some of the comments I, and my friends, had received for calling out what I pretty confidently would call racist dog whistling.

I have to be honest, in the way that my latest podcast episode is quite honest; I have no idea what people actually want any more, and as I grew from “back labour no matter what” to “we can critique labour healthily and listen to those with opposing views but I can’t see an alternative that works in this broken system”, my surety in what I was saying diminished.
I look at that as a gift.
I don’t want to parade the digital halls of social media, telling everyone what I say is definitely right, throwing out deliberately divisive tweets and confidently telling you any alternative to what I say is wrong because I don’t know. I don’t have the self confidence, nor the confidence in any political figure or leader, to state that we’re doing the right thing, on the right track, and that you should lean over and copy my answers on the test of “how to move forward”.

Equally I’m disillusioned with any faction I once called mine. The more center-left labour seem, no offence to those who keep staunchly backing it, to be willing to compromise on stuff that I’m not; but also lack the nuance to understand that just because I’m critical of labour’s brexit stance or Wes Streeting’s weird “they’re both bad” stance on transphobia in labour for example, doesn’t mean I’m trying to subvert support for labour. Dealing with problems is how you deal with them, and making compromises for them or flatly ignoring them doesn’t. Labour has some issues it needs to deal with by talking about them out loud, and by allowing voices who want to bolster the movement but don’t understand the direction to speak up, labour could allay these fears, embolden its supporters and move ever onward to a progressive alliance- not with other parties, with it’s broad-base supporters itself.
On the “far left” which is a term that makes me wince a bit because it’s so often used to describe the “has socialist in bio but acts like a 4chan edge lord” type, I’ve been absolutely stunned to see misogyny, bullying campaigns, I’ve had direct homophobic nonsense and people like the ragged trousered philanderer blithely being disgustingly transphobic guff – behaviour I genuinely thought was beneath people I once respected and now can’t stand to know I associated with.

I made fairly definitive critique of a man who used the argument “ethnic minorities and upper working class people want to destroy labour with liberal politics” (its Neo-liberals you’re referring to I assume) and spent 4 hours reading comment after comment of people deciding I was trying to sabotage labour, sabotage EiE, sabotage socialism itself, and not merely pointing out that if socialism means small-state bollocks where you point the finger at “ethnic minorities” and fellow members of the working class as the enemy instead of trying to make a cohesive movement with those very people, I don’t align with those views. It’s not exactly guy Fawkes-ing the EiE HQ is it, saying “wow this is really disgusting sentiment” and yet I had supposedly left wing people saying shit like “Tommy Robinson isn’t a bad guy now, he realises it’s the state, not muslims who are the enemy”. This the same Robinson who, literally 5 days ago was demonising Pakistani men? Or saying that I must be tory if I don’t imbibe the sentiments that foreign working class people are trying to sabotage the… what, “native” working class? Sure, Jan.

Dempsey’s views on calling Tommy Robinson supporters “the scum of the earth” make me laugh. Because Robinson supporters are the scum of the earth- not indelibly, forever scum- racism is a choice, bigotry is a sword you can put down at any time. Robinson supporters don’t care about unionisation, or workers rights, or emboldening the working class- they care about ‘the nasty foreign people coming here to steal are jobs’ and whatever other half baked cuntery they pull out of their racism-frazzled brains. There is no excuse for what he said- none. Pushing divisive rhetoric about factions of the working class, levelling blame at ethnic minorities? No way would I ever align with those views, and offering forgiveness to Robinson supporters until they showed actual contrition for falling for the racist dog shit that gave him the money to put a swastika on his neck? No thanks. You don’t fix racism by not being racist, you fix it by being anti-racist- and you dont fix capitalism or FPTP by espousing more politely worded, general racism.

The fact is, there is no perch on which I’m comfortable on “the left” after all of this, after being squeezed between the pro and anti starmer people to bursting point, and I’m certainly not a centrist but I don’t necessarily hate those who are (there’s a difference, to me, between ‘this policy isn’t pragmatic enough to work’ and ‘oh sure they want gay marriage illegalised but look at that tax plan!’- that’s not centrist pragmatism, it’s selfishness which is a byproduct and ethos of the right)- and I cant stand the right. It’s to the point where if you still back right wing parties now, now that the masks are off, you’re either so deeply radical I can’t help you or you’re so twisted you don’t need guidance, you need an assessment.

I call myself a progressive now for lack of any better option. Because the factionalised shitgibbonry of the left as a whole is pathetic, puerile, childish and yet it’s also deeply dangerous. I’m sick of big leftist figures acting like paragons of goodness whilst setting their followers on other left wingers, unleashing tidal waves of vitriolic bullying and acting like making other leftists come away from social media is some sort of victory for your movement instead of proof that you don’t give a shit about politics- if your entire goal is just to push your own agenda so hard it steamrolls other people, that’s not ok.
I’m sick of seeing people demonise those they share particulates of political leaning with rather than taking aim at the actual enemy. Half of you are overthinking it- it’s not some secret complex game of guess the secret baddie, like ‘Guess Who’ with rosettes- you’re either for voting against the tories or you’re not. I say it a million times a day, the system is broken so if you’re not happy with this iteration of labour, what’s the plan? Oh some long winded spiel about reforming the system by not partaking in it- apparently it’s actually a huge part of disinformation farms to push the idea that not voting is some wise political choice- not voting just means you need to shut the fuck up about any and all repercussions because you literally cut out your own tongue when asked for your opinion. Miss me with that “I’m so big brained I don’t participate but I feel entitled to moan” shit. And even better, nobody who insults Labour seems to have an actual plan- even big leftist figures whose bank is aflow with the money they earn by bashing labour come down on “well im still voting for them but I’ve been consciously telling people not to for months”. Mmmm, I also like hypocrisy. Again, the lack of nuance. You could constructively criticise and platform those who do the same, but I guess acting like rabid dogs with 200 characters or 2.20 seconds to bark is easier. The option I often have wafted at me is “i’m just going to vote for this other political party that won’t win, but at least my hands are clean (and the tories will still win but that’s not MY fault, right)”. Every person who suffers under tories doesn’t really give a shit about your clean hands but whatever helps you sleep at night I guess.

