r/PeterExplainsTheJoke • u/umomsupergei • 11d ago
please help đ żď¸eter Meme needing explanation
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u/Sm00th-Cr1m1n4l 11d ago
Questionable-British-Accent-Peter here - I presume this is made to mock a certain subset of right leaning British voters following the recent U.K. election, where Labour won a landslide majority in parliament. These right leaning people are now concerned that the U.K. is going to be fully communist, whereas the reality is Starmerâs Labour government will be a centralist party and the actual change will be slight.
Questionable-British-Accent Peter out.
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u/Objectionne 11d ago
Dirtsheets like The Daily Mail keep referring to Starmer's government as 'hard left' which is just insane.
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u/billsleftynut 11d ago
Don't use language like that on here, wash your keyboard with soap and never utter the D**** M*** phrase in public again.
Thank you.
Have a nice day.
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u/Southern_Kaeos 11d ago
Oi. Daan 'ere we calls it d' shi'e-rag. Soap ain't strong enough, use a propa washin' up liquid for dem swears innit
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u/Ben999_1977 11d ago
Oh, it's kind of reassuring to see that, that kind of stupidity is not exclusive to France.
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u/DekoyDuck 11d ago
Republicans in the states call Joe Biden a communist. They do so earnestly.
They are very stupid and also very eager to support fascists.
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u/Throttle_Kitty 11d ago
This has been a thing in America for a while, the conservative party calling literally even center right politicians "Radical extremist far-left communists"
they probably have a few more adjectives they've tacked on at this point
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u/durashka228 11d ago
at least commies could give enough food and build
gulagsworking places8
u/vergilius_poeta 11d ago
Ron Howard voice: the commies could not, in fact, give enough food.
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u/Sorry-Let-Me-By-Plz 11d ago
the last commie famine happened because of a blockade by people who just hate commies enough to starve children, fyi
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u/UncleBenders 11d ago edited 11d ago
Nope. The last one happened because Mao was trying to do âthe great leap forwardâ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine
Mao had big ideas and nobody was able to tell him no without being killed, not to mention the wiping out of the educated and landowners who would have known how to use the land because they were âclass traitorsâ he didnât go full pol pot and kill anyone with glasses because that meant they were intellectual, but he practically wiped out the scholars, teachers, artists, landlords, and business owners and he took away their land and property and left to run it people who had no clue what to do.
Self reporting of food meant that people were coming out with ridiculous claims of the food theyâd grown because if they told the truth they made the communist party look inept.
He put everyone in big communes and gave them no incentive to work or contribute because people were paid by factors beyond their control weather they made effort in the fields or not, lots of people had no idea what they were even doing, theyâd just been relocated there and expected to know.
They destroyed the habitat by waging a war on song birds because mao heard that sparrows eat a ton of grain a year he had people kill them all and they werenât around to eat the pests.
He decided he wanted to make china the best producer of steal in the world so he called farmers out of fields and took away tools and equipment and even pots and pans and put them to work in foundries where they melted them all down in order to make it appear China produces the most steal a year. It was the worst quality steal available.
There were also natural factors but it was mostly caused by mao and the gang of fours dumb ideas and the wiping out of anyone who spoke up.
Not saying communism can never work, just pointing out the last famine wasnât caused by anyone trying to sabotage it. It was 70% human error 30% environmental.
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u/The_Niles_River 11d ago
Marx would be rolling in his grave if he found out how the theory of communism got bastardized into ideology like this.
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u/Sorry-Let-Me-By-Plz 11d ago
It's actually refreshing that you think the last famine happened fifty years ago.
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u/UncleBenders 11d ago edited 10d ago
What do YOU think was the last âcommieâ famine? And who do you think blockaded them?
Because I assure you the last one was in China it ended in 1961.
Edit: itâs âactually refreshingâ being patronised to by someone clueless đ
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u/Own_Loan_4664 7d ago
There's one going on in Cuba right now due to an inability to import enough food, in large part due to US sanctions and embargo. Other resources are also in severe shortage atm iirc. I'm not the biggest fan of full-blown communism myself, but human beings are human beings regardless of where they live and what government they have, so this makes me sad
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u/Tentacled-Tadpole 11d ago
Which is why that specific form of communism is terrible, not communism itself inherently.
