State of the parties as 2015 General Election looms.

[amateur51]

Beat me to it, you did!

A previous message applies - both parts.

[jean]

Why are you 'defending' her?

I'm not defending her - she was foolish to do what she did. I'm defending the white working class against the assumptions of a metropolitan élite. There's nothing especially Marxist about that.

[Richard Barrett]

The UKIP aren't ultra-right, stop trying to scare us.

And they prove it, according to Farage, by doing something which the three main parties don't and banning BNP members from joining. But why would they even need to consider doing that? Anyone who isn't scared by UKIP has the wool over their eyes. "Party of the working class" indeed - they're no more working class than the Tories (both their MPs of course were Tories until they saw the possibility of being big fish in a small pond), what they have is a more bare-faced way of making empty promises based on lies which appeal to people's worst instincts. This is what far-right politics consists of. It's deeply scary.

[teamsaint]

I'm not defending her - she was foolish to do what she did. I'm defending the white working class against the assumptions of a metropolitan élite. There's nothing especially Marxist about that.

right, so there is actually an interesting discussion to be had here, perhaps?

After all the metropolitan elite, ( the assumption is that this is a liberal/labour party elite) along with the conservatives, are very happy to use a national flag, patriotic fervour, or to cash in on a wave of nationalist opinion when it suits them (cool Britannia ?), but happy to distance itself from the associated symbols when it suits them, EG when UKIP are on the rise.

In any case , the white working class in fact seems every bit as happy to associate with those symbols of Englishness amd Britishness as any other part of society does...like at LNOTP, for instance. It happens, like it or not.
And as with the rise of UKIP, perhaps best not to pretend it isn't happening, and to confront the causes?

Here is a song with an interesting lyric, about seeing the confederate flag flying in Germany....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ocCd0DrNFU

[jean]

Th flying of a flag, any flag, has symbolic significance.

Unfortunately, the flying of national flags (whether the Union Jack or the flag of St George) by a private individual as opposed to a public body came to be a preserve of the BNP and other ultra-nationalist, racist groups.

Thus you could not really avoid assumptions being made about what you were expressing if you chose to hang such a flag from your window.

However, a few years ago, people began to hang the flag of St George from their windows, gardens, cars, allotment sheds and so on to indicate support for the national team. These flags are always removed at the end of the contest.

Go round any residential area at the moment, when there are no national teams playing anywhere - you will see very few national flags, if any at all. A man in the next street to mine was the only person I knew ever to fly a Union Jack from his house every day regardless of sporting events, and he was making a statement about his affiliation to the local Orange Lodge.

(The LNOTP contains an element of irony, I think you'll find.)

[visualnickmos]

The UKIP aren't ultra-right, stop trying to scare us.

Of course they are not - what planet are you on?????

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-29706994

http://www.jpost.com/Diaspora/Jewish-leaders-alarmed-by-UKIPs-new-European-ally-379572

http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2014/10/ukips-unsavoury-polish-ally-in-the-european-parliament/

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/10/20/ukip-robert-jaroslaw-iwaszkiewicz-_n_6015116.html

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/oct/20/ukip-does-deal-with-far-right-to-save-european-grouping

[teamsaint]

the LNOTP does contain an element of Irony...and a rather greater element of serious nationalistic pride, I would suggest.

going back to the football, most of the flags are taken down, but not all, and they are routinely displayed in windows, vans etc, as mentioned before.

I think it is false assumption to automatically connect the flying or displaying of a SG cross or union flag with racism, being white or anything else. In my experience, there are British (or English) Asians who are happy to identify with the SG cross.

In any case the implicit assumption that flying displaying these flags ,outside of major football tournaments, is racist ( which is I assume the issue), is a dangerous one, IMO, even if it does have some historical basis.

Flags are important , powerful , and potentially troublesome symbols, but they are used for a host of reasons.