I genuinely hope we get PR in the near future- not just because I have grandiose hopes for a more democratic spread for voters to choose from, but because I’m sick of being hemmed in to a wing of politics that’s become even more toxic than the forced birth loving, force my religion on you-ing, worship the rich-ing tosspots on the other side. Having to share politics with people who act more despicably than right wingers is pretty grim- and because the system is fucked up, there is no alternative.

I’m taking time away from it all, to sort through my feelings on it. The fact is, I see little point in talking about politics right now, because there’s no view you can have on leftist politics that isn’t polarising. The left is radicalised against itself and it’s pathetic. We don’t deserve power any more than the scum in power right now do. It’s an embarrassment of a movement- half of it more bothered with deifying the dusty words of old white men who engaged in theoretic thinking, whose lives didn’t even slightly reflect our way of living than actually looking at the system we’re in and asking how the fuck we make these hazy dreams come true without employing the same scary ass totalitarian governments who push for socialist structure, the other half desperate to compromise on some of their own long held beliefs because they think winning can come at a stupendous cost and that giving up on long held core beliefs of their movement is acceptable. Ah yes, we win everyone! Brexit’s never being reversed, it’s ok to be transphobic and the laws that stop us protesting, force us to abide by ridiculous voter disenfranchisement and keep us locked in a broken system of capitalist dogma even as we cant afford electric or water are still all things, but we win!

Frankly everyone, go for it. Tear yourselves apart, tear each other down, demonise each other- I’ve pushed for unity on the left ever since I saw a bigger picture lurking in the background. But what’s the point. I don’t want to align myself with any of you right now because all of you are behaving shamefully. So do what feels right to you, be tribal, be vile to each other- It’s nice to see under the mask and understand the dangers of political polarisation laid bare and to understand this ever growing “if you’re not in, you’re out” mean girls politic in the UK.

I’m taking some time away from all of this because my head is abuzz with realisations. when I come back I hope some semblance of maturity magically manifests itself into the forebrains of leftists in the UK because right now- you’re all acting like idiots, and as loath as I am to level the accusation of enabling the tories I am – the whole lot of you attacking each other instead of talking constructively are doing exactly that.

Peace out, enjoy your fighting folks, I’m going to work, gym, read some political theory and come back ready to focus on the actual enemies rather than my bedfellows.

The Stupidification of Brits

By Daviemoo

As the Conservatives push hard to renationalise imperial measures, something we’ve always had on our food packaging my entire life as an ostensible “brexit benefit” that doesn’t directly revolve around-but will likely contribute to – a poorer economy, one must wonder how it is not obvious that the party is trying to contribute to an overall shift away from the rest of the world: Little Britain will be unable to sell goods to a market that doesn’t understand the measures, or that has to do extra work to do so. But this isn’t the only way the tories are working to Break down Brits…

Imperial Measurements- an exercise in futility- Boris Johnson

Imperial units seem like some kitschy reach back into the not so distant past- some little move towards showing the world we don’t need them because we have our own way of weighing corn and meat… not one person who isn’t desperate to return to the smoky pubs and “it’s ‘ow we’ve always done it” rhetoric of the past is particularly interested in starting to use imperial measurements again, because it is of no benefit to anyone who doesn’t regularly start sentences with “back in my day…”

Imperial measurements will make it more difficult to:
-Sell to other countries
-Cook
-Purchase necessary products and ingredients

It was also never “banned” by the EU, but to fit their standardisation model it was vital that we all used the same measurements- products in the UK have always been allowed to display imperial, just not as prominently as the other units.

So why would we do it? Because as always it pleases that tiny base who will thoughtlessly back the tories specifically because of nonsensical moves like this. Looking at the outlook of those who approve of this, they don’t care about the realistic damage and annoyance this move will cause now- but you can guarantee that they will be the loudest to decry it as soon as they experience issues resulting from it.
As we fall into measuring things here, we will lose step with the rest of the world- the pointlessness of making our coexistence harder rankles, but also fits perfectly well with the desired outcome of those in charge of implementing brexit: what seemed like a silly little brag fits in with the theme of isolationism behind brexit. Measures, money… what next?

The curtailing of university entry- Nadhim Zahawi

Recently it was announced that if you do not score certain fundamental grades, student loans will not be on offer, effectively curtailing university for those who fail to achieve in the earlier exams. This is a disaster both in terms of the hangover from coronavirus which adversely affected hundreds of thousands of peoples’ education, but is also- and there is no sensitive way to write this- a stupid idea.
I’ve written extensively about the myriad different learning styles for human beings, whether that’s an ability to absorb through physical action, reading, listening, watching demos and more- denying someone access to higher education simply because they cannot conform to the archaic system of listen, repeat in a slightly different way on a written exam is a disastrous response to the educational future of the UK. People can excel at university when given access to the right learning resources, teachers and allowed to study a passion subject instead the usual proscriptions of subjects given at a young age- and even if someone goes on to work in a completely different field, the ability to obtain a degree, masters or PHD is a vital skill that should be exercised for those who can – and want to.

Zahawi’s zest for preventing students who don’t excel at exams from reaching new chances of education is a transparent attempt to gatekeep knowledge from those who need it most desperately- and he should be looked upon with shame for this transparently reductive action.

Additionally, the spectre of “left wing censorship” and deeply worrying authoritarian moves to combat this nebulous nonsense has always been touted over university: searching student forums shows right wing students asking whether they will fit in- rather than simply acknowledging that their views, as all views are, will be questioned, it’s an immediate self censorship and a lack of understanding that an exposure to a wide range of people around you is likely to change your narrow views to wider ones: university isn’t a factory for spitting out left wing Leninists, they are buildings filled with knowledge, and intersected by tens of thousands of people you may not have met and learnt from before: you are not being converted, you’re learning other people’s lifestyles and exposure to this is the antithesis of reductive rhetoric.

Other tory ministers state that children should be asked to sing unsettling nationalistic anthems in schools– we truly are allowing steps towards childhood indoctrination to nationalism.

Throttling the media- Nadine Dorries

Despite 96% of respondents saying they wanted channel 4’s funding model to remain the same and a wealth of evidence presented that C4 is doing well in it’s monetary goals, Dorries has stated that the government will take steps towards its’ privatisation. Dorries has repeatedly demonstrated that she doesn’t know or understand- nor despite time and prompts, care to learn, how channels in the UK are funded (she has also wrongly stated information about the BBC, ITV and channel 4’s several messups). Dorries has stated channel 4 hasn’t “helped its case” against privatisation when “one of its lead presenters is shouting fuck the tories at a concert”. That would be a sentence in and of itself enough to sink any other culture ministers as blatantly taking revenge on a channel for a presenter not slavishly worshipping the government but Dorries is too busy making raps on tiktok to feel the shame she would if she viewed herself as a huge majority of the UK view her.

