Conservative Party's chronicles

Originally Posted by Chris

Yes, indeed, because Birmingham’s massively integrated like that.

Well, thank you at least for demonstrating another page of the Left/metro-liberal playbook - claiming “we don’t know” stuff we actually very easily do know (c.f. “How do you know I’m a man?” Posited by obviously male trans-rights heckler at a conference women’s event yesterday). It’s just another facet of the same narrative, designed to ensure you can’t even talk about a subject.

You only have to spend an hour or so walking through these places - and I have, incidentally, spent some time living and walking in the fringes of Brum and Smethwick some years ago - to see who’s embracing Britishness and who’s forming enclaves.

It is not racist to draw attention to observable facts. It is utter foolishness to continue to insist certain topics can’t be discussed, are inherently evil or are unknowable.* The longer the metropolitan commentariat class continues to peddle these absurdities, the angrier people who can see it’s untrue will get. And *that’s* when you have an actual problem, because people - voters - turn to extremists when they think the mainstream parties aren’t listening.

*Lots of young women in Rochdale and elsewhere stand as witnesses to what happens when important issues are shut down just in case they’re seen as racist. Seems like we’ve learned nothing.

You cannot tell how integrated someone is by the colour of their skin. It was the lack of white people he was commenting on, suggesting that it was a failure of integration. He didn't provide any other example. Integration is about language, culture and participation in society. The colour of your skin is not a proxy for these discussions.

This is a gaslighting technique, where he defends that statement by pretending it was the following sentence about concerns about integration that people are objecting to. He is smarter than that; he knew what he was doing. It's not the first time he has used white people in connection with his claimed concerns about integration. When talking of a decline of British people in certain areas, he makes sure to specify 'White British'. He also knows, as we all do, that this is taking place when some - not all - right-wing commentators are pushing the idea that you cannot be deemed English and black. If it was a one-off, you could claim he phrased it badly, but it isn't.

As for the metropolitan commentariat class, I think the objections to what he said would extend far beyond them, which is why he has to pretend he was saying something else. He'll keep dallying with this language 'white british' instead of British, making comments on skin colour, then get faux-offended when challenged it saying he is simply talking about integration until such a time he feels confident enough to say what he means. If we are at the point where ethnicity is now a valid concern, then we're already at the extremes. It's not what I want the mainstream parties pandering to.

[Sephiroth]

You have to start with a UK made up with its white ethnicity right up to WW2. Immigrants such as they were from the now previous colonies, integrated fairly well, without losing their traditions.

After WW2, the UK imported a lot of Caribbean workers to fill the labour shortage cause by the war. That has worked out fairly well, albeit human nature tends to a certain degree of ghetto-isation - sort of herd comfort.

In the 1970s, Kenya & Uganda decided that they didn't like Indians. So they were chucked out and the UK , to its credit, took them in. I recall from the time that India didn't want to know.

Recently, the UK did the right thing in taking in Hong Kong citizens who wished to escape Chinese oppression.

So far, all the racial groups described above have blended into the UK economy to an extent that we are all comfortable with.

But then it all went wrong, particularly starting with the Blair era and Middle East & Afghanistan turmoil. Over those 30 years, people of that particular culture have flooded into the UK with very little compatibility with UK culture. Please see 7/7 and subsequent terrorist murders for details, along with Rotherham and similar northern towns with strong ghetto elements. There are no-go areas in London where whites, particularly women. walk at their peril.

@Damien might care to bear history and culture in mind before castigating Chris and others' similar words.

But you're again talking about culture. My objection to what Jenrick said was that he, not for the first time, brought race into it. As you've pointed out, there are people whose families have been here for generations and are English.

He could walk into communities that you have described, not see a white face, but be looking at a tremendously successful integration story.

[Sephiroth]

Originally Posted by Damien

But you're again talking about culture. My objection to what Jenrick said was that he, not for the first time, brought race into it. As you've pointed out, there are people whose families have been here for generations and are English.

He could walk into communities that you have described, not see a white face, but be looking at a tremendously successful integration story.