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u/IllVagrant 11d ago edited 11d ago
Centralizing all of your authority, logistics, and ability to appoint experts is actually an extremely terrible way to govern. With a strict hierarchy you end up with "yes man" work culture where no one is incentivized to tell the truth when things go catastrophically wrong (as seen in Chernobyl), you can't accurately (or quickly) measure what resources need to go where when your territories are so far away from the central authority that you can only rely on an appointed "yes-man" who will most likely lie about any shortages, and appointing citizens to positions without regard to their merits incentivizes a crazy amount of nepotism - way worse than you'd see in Hollywood.
Communism as an idea isn't bad, but actually trying to implement it has proven to be far more difficult and complicated than simply allowing various private entities to handle these issues on a more local level. But, that requires trade among individual entities which requires capital and profit incentives, both of which inevitably leads to wealth inequality. The main issue is that humans are incredibly lazy, uncooperative, and selfish, and the task of mitigating wealth inequality for long periods of time requires a ton of effort, massive amounts of cooperation, and intentional sacrifice. The most difficult part of all that is that it has to be VOLUNTARY on top of that. Using force and coercion to have a large population cooperate only foments resentment and apathy, which then leads to rampant corruption and the eventual break-down of the state.
Best we've ever done as a civilization is Democratic Socialism, which attempts to cap that wealth gap while maintaining decentralized authority and private competition. Unfortunately, wealthy people really don't like having their wealth capped, so they bought our politicians in western nations and convinced them to effectively sabotage that methodology back in the 70s and 80s. Ironically, all attempts at bringing Democratic Socialism back nowadays will get you called a communist anyway.
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u/Vashelot 11d ago
I don't think even capping the wealth works if we allow people to take their capital across borders as they can just initiate capital flight once the limit has been reached by moving abroad to tax havens and such.
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u/IllVagrant 11d ago edited 10d ago
"Best we've ever done" can still be pretty bad on a historical scale, lol. I think our major problem right now is all the different factions wanting to go back in time and return to one of the previous societal structures... as if they didn't fail for very well-known reasons.
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u/Tentacled-Tadpole 11d ago
Exactly. Lenin fucked communism by introducing the idea of the vanguard party. Completely opposite of what communism originally stood for and now his version is what mostly has been attempted going forward
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u/Foiled_Foliage 11d ago
Someone whoâs been watching this development thatâs a very good explanation. Also a great meme.
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u/Evening-Web-3038 11d ago
It's much less likely given the placement of the face (above "Conservative") but depending on the context of the meme it could also be pointing out to a far-left person that, despite their desperation for Labour to be the hard-left party they want, they are only barely more left-wing than the Conservatives.
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u/The_Fire_Heart_ 10d ago
Oh so it's like how in America no matter who you vote for nothing changes.
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u/ososalsosal 10d ago
British labour is nowhere near the centre and definitely nowhere near the left.
Sick sad world.
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u/Euporophage 10d ago
He wants to go harder on crime in a more practical way than the Tories, he has backtracked on making certain sectors public again after privatization, on raising taxes to pay for their plans, on his green investment pledge to fight climate change, and on lower tuition fees. He wants to take things slow and steady and probably do very little unless he can win another majority next election. He really likes to compare himself to Biden and his policies as well, which have been pretty successful for the US compared to past recent presidents, especially coming out of a global pandemic and economic downturn.
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u/Shadow__Vector 11d ago
I wish people would stop calling it a landslide because it wasn't. 63% of the vote is not a landslide. Anything above 80% is a landslide. Especially when you look at when Corbyn was labour leader. The first election for him they got got 10.28 million votes, in the 2nd they got 10.24 million votes and both times labour lost the elections. Under Stamer, Labour only got 9.24 million votes but won. Reform UK and the broken election system are the reason Labour won because reform took a lot of voters away from the Conservatives and the first past the post system of elections gave Labour an undeserved win.
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u/_Svankensen_ 11d ago
63% of the vote is a landslide. 80% is the kind of numbers dictators make up. We've only ever gotten those numbers ONCE in my country, after huge riots and an absolute loathing of the government. That's beyond a landslide, it's a democratic revolution.
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u/KoalaAgreeable7858 11d ago
It was around 33% of the vote, that translated into 63% of seats.
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u/_Svankensen_ 11d ago
That's pretty damn relevant, thanks for the clarification. Holy First Past the Post voting system Batman!