But the media also does the tories job for them- all of the big newspapers lean right, from the Daily Mail and its endless campaign to blame “lefty do gooder lawyers” for everything, the Express and its attempts to copy headlines that sound similar to those written in North Korea about their own “dear leader”. Other papers are too busy trying to scratch at culture war to make sales by punching down on minorities or both sides-ing debates which are patently pointless or a nonissue. Those media that do speak truth to power are often small or sat on, or- as we saw recently with Cummings’ admissions about the Johnson administration “throwing bungs” to right wing media whilst ignoring left wing or smaller media outlets, underfunded into oblivion.

Social media has seen an uptick in the amount of people desperate to speak truth to power there- its how I have come to what little prominence I have because the only place you can speak about the disgusting state of the country with little intervention (though lots of hate mail, the odd death threat and a sprinkle of doxxing) is social media.

The only way through this mire is a multi pronged attack. Social media is hugely influential when it comes to allowing the voices of ordinary people to be uplifted above the proscripted dross of the mainstream media- a phrase I hate but will indulge in here, but large scale organisation and a flat refusal to allow the government to pass damaging legislation must also start to take place. Fighting back against tory policy must take place both in cyberspace and in the real world – lobbying the government is ineffective right now, but we cannot stop and must in fact increase our efforts to battle them in the real world including against the frightening anti protest legislation they have inducted.

They will not stop us. We are many- and there are more of us than we think. Though decades of tory policy have enforced a miasma of glibly disenfranchised brits, people can be reached with the right message -we must find this message and galvanise those who would not normally move to counter this fight. We must- for without the voices of the discontented rising in concert, the zombie moans of a nation whose freedom is dead will only grow to silence us all.

Daviemoo is a 34 year old independent writer, radicalised into blogging about the political state of the world by Brexit and the election of serial failures like Trump and Johnson. Please check out the rest of the blog, check out Politically Enraged, the podcast available on all streaming platforms and share with your like minded friends! Also check him out on ko-fi where you can keep him caffeinated whilst he writes.

Partygate: From Democracy to Mockery

By Daviemoo

As the met concludes the investigation they had to be pressured into a vast portion of the country is left asking ourselves: did the met police perform the coverup many of us suspected- and are we now stuck with a dead cat for a prime minister?

In November 2021 when news first broke of parties in Downing Street, there were many amongst our number in the UK who were less surprised that our government ministers would flout vital safety law than shocked it took so long for another scandal to surface.

At the time huge interest was piled onto those who were in the know: Pippa Crerar’s journalistic moxxie turned up evidence that Allegra Stratton, who had already been struggling as the tories’ answer to the UK press secretary in the form of Jen Psaki, had openly joked about the fact that the rules had been thrown off at the height of lockdown, giggling with her colleagues about cheese, wine and impropriety. The video showed what could charitably be referred to as distain for the rules as tory staffers laughed about ignoring safety guidance, especially in the line “and it was not socially distanced”. We wouldn’t have long to get used to Stratton’s face smirking across our screens before a new, HD Stratton video emerged: her resignation, tears running freely outside her house as she assured a raging public that she would “regret her actions for the rest of her life”. But what actions was Stratton referring to: she had merely joked about the rules being discarded by colleagues?
So naturally came the next line of questioning: if the woman who joked about laws being broken at the archaic heart of british democracy was to go- who else would? What would the punishment for this rule breaking behaviour be?

Cut dramatically to bombshell after bombshell: there were MULTIPLE parties! Sunak was at one! And it didn’t take long before the revelation we all waited for: Boris Johnson, prime minister was in attendance at not just one- but several- of these events.

Johnson, for his part had fallen on his usual habit of trying to lie his way out of trouble: after all, he lied his way into Downing Street on the promise of getting brexit done (how is that going, Prime Minister- fixed the border yet?). But the collective weight of grief, anger and appetite for truth (mixed as always with our obsession with scandal) meant the british public would not, as we have been told by a multitude of Johnsons’ staffers, “move on”. At first Johnson denied parties had taken place at all, the idea was ludicrous! Then he gravely assured us he was as furious as we were at the accusations- how very dare his silly staffers hold parties in his residence! Then came the denials that he attended any events himself- then photos of him at said events rolled in, to which he responded that it was not a party, it was a work event- then photographic evidence of him reclining with multiple staffers and his wife and the decorator for his flat appeared- was this a work event, with people who weren’t staff there? Well no, he said, it was a party- but he didn’t know it was a party you see, how could he, for the prime minister who flew from a meeting about Putin’s use of a deadly toxin on home soil to a KGB agent’s son’s party couldn’t possibly know what a party looks like- then when emails confirmed he did know it was a party the tact changed again- yes it was a party, he did know it was a party but he didn’t know parties were against the rules but he was very sorry and he would commission a report into it all so we could see the extent which our democracy was being mocked.

When the Gray report was inches from our outstretched fingertips suddenly the met police leapt into action- despite earlier stating they did not investigate retrospective breaches and predictably the line shifted from “just wait for the Sue Gray report” to “just wait for the conclusion of the met police investigation”. Wait, wait ,wait they said, forgetting it seems that while they threw back cheese and wine and laughed at podiums we had lost two years of our lives to isolation and now we were being asked to wait for justice to be served to those who couldn’t adhere to the same rules we had. Now the Gray report remains the only bastion of hope for holding the government to account – but therein lays the flaw that exposes the deepest issues we have with forcing this government to account for its wrongdoings: you cannot force someone to account for something they don’t feel regret over.

Boris Johnson, Rishi Sunak, the staffers- nobody feels remorse for their actions: they feel irked that they were exposed and embarrassed, angry that they had to divert resources away from what they actually care about to try and placate what they see as a sea of baying ingorami and confused that they should have to defend their actions. The line will go that “nobody died so who cares”. We are force fed lines about cake and Prosecco and how everyone just wants to be angry and offended. But not one amongst those who helped topple the respectability of british politics understands the root issue.