I understand what you are saying but remember, Jenrick specifically said it's not about skin colour. The term "white" should not be taken in a narrow context.

The thing that's probably bothering you and like minded people, is that "British/English" is not detectable by colour and thus the term "white" tends to racism.

But if the term "white" is used in my context, then there's nothing wrong with it.

Originally Posted by Damien

You cannot tell how integrated someone is by the colour of their skin.

No, but you can make reasonably confident predictions about the level of integration across a district if houses that were once entirely occupied by white families, are now entirely occupied by black or brown ones. The nuance you are refusing to see is that he is commenting at the level of community, not pointing the finger at individuals. As you point out, he’s not dumb, he obviously knows there are limits to what you can infer about an individual based on their presentation, whether that be race or any number of cultural markers.

It was the lack of white people he was commenting on, suggesting that it was a failure of integration. He didn't provide any other example. Integration is about language, culture and participation in society. The colour of your skin is not a proxy for these discussions.

Again - when presented with an individual human being shorn of all context, of course you can’t. Put that individual in a network of streets that are entirely inhabited by people of the same race, none of whom had family in the UK prior to about 1950, and you absolutely can make sufficient inference to begin to identify a problem.

This is a gaslighting technique,

Dead right. Here it comes:

where he defends that statement by pretending it was the following sentence about concerns about integration that people are objecting to. He is smarter than that; he knew what he was doing. It's not the first time he has used white people in connection with his claimed concerns about integration. When talking of a decline of British people in certain areas, he makes sure to specify 'White British'. He also knows, as we all do, that this is taking place when some - not all - right-wing commentators are pushing the idea that you cannot be deemed English and black. If it was a one-off, you could claim he phrased it badly, but it isn't.

As for the metropolitan commentariat class, I think the objections to what he said would extend far beyond them, which is why he has to pretend he was saying something else. He'll keep dallying with this language 'white british' instead of British, making comments on skin colour, then get faux-offended when challenged it saying he is simply talking about integration until such a time he feels confident enough to say what he means. If we are at the point where ethnicity is now a valid concern, then we're already at the extremes. It's not what I want the mainstream parties pandering to.

… where he has said something he knows is liable to wilful misunderstanding, and has therefore explicitly drawn attention to the likely misunderstanding and provided added reassurance that this is not what he means, but you go on and insist that he means what you need him to mean anyway, because he’s dared raise a subject which is verboten amongst metropolitan lefties.

It seems to me you’ve been so careful to curate your acceptable beliefs and opinions that you’re quite unable to believe Jenrick might simply mean what he says. It’s a pity because those who choose to see issues in this way (or to be wilfully blind to them, as the case may be) have poured so much energy into controlling what may be said, they’ve rendered themselves unable to engage with the arguments when people inevitably get fed up and start saying them anyway.

There has been a sea-change in public discourse over the past few years - I refuse to believe you’re so deaf you can’t hear it. But until you’re ready to engage with it as opposed to labelling it ‘gaslighting’ (and by making that accusation you’re actually doing the very thing you’ve accused Jenrick of doing), you’re going to be powerless to stop it. At this point by the way I mean ‘you’ very much in the plural, i.e. all those whose instinct reply along the lines of ‘you can’t say that’ when forced to confront the protests of the lumpen proles.

Originally Posted by Chris

… where he has said something he knows is liable to wilful misunderstanding, and has therefore explicitly drawn attention to the likely misunderstanding and provided added reassurance that this is not what he means, but you go on and insist that he means what you need him to mean anyway, because he’s dared raise a subject which is verboten amongst metropolitan lefties.

Well, we have a difference of opinion on his motivations. You think he was making a point about groups integrating into wider society and the danger of them forming enclaves away from everyone. I think he was tapping into a rising ethnonationalism within the UK.

This wasn't the first time he reached for 'white' as a shorthand for talking about integration, and I don't think it will be the last.

It seems to me you’ve been so careful to curate your acceptable beliefs and opinions that you’re quite unable to believe Jenrick might simply mean what he says.

