Slight correction/addition to previous post. The Euro elections are not FFTP but multi-member proportional, which is why high votes for the Nazis are being reflected in actual seats. I think council elections may be similar. But General Elections remain FFTP, and that’s what Brits are used to, which is likely to have a major influence on voting tactics even under other systems.

Because of FFTP, two-partyism is much more entrenched in the UK than it is in Oz, which makes the performance of UKIP and the Nazis even more remarkable and disturbing than it appears at first sight. This is a big popular swing in the direction of white Anglo racism and protectionist nationalism.

I am very worried about the way British society has evolved under governments from Thatcher onwards. Don’t think I’ll be moving back, any time soon.

Because of FFTP, two-partyism is much more entrenched in the UK than it is in Oz, which makes the performance of UKIP and the Nazis even more remarkable and disturbing than it appears at first sight. This is a big popular swing in the direction of white Anglo racism and protectionist nationalism.

I am very worried about the way British society has evolved under governments from Thatcher onwards. Don’t think I’ll be moving back, any time soon.

andyc, were you saying left-wing and racist? The conservatives are now ahead of Labour in Wales for the first time in history, and the two main parties in the UK are right-wing.

I went to Salisbury with an Asian-Australian friend 2 weeks ago, and as we emerged from teh station we saw a massive billboard with UKIP electioneering on it. The main slogan: “Say NO to ALL immigration NOW”.

British racist parties don’t fuck around…

The huge left-right divide between the populous and rich bottom-right half and the rest is the major driving force for Welsh and Scottish devolution.

Re. reasons for the demise of NuLab: you missed out the security cameras every metre and increasingly brutal policing. Brits, whether slimy and degenerate or not, do not really like being Big Brothered, and probably have become worried enough that they’d like the slide into Stasiland reversed. They won’t be vocal about it while it only seems to be having adverse consequences for The Other, but the nasty side effects are getting closer to home every day.
The Tories won’t help on this front, of course: the slide was started by Thatcher and accelerated by NuLab, which should really have been called “NewThatch”. What the rest of the country bar S.E. England would like is a real Labour Party, but that won’t be available until after the Tories get in and terrorise everyone, while NuLab implodes and is replaced by a new generation of noncriminal nontotalitarians. I’d give it until 2020 or so, if the country hasn’t disintegrated into warring statelets by then.

PS: most ironically accurate election poster ever: the Tories’ 1997 campaign poster featuring a shadowy Tony Blair with demonic red eyes, and the slogan “New Labour: New Danger”.

I think Britain is fundamentally a Tory country. They let Labour in to fix the NHS. That’s done, so out they go. But Labour started a war on Islam, and started blowing their racist dog whistle, and they’ve given the BNP and UKIP a platform to broadcast their racist views, as well as giving them an air of respectability (“British jobs for British workers” is a Labour slogan, ffs). So when Labour slithers into electoral obscurity, they will let the far right in, and make the Tories that little bit more likely to dance to the BNP tune.

I’ve been in England for a year. I’ve seen more crime, more degeneracy, more filth and slime in that one year than in my entire life to date. This country is completely and utterly fucked up, in a way I couldn’t have imagined before I came here. Labour isn’t like the ALP at all, and I will thank my lucky stars that I have had a chance to see what a left wing party looks like after it has sold its soul to satan. The ALP stands for something, it has a history with the unions and a proud tradition. The BLP stands for fuck you and I’ve got my hand in the till. Good riddance to them, and thank the spaghetti monster I can get out of this place…

How does the Labour meltdown feel? I guess pretty mixed feelings … the last thing I want is a Tory government, but of course I’ll be delighted for Caroline Lucas and Jean Lambert to hold their seats and the prospect of new Green MEPs is great! I think a lot of people in Hackney feel similarly – they’ll be glad if Jean holds her seat but worried about a Tory government in the next 12 months of so.

We don’t currently have any MPs in Westminster and if we win our first seat/s at the next general it will be a small number and I doubt we would go into any sort of coalition. I think by far the most likely scenario is a Tory majority government.

It would have been sexual sleaze. It always is with the Tories. that’s what makes them so endearing. Labour tends to do financial sleaze.

It was, as I recall. What really hurt them was arguably not so much the sleaze itself, but that it all came out just when John Major was attempting to ply a “back to basics” family values agenda to shore up Tory support. They breached an implicit social contract between politicians and voters, the terms of which are “We won’t worry about what you do in your bedroom as long as you don’t worry about what we do in ours.”

being out of power for a decade in a democracy is just a Party’s democratic “just desserts”. You have to rebuild from the horrid misery, try to face your mistakes, work out a new plan. It’s not rocket surgery.