We- the people- were expected to follow these rules, asked to do as we were told, requested to do what was right, moral, safe- because at the same time as Johnson was quaffing wine and discussing the robustness of cheese with his colleagues, people were sat on the floor of their homes, desperately depressed and alone, mourning people whose chests were filling up with liquid as they drowned- funerals were held with barely any attendees. People were driven to suicide by trying to do the right thing and protect others. Mothers lost sons, sons lost fathers, fathers lost brothers. A million new disabled people, damaged in one or more ways by infection with a dangerous virus, many- most- of whom tried their best to avoid catching the coronavirus. We were told Johnson was only at one event for nine minutes- nine minutes I would have loved to have spent with my newly widowed Dad, or one of my two sisters as we all struggled to cope with the loss of my mother.

The breaking of rules was a big issue because even one slip up, one forgotten mask, one unwashed hand could have meant further spread of the virus that has stolen two years of our life and continues to kill hundreds of our countryfolk a week. Some of us worked hard for two years to ensure we stuck as best we could to the rules laid down by the Johnson government and to see his open flippancy in defying those rules then to watch the met gently chuck Johnson on the chin, employing the notion that Johnson cannot be punished for every event because they happened at his home so he “had” to be there is not our own chuck but a slap to the face.

The Johnson government has desperately tried to amend what it sees as the flaws of British society- wilful disregard and distrust for the office of prime minister- but who can respect a prime minister who drags us, still connected at the artery of Ireland, from the EU and watches us bleed whilst blaming them for the damage- who can respect a prime minister who “shook hands with” covid patients even as the deadliness of the virus was being questioned, the man who enforced harsh rules and penalties on everyone else but never for one moment believed he would adhere to them himself – the man who took away protest, made it harder to vote- the man who has utterly prostrated himself at the altar of ego, heedless of the cost of his own lies even as we paid the price.

Boris Johnson is, I hope, the worst prime minister the UK will ever see. The question now is not is he the worst: it is how long will he remain in post, and until Johnson realises that his desperation for validation will not be sated by a country sick to the back teeth of his embarrassing actions, he will continue to drag us further into the cut de sac of fruitlessness that his worse than lacklustre tenure has provided so far: so to the tories who surround Johnson and seek to protect themselves as much as he, remember this: your days are numbered and you are tarnishing yourselves every moment you remain his loyal lapdog. History is written by the victors and you lose every day you stand by his side. Either relinquish your white-knuckled hold on the hackles of the man who has destroyed you or go down in history as an enabler of the worst prime minister in the history of the United Kingdom.

Daviemoo is a 34 year old independent writer, radicalised into blogging about the political state of the world by Brexit and the election of serial failures like Trump and Johnson. Please check out the rest of the blog, check out Politically Enraged, the podcast available on all streaming platforms and share with your like minded friends! Also check him out on ko-fi where you can keep him caffeinated whilst he writes.

I mourned my mother’s death in total isolation as Boris Johnson and his cronies partied – they must go.

By Daviemoo

On the 20th March 2020 my mother finally passed away after days of agonising struggle due to terminal cancer. The pandemic shrank to a dot in my periphery as the woman who raised me passed slowly away before my eyes. As she let out her final breath I knew my world was immutably changed. And whilst this is not a unique experience, the world of isolation I then awoke to days later was: mourning in isolation was agonising, but I, but my sisters, but my dad, but many other people did it. And as we awoke daily to a world of death and sickness, mourning our loved ones, Prime Minister Boris Johnson threw unashamed parties at the seat of British democracy. So the question now is: consequences or a shirking of the rule of law… do we live with democracy or mockery?

I remember the first day of lockdown, sitting in my flat watching the news, petrified to even open my front door. I lived in a high rise at the time, my neighbours door directly next to mine, neighbours further down the hall left and right. Our hallway became a danger zone: what if they had it? What if I went for a walk, for my mail, for some milk- and caught coronavirus? Fortunately for me, I was too absorbed by trying to make sense of a world where I couldn’t text my mum and ask her questions: how are you? How was the day?
That was ripped away by cancer, and all too many people face this horrific reality. But others are lucky: they have family, friends, a support system.

Not only did I have to face a world bereft of that voice of comfort I’d had since birth but I couldn’t even be around another person.

At first it wasn’t a struggle: I just wanted to be alone to absorb it all. But as it began to dawn on me that I was that much more alone the weight began to pile onto my shoulders. I kept picking up my phone to text her and realising I couldn’t. I kept finding things I’d ask her: what can I read, what’s good on TV, what was she eating? Gone. But then the memories: seeing her getting weaker, smaller, paler, sicker. I just wanted to talk to someone about it and as I sat there alone with those awful thoughts repeating I coined a phrase for it: I just wanted to get the venom out. I wanted to talk to someone to remove the poison from those memories, to seek comfort.

I didn’t.

I was alone for the entirety of the first lockdown bar running into my ex and close friend down by the river in Leeds. We stood feet apart petrified of infecting each other. I knew coronavirus would probably make me very sick judging on what’s happened to me before when I’ve had other viruses. So we said our hellos, I said some brief fluff about coping and then went back to my flat alone where I found a wine glass mum gave me and cried.

I don’t want or need sympathy for it: losing your mother is an unfortunate inevitability for vast swaths of people. Losing your mother to aggressive cancer is also too common. But facing the enormity alone was bizarre.

Eventually I started going for daily walks and ironically, instead of following the towpaths down by the river or any of the usual nature rambles I headed into the city: because every normal walk was packed with other people. I walked desolate streets, turned around when I saw others making sure I avoided people at any cost. All the while, my brain liked to replay the horror over and over again.

My mother’s passing was the opposite of what you’d want for your loved one. It was not peaceful, there was no dignity. Only a slow agonising crawl to the end. And I relived that over and over, day and night. Alone.

Fast forwarding over a year of grief and much isolation, we approach the time of the partygate leaks.

My instant reaction was to laugh: I was so numb to tory corruption, ineptitude and disingenuousness that at first I thought it was funny that these people couldn’t even apply the laws they created to themselves. Then the laughter stopped. I thought about how I wasn’t allowed to carry my mother’s coffin because of risk of confection. I thought about how I had to speak to four people, all socially distanced at Carleton Crematorium. I thought about how I couldn’t hug my dad as he openly wept as I read out my mother’s eulogy. And I remembered my mother’s co workers gathered feet apart near the doors of the chapel as we left, unable to come in. And a sense of injustice so profound I could barely contain it welled up in me, so strong I could barely contain it. I wept openly to my friends that night (on voice note because omicron was spreading at the time)- isolated again and facing this news.