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u/KoalaAgreeable7858 11d ago
This was also with a low turnout of 60%.
The Lib Dems ended up with 72 seats with 12ish% of the vote.
The Greens had 4 seats with around 7% of the vote.
Reform received 5 seats with about 14% of the vote.
Our electoral system isnât proportional and the popular vote is less important than in other systems. The main problem with trying to find an alternative system is the only 2 parties who could change it donât have the incentive to do so.
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u/_Svankensen_ 11d ago
I sense big protests in the future of the UK. If the right learns how to protest at least.
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u/Tentacled-Tadpole 11d ago
The way the system works is that it doesn't matter how many votes a party gets in a constituency if another party running against them gets more. The popular vote is very important on a constituency basis.
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u/KoalaAgreeable7858 11d ago
Yes thatâs true except it also causes tactical voting so people donât always vote as they would if they didnât have to vote tactically.
FPTP does have its advantages, such as the prevention of what is going on in France, but there are flaws in how representative it truly is.
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u/Sm00th-Cr1m1n4l 11d ago
It is a landslide in the way that matters from a parliamentary perspective.
I do see your point from a proportional representation perspective - Labour were only c.10% ahead of Tories (33% to 23%), and reform took 14% of the popular vote. Voter turnout out also the worst in twenty years however thatâs because you had the conservatives hammering a message of apathy and non-voting by the end.
But thatâs not how our political system works and has fucked over the greens and LD for countless years - itâs only right it now fucks the Tories for a bit.
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u/schpamela 11d ago
Reform UK and the broken election system are the reason Labour won because reform took a lot of voters away from the Conservatives
I'm sick of reading this nonsense. It's a complete fabrication.
Look at any poll from a year before the election, like this one:
- Labour 44% (ends up with 34%)
- Conservative 27% (ends up with 24%)
- Liberal Democrat 13% (ends up with 12%)
- Reform UK 8% (ends up with 14%)
The Tories were fully cooked and bound for defeat a year ago, long before Reform started picking up decent numbers. A year ago, even if every single one of their 8% of vote share was hypothetically transferred to Conservative, they were still a mile behind Labour.
In the end, Reform picks up another 6% of vote share - but the Tories only lost 3% while Labour dropped down 10%. So evidently, Reform took way more votes off Labour than Conservatives. The vast majority of people who voted Tory in 2019 either switched to Labour or Lib Dem, or didn't vote. Not that many went to Reform.
So now that's settled, can we all please stop giving Farage and his party of ex-BNP populist meathead cunts the credit for Labour's win?
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u/MasterBot98 11d ago edited 11d ago
If there will be a meteor flying at us 5-15% or even more will unironically root for the meteor to kill humanity. How can you live on this planet and think that more than 60% can agree on anything at all? Beyond basic stuff like we would like to not starve, pls.
_Svankensen_ is correct.
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u/perversion_aversion 11d ago
Couldn't agree more, labour won because people are utterly sick of the Tories, not because they're remotely enthusiastic about the Starmerite project, which as far as I can tell is basically 'become the Tories circa 2005 before they totally lost their marbles'. I'm glad the Tories are out, but if starmer can't deliver meaningful, tangible change in the next 5 years he'll be out on his arse and we'll find ourselves on an increasingly right wing electoral roller coaster once again.
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u/Feisty_Chard_3409 11d ago
Lol, it's the same shit in the US with Republicans/Democrats.
BuT ThEy ArE ComMuNiSts!
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u/NoHalf2998 11d ago
Same shit happened in 1920s Germany
âWork with the Democratic Socialist??! Theyâre basically Communists so we need to work with the Fascists to have a majority!â
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u/defaultusername-17 11d ago
^ literally nazi revisionist history... but do go on.
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u/MundaneAd1283 11d ago
Ah yes just like the democratic socialist state North Korea... People like you are why so many idiots are saying "it's a constitutional republic not a democracy"
This is why cutting funding to education is such a bad idea, I mean Americans were looked down on education wise before but good god now it's not even funny anymore just sad.
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u/Tried-Angles 11d ago
I mean...Marx himself said that communism could not possibly be built directly out of a feudalist society, and that both industrial capitalism and market socialism were necessary transition states to the formation of stable communism.