I curate my beliefs the same as everyone does. My politics have changed over time, but not as much as Jenerick, who's gone on quite the political journey over the last 10 years. Maybe it's genuine, or maybe he is the one curating his opinions based on what's politically expedient for him at the time.

There has been a sea-change in public discourse over the past few years - I refuse to believe you’re so deaf you can’t hear it. But until you’re ready to engage with it as opposed to labelling it ‘gaslighting’ (and by making that accusation you’re actually doing the very thing you’ve accused Jenrick of doing), you’re going to be powerless to stop it. At this point by the way I mean ‘you’ very much in the plural, i.e. all those whose instinct reply along the lines of ‘you can’t say that’ when forced to confront the protests of the lumpen proles.

I know there is a sea-change in discourse, it's just I disagree with a lot of it. I don't think it's wrong to want to stop illegal migration. I don't think it's racist to say that. What I do disagree with most at the moment is the talk of going after migrants who have Leave to Remain, and discussions on who counts as English. The latter was never on the table when I was growing up, and now it's relatively common in the right-wing 'commentariat. It's that argument I think Jenerick is trapping into.

A popular view into why this sea-change happened is that the left got too confident, got too wrapped up in its own bubble, lost connection with the wider public and pushed views totally alien to them. I think the online right is starting to make the same mistake, giddy on how much the cultural pendulum has swung back in their direction, and Jenerick is too encased in that world.

I am not really sure what else to say, other than to see where he goes next.

[1andrew1]

Thoghtful article on why the Conservative Party has been severely weakened by Brexit

How Brexit drained the Tories’ talent pool

The party can’t keep expecting successful people to pretend that leaving the EU was a good idea

Given the scale of the damage it has done to the United Kingdom’s reputation, the hurdles it has placed on businesses, tourists and consumers, it can seem a little eccentric to note that Brexit has also been an utterly rotten deal for the Conservative party.

It brought the premiership of David Cameron to an abrupt end and took the frontline career of George Osborne, the Tories’ most brilliant strategist, down with it. The reconfiguration of British politics and voting it helped to accelerate means that the party has lost, probably for ever, the electoral coalition that helped it to win in 2015 — smaller, yes, in terms of votes gained than those of 2017 or 2019, but one largely comprised of voters with a direct self-interest in economic dynamism and an appetite for tax cuts.

And far from sending Nigel Farage into retirement once and for all, as its advocates once claimed would be the case, Brexit has put him in a position from where he could become Britain’s next prime minister — potentially relegating the Conservatives to minor party status in the process.

More damagingly still, Brexit destroyed the party’s relationship with the chunk of the electorate that the Conservatives will always need if they are not only to win elections but to govern effectively: successful people in the middle of their careers.

Not everyone whose journey on the Eurostar used to end with a near-frictionless arrival at St Pancras feels an emotional connection to the European project. Nor does every small business owner who no longer trades with the continent experience a pang of regret when they are reminded that the UK is no longer in the single market. But they do all experience a sense of irritation at barriers to their pleasures or their profits having been erected against their will.

If you remove the already large group of people who would make excellent Tory MPs but are doing perfectly well for themselves in jobs they enjoy, and then require the remainder to believe Brexit has turned out to be a good decision, or pretend they do, your talent pool becomes very shallow indeed. The Conservatives’ current approach is a bit like saying you can only fully participate in the political life of the party as long as you don’t own a television — sure, you will get some good people, but not very many.

https://archive.ph/Np6JE

[Sephiroth]

Given the scale of the damage it has done to the United Kingdom’s reputation, the hurdles it has placed on businesses, tourists and consumers, it can seem a little eccentric to note that Brexit has also been an utterly rotten deal for the Conservative party.

Above quote from the article is key. As is:

[QUOTE]And far from sending Nigel Farage into retirement once and for all, as its advocates once claimed would be the case, Brexit has put him in a position from where he could become Britain’s next prime minister — potentially relegating the Conservatives to minor party status in the process. [/QUOTE

The first quote puts the author into the Remain camp. Thus we have to treat his assertion that "Brexit has drained the Tories' talent pool" in that light.