The balance of this piece is not ever to say that the laws were unjust: anything that contained the horrors of coronavirus and protected people was necessary. It is a rallying cry to action for those who lost family, friends and more, or for those who just did the decent damn thing. We sacrificed months of our lives gladly to keep people safe, to “stop the spread”, we “hands face space”d, we “got boosted now”. Meanwhile the foetid government’s corrupt members, from lowest administrator to the very highest man himself, eschewed responsibility to themselves, to each other -to us, their electorate, for the sake of quaffing wine and beer, for Christmas parties, leaving do’s and more. Photographers caught jolly moments we couldn’t fulfil ourselves. We did what we had to do whilst our highest elected officials, those we used to be able to expect the most from betrayed us, our trust and our country as a whole.

I’ve had my upset around being alone to mourn written off as “gutter journalism”, “political fluff”, “nonsense” and more by conservatives more bothered about keeping their own jobs (and second jobs no doubt, for they have dropped any proceedings into the fallout from the Paterson scandal) than decency, justice, political surety.

Ineptitudinal attitudes around brexit will eventually scar over into functional trade as, down the line, adults step in to undo the damage of a Johnson tenure. Economies will recover, world esteem will rise. But our loved ones will not undie.

Tainted forever is the trust of a party that calls itself the party of law and order, a party who cannot even undertake the rules which it implements. Let no tory ever again call themselves the party of law and order as they defend convicted sex offenders or as they brazenly write off the suffering of the families of the covid dead or others.

The conservatives cannot be trusted, must NOT be trusted to continue to drag this great nation to it’s knees, to prostrate our justice before the altar of hedonism that is right wing populism and Boris Johnson in particular must be cast from his starring role as charlatan in chief, with his puppet Rishi Sunak in support as bank robber. Nadine Dorries and her clueless gesticulations over a media she is undoubtedly not in control of yet oversees, Dominic Raab’s “ships passing in the night” acquaintance with justice… the list goes on 539 times.

Britain deserves better than this. We, you, I- deserve better than this. When people say Boris Johnson tried his best it matters not whether it is true. If it is not true and he did not try his best, he was not fit to be prime minister. If he did try, and this is his best: he is not fit to be prime minister.

Daviemoo is a 34 year old independent writer, radicalised into blogging about the political state of the world by Brexit and the election of serial failures like Trump and Johnson. Please check out the rest of the blog, check out Politically Enraged, the podcast available on all streaming platforms and share with your like minded friends! Also check him out on ko-fi where you can keep him caffeinated whilst he writes.

The Great Theatrics of Modern Politics

By Daviemoo

Roll up one and all and see the greatest performance ever given by politicians! A play so absorbing that its enthralled a nation of those willing to buy the unlikely story that a group of people responsible for nearly 200,000 deaths due to a preventable disease, who have overseen scandal after scandal from blackmail and bullying to their stirring performance as reverse Robin Hoods- stealing from the poor to give succour to the rich- were ever interested in making our lives better.

We live in a remarkable time. Many things have contributed to the through the looking glass state of affairs we find ourselves in. 9/11, the incompetence of the Bush administration, Blair’s descent into useful lapdog and overt liar who pushed an agenda of war on us for the sake of the black lifeblood of the planet- oil. There’s a distinct delineation between the performative lies of someone like Blair and- as a byproduct- Starmer: they lie about sticking to promises and policies because they genuinely think and perhaps know that lying for the greater good benefits the majority. I do not hate those politicians who lie thinking they must do so for “the greater good” but lying, nonetheless, leads to the sort of crushing disgrace that ended Blair’s tenure.

But this type of performance, this lying is different than the insidious lies of people like Trump, Johnson, Patel and almost every single member of the conservative party “functioning” in the uk today. It is not to excuse it- but a lie told in isolation is different than the constant performance of roles that has encompassed the tories for the last 12 years.

The theatrics of Johnson’s red faced rants at the despatch box are meant only to absolve him of culpability in his now myriad well advertised crimes, some of which are listed above. A man who oversaw wholesale death at the hands of a plague then stood in an expensive press room, studiously dishevelled as only a man running a disaster can be and who barely contained his scene-breaking smirk as he blamed everyone from NHS staff to care home workers to the individuals ourselves, failing at every turn to grasp the depths of the role he plays- his own vital and completely unfufilled role as arbiter of safety. A man who somberly promised there were no parties- but then there were parties but he didn’t go- but then he did go but he didn’t know it was a party- but he did go and he did know it was a party but parties are ok: bravissimo! Johnson truly outdid himself as an actor through those scenes; I know were it me, I would likely have broken and laughed at the obscenity of such poorly written lines- but he performed them with gusto!

The playbook which this government has functioned from has always been written to shirk blame: you will note that not once has any tory, even performatively admitted responsibility for the outcomes of brexit on our economy, of coronavirus and the deaths therein, of rising hate crimes, of the knighthood of a man who oversaw the worst exam results because he would not factor in a pandemic, of the lobbying scandal or of a doctored race report or even of Johnson’s apparently strenuously rehearsed insinuation that Starmer was responsible for the monster that is Jimmy Saville. But that is because any person- not a minority, not even the majority, matters in this play we’re swept up in. Johnson tore up the playbook of politician and is rewriting as he goes, forgetting to refer to his own source material. That’s hardly surprising- Johnson’s prose has always been harshly critiqued by anyone unfortunate enough to delve into it. His half baked lies about political correctness being an import from the EU, fallacious claims of government ministers potential homosexual affairs… he may be an actor. A great writer he is not.

As a man, and a government obsessed with market prominence, the market itself took on the role of judge, jury and indeed executioner of coronavirus. If you couldn’t afford to stay home then perhaps you should have worked a bit harder, studied more, perhaps you should have saved more to get a mortgage then you didn’t HAVE to go out to work: you could have been offered a more prominent role in the play of modern Britain: But we weren’t all offered the stage Johnson was, we worked for our meagre bit parts and we were shunned from the spotlight- a man such as he would never understand this life because it’s so alien to his own. Every pundit who worked as his agent to install him knew he would deliver a brilliant performance as a prime minister, but when it came to fulfilling those duties he would, and has, and is, and will continue- to fall flat, miss the notes, forget the lines.