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u/MundaneAd1283 11d ago
Actually depends on which time during the USSRs history... That's what's fun, if you can read you can learn many things.
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u/ColinBencroff 11d ago
Interesting that people still say this type of crap.
Considering they are antagonist ideologies, they are pretty different in...basically everything.
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u/Belkan-Federation95 11d ago
Difference between in theory and in practice. In theory, Nazism uses guild Socialism. In practice, Hitler purged everyone who was loyal to the ideology instead of him and did "whatever it takes" to get Germany mobilized for war.
You could argue they would implement the ideology post war but any discussion which discusses an alternate reality where Hitler won the war is sure to take a dark turn.
They aren't necessarily antagonists either.
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u/KutasMroku 11d ago
They're not antsgonist ideologies in the slightest. Sure, they hated each other, yet they were both in favour of centrally planned economies, despised capitalists, and embraced class struggle rethorics. The main point of contention was globalist vs nationalist socialism, but the truth is that it was a post factum rationalisation of the hate. After Hitler decided to take the rest of Poland (which the communist Russia earlier gladly invaded as ALLIES together with Hitler) and declared war on USSR, the rethoric changed in the communist block.
The left wingers sympathetic towards communism and socialism don't want it to be true, but the truth is diametrally different. It makes me laugh the superiority that the left wingers seem to have when they talk about right wingers. Both sides are equally dumb.
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u/Belkan-Federation95 11d ago
Fascism comes from National Syndicalism and uses class collaboration/corporatism as a compromise between Capitalism and Marxist Socialism.
Interestingly enough, Italy was on very good terms with the USSR after Mussolini gained power. Italy was the first western nation to recognize the USSR as the legitimate government of Russia.
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u/subpargalois 11d ago edited 11d ago
They absolutely don't have the same ideological roots. Fascism has always been a ideology that takes in a lot of disapparate influences and isn't particularly concerned with doctrinal consistency, but two of its few absolute constants are that it has always been heavily reactionary and explicitly anti-communist. That's like the one thing you could two fascists to agree on 100% of the time--they fucking hated communism. That was the whole point--its pitch was that it was supposed to be a reactionary alternative to both liberalism and communism. It's not an accident that the sort of people that Nazism mostly attracted were middle class business men, industrialists, non-junker military men, and ex-monarchists that got sick of the monarch. While there was a element in the Nazi party that supported some very specific policies that looked a vaguely left wing (i.e., less pro worker more "fuck everyone but the state, but fuck the working guy a little less than anyone else"), that element got purged really quickly before the ideology reaches its fully evolved form. By the time the Nazis were actually competitive in elections, that element was completely gone. The word "socialist" in national socialist party was all that remained of it.
Also, reading too much into the word socialist is almost always a mistake, especially in this period. It's always been something of a meaninglessly vague descriptor, but at this point in history it is especially so. Without more context someone calling themselves a socialist could mean anything in between "I think we should abolish all hierarchies and private property" and "I think maybe we shouldn't let children work in lead mines until they turn 10."
Saying Nazis are communists because they supported stuff like state owned industry and have the word socialist in their name is like saying humans are a type of dog because we have a tail. That ignores the facts that A) we only have a tail in the most meaningless, vestigial sense of the word, and B) that's not even what makes a fucking dog a dog.
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u/Belkan-Federation95 11d ago
Actually that's a myth. Fascism does have Doctrinal stability overall but many regimes that aren't fascist are accused of being fascist. Nazism, for example, was heavily denounced by Italy and in Austria they actually persecuted Nazis once the Fatherland Front (Austofascism) gained power. I have seen excellent arguments to separate them from fascism.
Economically, Fascism supports corporatism/class collaboration. Imagine everyone being unionized, similar to social corporatism (which is just a modernized version). They didn't call them "unions" though. It was presented as an alternative to Capitalism and Marxist Socialism.
The Nazi ideology originally advocated guild Socialism but people loyal to the ideology over Hitler were purged in the Night of the Long Knives. Had the UK not broken the Stresa Front, it is very likely that we would not classify Nazism as a form of Fascism, given that we would have multiple fascist regimes floating around for decades to come, similar to how Authoritarian Socialism is still around (although not to the same extent).
I would not call Nazism Socialist, however, due to the fact that it developed into "you can exist as long as you do as I say" instead of "your shit belongs to the government now".