[Richard Barrett]

The Thornberry incident just goes to show how confused and conflicted the Labour party is on the issues from which UKIP sucks its lifeblood. What is needed is a political movement which activates and mobilises people's hopes rather than merely (as with Labour, Tories and UKIP) their fears. In the present situation the Greens seem to me the only party doing this. An interesting poll in the Statesman, though maybe I should point out that it was commissioned by the Times, asks the question "If candidates from the following parties were standing in your constituency and had a chance of winning, how likely would you be to vote for them?", with this result: Labour and Tories both 35%, Greens 26%, UKIP 24%, LibDem 16%. As the commentary on the YouGov site remarks, "The Ukip number is still impressive, but one realises the Greens are actually more popular, just not considered capable of winning in any one seat. Once upon a time the Lib Dems would actually have topped such a poll, and the electoral map could be painted in hopeful yellow, so the real surprise is that their number is now so low."

So there's a sliver of hope in the thought that there are probably enough who would never vote for a far-right party like UKIP under any circumstances to prevent them from getting much of a foothold, whatever Farage may blather about all bets being off (quickly learning the self-serving hyperbole of mainstream politics, is he not?)

[ahinton]

The Thornberry incident just goes to show how confused and conflicted the Labour party is on the issues from which UKIP sucks its lifeblood. What is needed is a political movement which activates and mobilises people's hopes rather than merely (as with Labour, Tories and UKIP) their fears. In the present situation the Greens seem to me the only party doing this. An interesting poll in the Statesman, though maybe I should point out that it was commissioned by the Times, asks the question "If candidates from the following parties were standing in your constituency and had a chance of winning, how likely would you be to vote for them?", with this result: Labour and Tories both 35%, Greens 26%, UKIP 24%, LibDem 16%. As the commentary on the YouGov site remarks, "The Ukip number is still impressive, but one realises the Greens are actually more popular, just not considered capable of winning in any one seat. Once upon a time the Lib Dems would actually have topped such a poll, and the electoral map could be painted in hopeful yellow, so the real surprise is that their number is now so low."

So there's a sliver of hope in the thought that there are probably enough who would never vote for a far-right party like UKIP under any circumstances to prevent them from getting much of a foothold, whatever Farage may blather about all bets being off (quickly learning the self-serving hyperbole of mainstream politics, is he not?)

Indeed. Whilst I am not endorsing or recommending this book - http://lifeafterthestate.com/ - not least because I've only just heard about it and therefore haven't yet read it and especially as it sports a testimonial from a certain Douglas Carswell - it seems clear that its thrust is the very discontent that increasing numbers of people are developing towards political parties of all kinds and the way in which things are "run" at Westmonster.

I very much doubt that Mr Farage would close down all the bookmakers even if he and his party managed to achieve an overall majority and form a government, so his talk of "all bets being off" can be no more than mere braggadocio.

Why is it that invariably get the impression that Mr Farage is noisy even before he opens his mouth?...

[jean]

The Thornberry incident just goes to show how confused and conflicted the Labour party is on the issues from which UKIP sucks its lifeblood...

In what way does it go to show that?

[Richard Barrett]

In what way does it go to show that?

Primarily, the fact that a shadow cabinet member should be so clueless as to make herself look like a caricature of the "liberal metropolitan elite" in that time and place, and that the party then goes into knee-jerk PR overdrive to neutralise her, none of which really has any bearing on the actual issue in question, ie. working-class patriotism and the possibility of coaxing it into xenophobia which was exploited so successfully by Enoch Powell back in the day.

[jean]

If she had suggested that the entire white working class is irredeemably racist, she'd be chiming in with what I called the liberal metropolitan elite because anyone who actually spends any time in working-class areas knows that people don't indulge in displays of patriotism like this except during international tournaments unless there's another motive. But she didn't.

The whole point was that this was an isolated example of this kind of flag-waving - even the man whose flags they were felt the need to explain that he'd put them up for the World Cup and hadn't got round to taking them down.

[Richard Barrett]

If she had suggested that the entire white working class is irredeemably racist

Which she should have realised the rightwing media would misconstrue it as.

[jean]

I agree with you there.

[french frank]

Given the Mail's onslaught on 'The Man Who Hated Britain', Miliband's anger was presumably fuelled by dismay, predicting how the opposition could use this as another stick to beat Labour with.

And the homeowner said he didn't even realise there was a byelection on ... (Still, I didn't realise there was a World Cup going on).