This mindset so common amongst the elite is not surprising. Those born to be stars are so used to it that it fades into the background. What’s surprising is how successfully this government has played it’s role, plying the working class with this message- and how many have accepted their bit part at the coliseum of conservative- how many working class people stand and cheer at the interval, crying “yes, yes our lives are worse, we’re poorer, more unhealthy, our family and friends died, we can’t afford to heat our homes- more, more!” They leave rave reviews for a government performatively talking about wanting to be the party of tax cuts as taxes go up, the party of individual responsibility as they shirk their own duties- they go off book every day on stage, speaking contradictions to their character and yet the proletariat rise from their seat, applauding.

9% of the UK tested positive for coronavirus last week. Where was the scene of a PM worried for the health of his nation? Was it cut from the play? No.
Because the UK are bored of hearing about covid, because the government and a less than useless media are not pushing the message- there are many reasons. But most of it, to my belief, boils down to a prime minister who stands unflinching at the despatch box, his brows knitted in consternation as he orates about how well we’ve done (despite having the highest deaths in Europe), how great our vaccine rollout (which is now woefully low on the world table and doesn’t even factor in children) is, how we’re levelling up (as 1.1 million people are due to drop into the trenches of poverty). Johnson’s lines are well rehearsed, and of course, complete nonsense.

The prime minister’s bluster is performed by a master of wordplay with absolutely no substance. I often imply that he is a stupid man, and I do believe that there is a dearth of common sense in that head- but to deny he is consciously complicit of his decision to let the market dictate death is to offer him a disservice- I credit Mr Johnson with knowingly leading us into mass death and a decimated economy. Because Johnson and huge swaths of those who gather to watch him perform are fans of hope. They want to live off the great glory of a Britain that never existed. “Built by hard working people” they will extoll in parliament. Built then by slaves imported in droves to fulfil the wishes of our ancestors, and built now by the poor whose earnings are being pared down to nothing by a government who will take our taxes and stuff them in the coffers, ready to drip drip drip feed us until the run up to an election they hope to storm. Suddenly the magic money tree will bloom and Johnson will cry ‘ITS BECAUSE OF ME- I WORKED TO GET YOU THIS MONEY’. A performance worthy of Shakespeare- a man Johnson is writing a book about and being paid more for than I will earn in 5 years no doubt.

Boris Johnson could, tomorrow, convene parliament and do all manner of things to help the cost of living crisis. Energy companies cannot just up and leave; their earnings should be capped and the extra money reinvested into consumer savings, or into green energy which would and should be cheaper. But he would have to eschew the role he’s played for so long. Out would go the spotlights and in he would step, the caricature lost, and we would finally see a contrite, a worried, a selfless PM who would do what he could to help us: but this is a role Johnson is utterly incapable of fulfilling: he is typecast. He will not change.

He could have worked collaboratively with the EU on a brexit deal that didn’t involve heinous red tape and therefore push up the price of goods, ruin businesses that rely on import/export expedience. He could fairly tax the hyper rich, close the tax loopholes that the EU was working on so those who earn obscene amounts of money pay fairly and proportionately. But Boris Johnson will approach the despatch box with his sneering surety that Britain must suffer under his guidance because the market dictates it so. So it is with this that we must realise: Johnson is not a prime minister, he is an actor on a stage, performing a brilliant imitation of a businessman running the country like a firm to maximise profit even at the expense of the workers. As long as the CEOs are rich our lives or deaths do not matter.

Johnson and his allies have each stepped up to the spotlight to perform wonderfully convincing soliloquies, each convincing us of a different reason for the play we’re unwittingly performing: it’s the people of colour, the foreigners, the LGBT+ who have stolen the show, made the whole performance about them: but it is the minorities who simply ask for time on stage- we didn’t write the play. those who proceeded Johnson’s government did, and this government’s wilful continuation of a storyline of deflecting blame is the true reason we are here.

As the audience of the Johnson government’s play dwindles due to covid deaths, due to starvation, hypothermia in their own homes, due to rising hate crimes one must wonder: who will be alive to witness the curtain fall? Will we be lucky enough to survive the full tenure of the Johnson government- and of those who do make it to the final act, who will stand and cry “encore”.

Daviemoo is a 34 year old independent writer, radicalised into blogging about the political state of the world by Brexit and the election of serial failures like Trump and Johnson. Please check out the rest of the blog, check out Politically Enraged, the podcast available on all streaming platforms and share with your like minded friends! Also check him out on ko-fi where you can keep him caffeinated whilst he writes.

It’s either a gentle step to the left or another goose step to the right

By Daviemoo

I can’t take any more political discourse that uses the worst “both sides” lamentations. So many people will insist on telling me that all politicians are scum, liars, wrong, bad- and the irony is that I don’t disagree. I’m aware that politicians are unprincipled. But the temperature of UK political discourse just keeps getting hotter on one side.

Let me make this clear before I move forward: I don’t like Keir Starmer. I don’t even particularly like Labour under him.

He’s made snafu after snafu, he’s slow to react, labour seems to be a seething pit of argument and discussion that amounts to the same endless friction that has persisted, albeit quieter, since 2019.

There are myriad issues that labour need to deal with. On Starmer, the latest sin he’s admitted to is that he will break promises if it means winning an election.

So many of the political savants I follow online or speak to in person happily decry Starmer, led by the latest op-ed from Owen Jones- and it’s not that I don’t understand why people dislike Starmer or Labour under his governance. I’ve sat quietly, swallowing back criticism after criticism as Starmer seems to drag labour further towards the center. I’ve defended him even when what he’s done has annoyed me because I’ve assumed automatically that there is some grand plan I’m unaware of or that he/ the labour leadership must know better. But the rabidity with which every single thing Starmer does is shocking to me, even as someone that frankly thinks he’s a strange mix of a bit wet and also ruthless towards those who he should be courting.

Where, though, is the perspective? So often I’m told “not tories is not a good enough reason to vote for someone” and in normal times I’d agree. Under a shoddy but functional government, that argument would of course hold weight but right now it folds like damp paper.