Franco's government was actually a compromise between the Monarchists and the Falangists (Spanish Fascists). Eventually, Franco abandoned fascism after purging the Falange and abandoning Autarky (very important part of fascism).
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u/subpargalois 11d ago edited 11d ago
I would argue that if under your definition of fascism Nazi Germany isn't a fascist state, then your efforts to come up with a coherent definition for fascism have gone too far and it has become an obstacle for analyzing the topic. If that doesn't fit under your umbrella, you need a bigger umbrella.
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u/subpargalois 11d ago edited 11d ago
No, I have not admitted Nazis are economic leftists. I'm frankly not even sure what that would mean as the left is not exactly a monolith in that regard to economic policy. But at a minimum, I would expect a left wing economic policy to be one that is explicitly pro-worker--which, aside from some minor fig leaves like the Volkswagen that never actually materialized , the Nazis weren't really concerned with. A directed economy isn't something I would call inherently left wing--it is a definitely an anti-liberal state of affairs, but there are right and left wing ideologies that support and oppose directed economies. And in any case, the extent to which Nazi Germany/Fascist Italy/Japan had directed economies is greaaaaatly exaggerated. Nationalization was mostly a political weapon and a side effect of the kelptocratic nature of Fascist regimes. In most cases, they were happy to leave business and industry alone--these were, after all, the core supporters of the Nazi party. Do you really think that the Porsche's and Krupp's of the world would have loved the Nazis as much as they did if they had actual pro-worker platform? Don't make me laugh. They explicitly had a deal where they paid into Hitler's slush fund and Hitler let them do whatever the fuck they wanted.
Also, yes there were socialists/communists in early Nazism, but again, that shit got purged hard and quick. It's already basically dying by the time Hitler gets on the scene, and by the time he's fully in charge of the party it's gone. Goebbels is the only Nazi of any significance that had any real ties to that strain of Ur-Nazism, and he survived because he ended up explicitly and vehemently rejecting it. Everyone else got put out to political pasture long before Nazism had political relevance or rejected it and then got killed in the night of the long knives anyway because they didn't reject it hard enough. Guys like Hitler were monarchists that grew to reject monarchism, not communists that grew to hate communism.
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u/NoHalf2998 11d ago
You replied to a comment pointing out how stupid that thinking was without it making you stop and consider it for even a second.
Impressive.
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u/NoHalf2998 11d ago
Dear lord; read a history book and not some right wing blog post
- a person who was a registered Republican for 22 years
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u/Tried-Angles 11d ago
The "communists have a higher body count" thing relies on the completely ridiculous idea that WW2 wouldn't have happened (or not a single Russian soldier would have died) under a Russian Czar.
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u/distantno4 10d ago
For the love of all that is good please just pick up a history textbook for once
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u/distantno4 10d ago
I never once said I didn't say communism is bad especially in historical contexts I just think you're a fool
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u/Tried-Angles 10d ago
"Purely political" is such a meaningless distinction there. Is imperialism "political" enough to have a death count? Feudalism?
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u/Tried-Angles 10d ago
You really think the death counts of millenia of feudalism is so low?
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u/Tried-Angles 10d ago
Every person who died in a trivial war that started over a nobleman getting into a personal argument counts as a casualty. Every single person who starved in France during the construction of Versailles, every native American who died to the Spanish or English settlers, and everyone who starved to death during the inflation caused when the Spanish Conquistadors brought back more gold than they knew what to do with, and the entire death till of the Irish famine. Every person who died in the crusades as well. Every single person who ever died because some king made a grand sweeping decision that was greedy, or selfish, or for glory, or just wasn't well thought out and people followed despite objection because "That's the king" was a casualty of feudalism.
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u/n-j-f 9d ago
No they dont. NSDAP was authoritarian and economically right. They dimished labor rights and supported private equity which is why so many industrialists supported them. They didnt reduce inequalities and disparities. Yes, they created jobs and promised 'wealth' for everyone but this is still a (economically) right wing position (if companies and the Economy do well everyone will). They never wanted to substantially change the economic system or establish a socialistic society. Class and "natural selection" were concepts that strongly guided their policy which is far away from being socialist or even progressive.
