[Macros]

If anything more brexit

[worry]

What exactly are councils? Like a tier of government below the city level?

[amphibian]

Macros, on 08 May 2026 - 05:21 PM, said:

Sweet fuck have labour shit the bed, from supermajority to this.

Really hope the 3 councils Greens have won so far absolutely kill it performance wise to contrast with the inevitable reform corruption and fuck up

Starmer has been nearly as bad as Truss and Sunak. Just baffling levels of "what a shithead" and I hope Labour absolutely shanks him to irrelevance.

This post has been edited by amphibian: 08 May 2026 - 10:44 PM

[Maark Abbott]

amphibian, on 08 May 2026 - 10:44 PM, said:

Macros, on 08 May 2026 - 05:21 PM, said:

Sweet fuck have labour shit the bed, from supermajority to this.

Really hope the 3 councils Greens have won so far absolutely kill it performance wise to contrast with the inevitable reform corruption and fuck up

Starmer has been nearly as bad as Truss and Sunak. Just baffling levels of "what a shithead" and I hope Labour absolutely shanks him to irrelevance.

Nah, not even close.

He is definitely a wanker and I will not dispute that but his government have actually made progress. Granted, progress held up to some degree by him being a bellend, but he has not been nearly as catastrophic as Truss, or as brazenly corrupt as Sunak.

Where his major fuckup is seems to lie in attempting to pander to the hard right. He went after pensioners, he further alienated the party's voterbase and then he decided to demonise protests against genocide. Despite this, somehow still not as awful as the two before him.

Worry - councils are local government here. Some deal with cities, some with towns, some with areas, but functionally they're kinda the same - local issues like school funding, roads, that kinda thing. Usually a party will have a view on how to run towns. Reform's only view and policy is 'brown people scary' so they'll proceed to fuck everything up for the councils they control (like mine).

[Tiste Simeon]

Maark is 100% right. There's lots that Starmer has done that I can agree with (compared with almost zero things the Tories did in 14 years that I approved of...)

But his weird obsession with sucking up to Israel and criminalising hundreds of OAPs amongst others because they stand for Palestine is pretty horrifying.

[TheRetiredBridgeburner]

I was away for the weekend and did my best to not go down the rabbit hole of the local elections, but as others have said upthread, it's depressing but ever so predictably so.

Our incumbent Lib Dem councillor kept his seat, so locally I'm pleased as they seem to be a general force for good in the area - and boy do they take abuse from those of the Reform persuasion on an almost daily basis whenever they try and engage. We had an "asylum hotel" protest just down the road from us for a hotel which hasn't been used to house asylum seekers for a number of years and in fact currently housed women and children fleeing domestic violence. The councillors absolutely no nonsense stance of calling out racism for what it is was very impressive and I think they handled it very well.

I just hope this happening three years ahead of a potential GE is enough time for Reform to mess up catastrophically - but given how many of their voters don't seem to understand the difference between local and general elections in the first place, it feels like a slim hope at the moment.

I caught the quote by the Reform councillor in Sunderland about melting Nigerians to fill the potholes and actually concluded hopefully that it was a caricature. Finding out otherwise was probably the cherry on top of a very depressing cake. This country has normalised hatred and abhorrent behaviour by those in politics to such a level I don't see a way back for the foreseeable future at least.

This post has been edited by TheRetiredBridgeburner: 11 May 2026 - 08:39 AM

[Maark Abbott]

They lost a councillor in Bradford an hour after the election because he didn't actually want the job.

They had another who thought she was being elected as an MP.

You cannot make it up with these imbeciles.

[Macros]

Wasn't one of the elected councillors an AI generated fake person?

[Garak]

And this is why satire is dead. Reality is dumber than anything satire would try.

[the broken]

So... Labour knows all this infighting just makes things easier for Reform, right?

[Macros]

No, theyre fuckwits also.

[Grief]

I'm not sure it's a huge boon to Reform. We're years away from a general election.

There are potentially worse things Labour could do right now than hashing out their leadership. The party are losing support and Starmer simply does not seem like he's got another good election in him. I'd even favour it if they seemed to have viable alternatives.

The real problem is what can they do next?

Leadership contests in the Corbyn years have shown the party membership have a willingness to back candidates further to the left than the party itself wants to stomach.

Wes Streeting is a far cry from that, and is not clear at all he would win a straight contest against Starmer. Some of his allies might prefer to drop the matter if it looks like it will open up to a wider field of candidates. The longer it drags on the more awkward it looks. It's possible the will be enough to keep Starmer staggering on for now. I'm doubtful that is really their best interest for the long run.

I've believed for a while now that Labour's best bet is to shuffle their leadership before the next election - although ideally closer to it - and try to sell the new leadership as a break from the old party. It worked well enough for the Tories.

Reform, for all their touted success, do have vulnerabilities. They're taking on a lot of the Tory crowd and Farage has baggage. The threat is essentially a more unified right-wing vote than at the last election. That's not insurmountable. Labour have mostly done a poor job of articulating any real vision for the country, and have been especially poor at maintaining party discipline.

[Macros]

We're falling into the same trap as the USA.

Labour MPs commit infractions and get hammered for it, the tories take flak but bluff it out for the most and Farage (trump) just fucking rolls through it.

£5m as a personal donation that he didnt declare.

Throw them to the wolves.


Oh sorry, the leader of the green party campaigned for British red Cross, he said was a spokes person for them, throw him in jail.

Labour have a chance still to crush this, clear chances kn transparency for MPs and political parties and limit money coming in, they still hold the cards in westminster

[Maark Abbott]

A Reform councillor in Sheffield has been banned for having a massive fucking nazi flag in his lounge.

At this point you have to wonder how people can reconcile supporting that lot.

[the broken]

Pre Maduro, indicting Raul Castro would have been symbolic. Now, they have to be wondering.

[QuickTidal]

the broken, on 22 May 2026 - 02:56 PM, said:

Pre Maduro, indicting Raul Castro would have been symbolic. Now, they have to be wondering.

It's stupid now too, since the current president (and therefore 1st seat of their communist party) is Miguel Díaz-Canel...so doing anything to Raúl Castro (who most people were indifferent to) is pointless nonsense.

Every Cuban I have ever known has had this opinion: They adored Che and still revere him, they tolerated Fidel because he was better than Batista but hated a lot of what he did, and they were largely indifferent to Raul...they generally don't like Miguel Díaz-Canel. It's a failed state, but it needs help not some former leader arrested. The guy who they might have been able to sell to the American people as requiring "justice" or whatever was Fidel, but he's long gone.

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 22 May 2026 - 03:26 PM

[Maark Abbott]

Local councillor to me (not my ward, but next one over) got outed for having a swastika tattoo.

Somehow hasn't been sacked.

[Tiste Simeon]

 Maark Abbott, on 27 May 2026 - 11:48 AM, said:

Local councillor to me (not my ward, but next one over) got outed for having a swastika tattoo.

Somehow hasn't been sacked.

Presumably how he got the job with Reform.