The tories are responsible for a disasterous mismanagement of the pandemic. Hancock killed scores of older people by discharging them from hospitals into nursing homes, was more concerned with meeting daily testing figures than actual practicable safety regulations, he had an affair with someone he hired using public money and is embroiled in sundry PPE scandals as are many, many MANY tory ministers. Patel forced refugees into unsafe, unsanitary accommodation which equates to prisons, and is set to do more to worsen their situations including opening “camps” in other countries to keep them- and has worked relentlessly to ensure that any meaningful protest in the UK is curtailed- purely as a reaction to unrest under her own government’s shoddy handling of the new civil rights movement BLM. Gove’s revealing tapes about wanting the north to suffer and calling us toothless, Raab- a man who accused the UK workforce of being amongst the laziest despite us working longer hours and on average working later, and when sick- abandoning his vital duty as Afghanistan fell, to stay at a hotel that it would take someone on minimum wage over a month of full time work to afford ONE NIGHT at. All the tories refused to vote for free school meals then when the UK public pressured them they mis sold the contracts and inflated the prices for sub standard goods- and MP Ben Bradley in particular said that his constituents would use the vouchers in “brothels” and “crack dens”. Rob Roberts was disgraced by sexual misconduct claims and yet continues in his role unabated. Lets also not forget about the horrendously inept minister for Education, Gavin Williamson and his myriad mistakes, most prominent of which was declaring proudly that the Co2 Monitoring systems for schools would protect children from covid- despite none of the monitors being installed when children went back. All of this of course helmed by the racist, sexist, xenophobic, bumbling and useless prime minister we’ve had foisted upon us – Alexander Boris Johnson. Racist articles and books, homophobia, islamophobia all of which he refuses to apologise for, corruption claims stemming back to his journalism days including a confirmed claim that he doxxed a journalist for a friend to allow them to suffer physical violence, calling huge salaries “chicken feed”, laughing and joking about the swaths of dead from covid, talking about bodies piling high in the streets, telling us lie after lie after lie about brexit from the alacrity of trade deals with the US to telling UK companies to “fix the issues with their supply chain”, to simply failing to understand the vital difference between animals slaughtered for profit going to farmers VS culling of animals at huge loss to their owners. He’s raised national insurance, caused inflation in bills, made food shortages nationwide… Johnson’s failings, both personal and professional are long and storied, and yet beloved he remains by many Britons who see this rich, daffy and doe eyed fool as one of them. Johnson wouldn’t stop to put a person on fire out, used to burn £50 notes in front of homeless people and wreck their businesses for fun, has had affairs behind the back of his cancer stricken spouse. He is a moral failure of a human, and a professional failure of a politician and those who love him fail to see that they have enjoyed supporting a confection, a fraud and a fake.

The tories may not always have been the party of scum, but scum they are now. Giving credence to the continued efforts to support the tories in their vast and storied failures, the british press- how anyone can continue in good conscience to allow the tories to run roughshod over the country they claim to love is beyond me.
Sometimes I feel almost paranoiac about it- it can’t possibly be as bad across the board as I see it? And yet the evidence is there, plain to see.

I don’t blame the tories for everything negative in my life, but for those things they are attributable, the links are plain and I cannot but judge those who- I can only assume- wilfully miss this ignorance.

Given all of the above let us be frank: British politics is a hellscape.

But this then is where my frustration mounts. Again, I think Labour has myriad serious issues at present and understand how poorly they are performing. And being told by it’s leader that he will lie or break promises to win the vote is hardly endearing. And yet I cannot feasibly see them as worse than the tories, bearing in mind the litany of things I’ve mentioned barely scratches the surface just of the last 5 years.

I understand, truly, why people would have huge distaste for Labour at present. But how can one truly thing that the better alternative are the tories.
People are so often calling labour centrist that they forget just how far right the tories have gone, and as someone who considers myself far left I often look longingly for a party that actually represents how I feel on myriad issues but the other parties in the UK I unfortunately know- specifically based on how our political system works – are a waste of time.

Any vote that isn’t for the opposition is a waste, and people can decry labour as centrist or corrupt or no better than tories- but tories we have. We are under the thumb of the most corrupt government in living memory. And I can’t help but look to America as an example of a country who held it’s nose and voted in what so many refer to as a centrist melt. Biden is a disappointment in grand terms as is Harris, but we always knew they would be. But Trump’s presidency was marred with corruption scandals, tacit declarations of violence and an increasingly emboldened far right- much like this endless elitist rule by the tories has brought here.

At the end of the day I will hold my nose and vote for labour because any change, any move left however slight, is better than continuing down the dangerous path towards authoritarianism we are already too many steps down here. Until we find a political figure who reaches and unites more of the left in a way similar to Corbyn but without the long shadow he cast (don’t come for me, I liked him a lot), we have to make do with what we have or as always, votes will be split between a handful of indy parties, greens, lib dems and a big share for labour as the tories again coast to victory with less than half of voters wanting them to take power.

The temptation to push for huge change is there, and if it were possible to make a movement so vast happen it would be revolutionary- but until this movement takes place we’ll be doomed to repeat this fractured pattern of splitting and being overseen by those we do not want in power.

So it’s up to the electorate- a gentle step to the left or another goose step further right.

Voter ID- Disenfranchising The Disenfranchised

By Daviemoo

In a country with normalised ID for every citizen, mandatory ID to vote is par for the course- so why, in a country where photo ID is not state subsidised or at least heavily discounted, are the British populace fine with new voter restrictions- the right to vote is one of the most basic there is. Is it fair to pay for the privilege?

It seems a far stretch to call the new legislation to implement mandatory voter ID “voter suppression”, but a rose by any other name still smells as sweet, and restrictions on voting still restricts voters.

You may be fooled into thinking that the government had sound reason to fear voter fraud and it’s impact on electoral integrity – until you read the ONS stats on voter fraud convictions in England. Those out there I’ll politely term as reactionaries- or less politely, fucking idiots, will go with the already laughably piffling figure of five hundred and ninety five reported cases.

In a group of countries with 66.65 million people, we’re already looking at the gentleman’s inch of political issues- add to that that all but SIX of those cases being dismissed without charge, two being given police cautions and FOUR convicted. So you may be forgiven for calling this government their favourite moniker- snowflakes- for overhauling the actual law to prevent a crime that four people have been convicted of.