In the rest of his article, he further asserts that because Brexit has made everything more difficult, the British talent pool of businessmen has deserted the Tories.

Well, the 2024 election result supports that assertion, at least to a degree. But the 2019 election result proved the significant public support for Brexit, as did the Referendum.

Brexit is a political failure due to not exercising our freedoms effectively.

This takes me to the second quote. Putting Farage closer to becoming victory is an expression of British will as currently expressed in the polls.

The public now disbelieve both Labour and Tories. The latter need to demonstrate their capability at political level to regain trust (culling the front bench of previous losers would be a good start). Talent pool would follow any success in the popularity stakes.

If the talent pool joins Reform UK, then they will have a fair chance at demonstrating their future competence.

[Carth]

Give over explaining stuff Seph, you and I both know Brexit is the standard fall back excuse for when nothing is going your way and the Govt. have no way to fix things

[Sephiroth]

Originally Posted by Carth

Give over explaining stuff Seph, you and I both know Brexit is the standard fall back excuse for when nothing is going your way and the Govt. have no way to fix things

If I and others) follow your advice, Carth, the Remainers will prevail in this forum.

In defiance of you (!), I remind the Remainers that we are a sovereign country run by a bunch of t*ssers. It's up to Reform or the Tories to come up with doable plans to set the country right.

I also remind Remainers that we have Ireland (perfidious government) to our west; France (an even more perfidious government) to the east. Hungary's and Slovakia's governments are Putin fans and stirring things up politically.

[1andrew1]

Originally Posted by Sephiroth

Above quote from the article is key. As is:

And far from sending Nigel Farage into retirement once and for all, as its advocates once claimed would be the case, Brexit has put him in a position from where he could become Britain’s next prime minister — potentially relegating the Conservatives to minor party status in the process.

Originally Posted by Sephiroth

The first quote puts the author into the Remain camp.

Whllst it's information not opinion, I agree the author has used more colourful language than a civil servant might use!

Originally Posted by Sephiroth

Thus we have to treat his assertion that "Brexit has drained the Tories' talent pool" in that light.

Obviously I don't think we do, his argument stands or falls on its own merits.

Originally Posted by Sephiroth

In the rest of his article, he further asserts that because Brexit has made everything more difficult, the British talent pool of businessmen has deserted the Tories.

Well, the 2024 election result supports that assertion, at least to a degree. But the 2019 election result proved the significant public support for Brexit, as did the Referendum.

Brexit is a political failure due to not exercising our freedoms effectively.

This takes me to the second quote. Putting Farage closer to becoming victory is an expression of British will as currently expressed in the polls.

The public now disbelieve both Labour and Tories. The latter need to demonstrate their capability at political level to regain trust (culling the front bench of previous losers would be a good start). Talent pool would follow any success in the popularity stakes.

I think the article is suggesting the talent pool is significantly reduced due to the Conservatives not openly acknowledging the damages of Brexit on British business. This places it at odds with British business, which it traditionally been alongside.

Originally Posted by Sephiroth

If the talent pool joins Reform UK, then they will have a fair chance at demonstrating their future competence.

The smaller pro-Brexit business talent pool will be split across two parties. I'm not sure where the far larger anti-Brexit business talent pool will go. Some may avoid politics altogether and some may join the Lib Dems until Conservative Party front-benchers can openly acknowledge the damage of Brexit on British business.

[thenry]

Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary, has said that he would probably support banning women wearing burqas in public.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics...e-news-updates

I get these ladies confused with religious figure heads like imams.

In addition to that (I don't think we should ban it), the Tories' immigration plan is very much matching reform and quite nasty: https://www.lbc.co.uk/article/katie-...ent-5HjdFgC_2/

I'll link to the actual legislation: https://publications.parliament.uk/p...234/240234.pdf

3 Revocation of Indefinite Leave to Remain in certain circumstances

(1) Indefinite leave to remain in the United Kingdom is revoked with respect to a person ("P") if any of the following conditions apply.