The issue, the insidiousness and, indeed, the explanation behind the implementation of restrictive voter suppression techniques- which have, by the way, been imported wholesale from the good old US of A off the backs of their election – comes down to the voters it’s most likely to affect.

When you look into who the bases who most regularly vote for political parties, suddenly what seems to be a strange lapse of sanity becomes a crystal clear attempt to further solidify the tories’ death grip on the throat of a nation that- simply looking at figures- didn’t want them in the first place.

The tories won the biggest popular vote since 1979 in 2019 with an astounding 43.6% of the total votes- it’s a huge margin. But when comparing that to the total number of votes cast this means that over half of voters did NOT want tories- nothing to say of course about those who did NOT vote, whose opinions we can’t guess at and frankly who I don’t give the time of day to during political conversations, because not voting then complaining is the intellectual equivalent of letting someone kick you in the leg then complaining that you let them kick you.

When you realise the implications of a party with less than half the country’s votes implementing the insidious rule the tories have palmed on us, you suddenly realise the farcicality of the recent legislations being passed- from voter ID to stripping our right to protest down to the bone. A party who traditionally caters to the older generation and doesn’t wholesale represent the youth of the UK has implemented restrictions on voting that will- not could, but WILL, impact on younger voters and poorer voters. Shockingly, the people less likely to vote for the tories- not LABOUR per se, but not tory- are the young and the more economically poor.

Ah, so here then is the crux of the issue. The tories aren’t concerned about voter crime, they aren’t worried about the already sterling job that those who invigilate for voting being compromised. This is- arguably- an attack against the people who could potentially swing votes away from their parties.

Let’s now discuss the pricing of documents that you’ll need to vote.

A new passport in England costs between £75.50 and £85.

Source: https://www.gov.uk/national-minimum-wage-rates

The above info is taken from the government website itself and means that those of voting age, on the national minimum wage, would need to work 12 hours specifically to cover the cost of a document which is now mandated for use in the democratic and vital process. Half a day of work to save the money to cover a document that you will now need to exercise what is a fundamental, and vital right to employ to ensure that you are represented in this country.

Let’s now look at obtaining a new provisional or full driver’s license in the UK.

Source: https://www.gov.uk/driving-licence-fees

Much more reasonable! Until you consider that purely paying between £34 and £43 pounds is a misnomer- either you’re paying this fee to have a driving license you only need to prove your legal age for various reasons and vote which means this is a cost brought to you SPECIFICALLY AND ONLY to vote, or you need this license because you are planning to learn to drive- which costs, buy and insure a car and use it- which costs – so the actual costs are much higher if you want to implement this ID document for it’s purpose, and if not- you are literally paying money to be able to vote, which you can do for free now.

I could then further break down how this would make voting infeasible when factoring in more expensive food prices, rent or a mortgage, transport to work, petrol, car insurance and basic necessities to live but you get the idea I’m sure- this move by the government means that those who are paid the least are now vastly less likely to be able to afford the basic documents needed to have their say.

When you compare this against the current system where voting incurs only the cost of getting to where you vote, or not even this cost if you vote via postal vote- you’ll need to forgive me if I look confused about the necessity of mandatory ID.

This of course the Government could combat somewhat, by bringing in an optional UK Personal photo ID card – an idea floated when I was just reaching the cusp of the voting age, but said to be too close to surveillance and a nanny state.

This is still true- but if the goalposts for voter freedom are to change, then so is the necessity of the state providing an affordable way for it’s citizens to cast their vote, otherwise this legislation can be called by it’s true name: a voter suppression bill.

A better way?

Stacey Abrams, US politician, led a storming campaign in Georgia running from 2016 to present to ensure that disenfranchised voters- or as I like to call them, people adversely affected by legislation just like this one- were able to access the provisions needed to cast their vote, and the time is nigh for a politician in the UK to take up our own seat at this table. The UK government, failing as it is to import anything successfully post Brexit, did manage to import the voter suppression bill passed in what I can only call revenge for Abram’s amazing work, so I’d heartily suggest that UK politicians who do value the tiny flakes of democracy we still treasure here do their work to ensure that this bill affects the minimal folk it will – because I guarantee you this will affect voters.

There are many other people who would be adversely affected by the implementation of this bill – for example, those who are legally barred from driving due to disability. Herein of course is another issue we need to discuss – the right wing fervour to disregard the rights and freedoms of disabled people. This would limit people who cannot work due to disability and who cannot drive to – exactly what options for ID documents to vote? And are we convinced that those who invigilate will have sufficient training as to recognise the scant options left for people- not an insignificant group mind you – who would be effectively limited by this foolish legislation, or forcing them to vote in more drawn out ways which may impact on them in different ways as usual not thought of by a government too interested in pandering to it’s own voter base at the expense of everyone else- and, ironically, sometimes it’s own base.

To conclude…

I’ve been accused of many times of being overly critical of right wing governance and the irony is, i don’t know how I will react the day I’m finally under a more left leaning government. I’d like to think my moral compass is aligned as closely I can get it with basic decency, and if I felt a lefty government was letting down it’s people I’d be just as critical. I suppose this small paragraph is going to stand as a testament as to whether that happens in the future- provided we aren’t stuck under authoritarian rule as long as I live due to the machinations of those uncaring clowns in power now.

Speaking of moral compass -I ask you, readers who value the true basic right enshrined to us all to vote, please contact your local MP and lodge your displeasure with the disgraceful legislation being pushed through parliament. Sitting angry does very little to help those in need who can’t speak out – so you do it.

And while we’re at it – ENGAGE YOUNG PEOPLE WITH POLITICS.

I don’t care what political party you’re aligned with – with exceptions, if you’re a nationalist fuckwit please kindly visit your closest pier and walk off it – please encourage your children to understand the absolutely vital role they will play if they engage with and vote in political discourse in this country. The tories are the party of keeping old people’s money secreted away. Young people need to find the people who represent their morals, their values and who offer them an alternative to the bleak decade we’ve just had. They have a chance to change the future for the better- for themselves and heck, for us too. Whether that hefty mission of undoing the damage of the conservatives lies with labour or another political party, discovered or undiscovered, I’m unsure. But I know for sure that young people deserve to have their say irrespective of this disgraceful coup of a bill. Help them realise how vital their voices are.