(2) Condition 1 is that P is defined as a "foreign criminal" under section 32 of the UK Borders Act 2007.

(3) Condition 2 is that P was granted indefinite leave to remain after the coming into force of this Act, but would not be eligible for indefinite leave under the requirements of section 2.

(4) Condition 3 is that P, or any dependents of P, have been in receipt of any form of "social protection" (including housing) from the UK Government or a local authority, where "social protection" is defined according to the Treasury's Public Expenditure Statistical Analyses, subject to any further definition by immigration rules.

(5) Condition 4 is that P's annual income has fallen below £38,700 for six months or more in aggregate during the relevant qualification period, or subsequent to receiving indefinite leave to remain.

(6) A person who has entered the United Kingdom—

• (a) under the Ukraine visa schemes;
• (b) under the Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme;
• (c) under the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy; or
• (d) on a British National Overseas visa,

is exempt from the requirements of Condition 2, Condition 3, and Condition 4.

(7) For the purposes of subsection (5) –

• (a) The condition applies only to earnings that have been lawfully reported to, or subject to withholding of tax by, HM Revenue and Customs; and
• (b) The relevant sum of annual income must be adjusted annually by the Secretary of State through immigration rules to reflect inflation.

(8) The Secretary of State may by immigration rules vary the conditions set out in this section.

This is a mass deportation of people who are here legally. There is no exception for pensioners who've since retired, whose salary is below £38,000, and who receive social protection in either pensions or other benefits. People who may have families here, lives here, have worked here, and who did everything legally and by the rules set out.

This isn't Reform. It's actually slightly worse than reform as far as I can see.

I don't like the way this country is going. I may be wrong but I also don't think most people in the country support this whatever they say on X.

The internationalist Left’s chickens are coming home to roost. The whole point of an immigration policy that excludes people who came here legally is to address the claim that many of them should not have been allowed to come here legally in the first place. It is a deliberate unpicking of prior policy, rather than simply accepting the ratchet effect of being unable to undo something which should arguably never have been allowed.

Personally I think there should be more effort to create voluntary resettlement schemes before going in hard in the way this act would. And I’m generally not a fan of enabling clauses that give secretaries of state too much leeway to vary the rules. However, I find some parts of this country unrecognisable any more and I don’t accept that it is racist to object to rapid social change, well within the span of a generation, in order to facilitate people to whom we have no legal or moral obligation. We are not the world’s health and social care system.

When mainstream politicians start to advocate for moves like this, it is only ever because they have begun to detect this is what their voters want. We do still live in a democracy and it should not be anathema in a democracy to propose doing what voters are asking for. As has been observed on this forum on and off over many years, the previous Labour administration is known to have operated an immigration policy designed to ‘rub the Right’s noses in it’. Nobody has sought to address the long-term consequences of such cack-handed social engineering since then, and here we are reaping them now in the policy proposals of a major UK political party.

I would be surprised if this is what people want. The polling suggests otherwise.

This isn't a tightening of immigration rules; this is a huge deportation effort. I don't think it's practical, but leaving that aside, when you get to the tens of thousands of people being deported, many of whom may have been here most of their lives, then I think there will be a backlash.

There are so many people whose entire lives are here, such as those who moved here legally from the EU as far back as the 1970s, who will be subject to deportation from the UK for nothing other than not being British citizens. It doesn't matter if they followed the rules, did everything asked of them, and contributed to society. Few exceptions will allow them to stay. I believe there are 4 million or so EU citizens with Leave to Remain, and because of how long that EU route has been open, many will be retired and therefore subject to deportation.

This is online brain rot from the Tories and Reform. Too much time engaging on X, getting angry at the online left, and radicalising themselves from ordinary people who'll want immigration curtailed and order restored, but have shown little support for deporting the people the Tories are now intentionally going after. The right are just as capable of living in a bubble and getting carried away with recent success to understand there is a limit to what people will accept.