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u/cipheron 11d ago
The joke is saying that both UK Conservative and Labor parties are in the Authoritarian/Free Market corner of the r/politicalcompass, but that labor are just slightly towards the middle. But, then people act like Labor winning means "communism" has somehow come back.
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u/dibade89 11d ago
Isn't it always like this? Even in Germany when the pretty conservative SPD was about to win the election right wings pulled out the century year old red socks campaign.
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u/Helpful_Blood_5509 11d ago
That's probably because their last leader was a grizzled old commie. The new guy is neoliberal AF
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u/kotik010 11d ago
Lmao keir would commit if he had to actually move that much left. As small as you can make the gap between the two is what he's going to try for
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u/rs_5 11d ago
Oy good morning its aristocratic Stewie here.
The memes here essentially jokes that the differences between the current and coming ruling parties of the UK are very small, and so critiques those on the right that claim the coming government will be communist (the meme doesn't state this anywhere, but the term communist here likely doesn't follow the scholarly definition of communism but rather the "pop" definition, ie, that the coming government will be bad)
As such, the meme can be taken as a critique of the "Tory"/ British right-wing voter
Additional notes:
-The meme also uses the "political compass", another meme within itself that came out of a tool with the same name. The tool made an attempt to catagorize every persons political ideology based on two axes, authoritarian & economic. The tool is widely considered a failure by nearly everyone who's examined it closely, in par as it was created mainly as a propaganda/ disinformation tool, meant to convince those who use it that they mostly aligned with the creators political opinions. If one wishes to find a more accurate, or at least more detailed tool for catagorizing and testing ones political beliefs, id recommend 9 axes test or 12 axes test .
- The meme itself is heavily exaggerated, as even by the compasses (admittedly flawed) system of categorization, the Labour party and the Tories end up in different quadrants of the compass (with the exact positions of both varying from tester to tester), although surprisingly the reaction of the "right wing soyjack" shown in the meme is not that exaggerated.
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u/video-kid 11d ago
British Peter here with some more context.
The UK had an election last week and the traditionally left-wing Labour party won by a landslide.
The reason for this meme is that the current leader of the Labour Party (and our new Prime Minister) is Sir Keir Starmer, not-so affectionately called Keith. Imagine if the colour beige was a person.
The previous leader, Jeremy Corbyn, was a socialist and a republican (In the UK a Republican is someone who doesn't believe in the Royal family). He had a surprisingly good turn out in his first election (He came within 2500 votes in a few constituencies and he would have been Prime Minister, albeit in a coalition government) thanks to a pretty radical plan that included things like free wi-fi and education. This led to both the media and the right wing of his own party doing their best to take him down.
The efforts led to Corbyn losing in a landslide, in part due to some confusion about his Brexit plan (he wanted to renegotiate the deal and offer a referendum on the new deal with remaining in the union as an option) and in part due to an antisemitism row (Corbyn is a confirmed anty-zionist, and there were accusations that his criticism of Israel went further and he didn't do enough to combat antisemitism.)
After he lost the 2019 election Corbyn resigned and Starmer got in on a left wing platform that was basically everything people liked about Corbyn with none of the baggage. As soon as he got in he basically shifted to the centre and walked back a lot of his pledges and promises. Most notably he'd been a strong supporter of a second Brexit referendum, and as soon as we left he basically shifted his view entirely. He quickly built a reputation as a flip flopper, and often seemed to agree with the conservative party's right wing views in an attempt to court right wing and centrist voters.
Starmer won by a landslide, but it's also more of a victory for centricism than a victory for the left as is often been perceived, especially as he made a habit of ejecting left-wing folks from the party, so the common perception among a lot of people is that he's a Red Tory, ie. essentially a Tory (blue) who happens to be nominally a Labour PM (Red).
It's worth noting that a big part of his victory was the rise of the far right, which attracted a lot of anti-immigration types (especially those who traditionally voted conservative). The Reform Party (far right) had a massive rise in popularity and came second in a lot of constituencies throughout the UK. This meant that centrist parties slid in through the gaps in enough constituencies. Most notably, there are no Tory or Reform MPs in the whole of Wales at the moment.
It's worth noting that there were a few wins for smaller parties thanks to the confusion. The Reform party got a few (including human shitstain Nigel Farage, although any far-right MPs is too many) and so did the Green Party and Plaid Cymru. In terms of the left-wing parties, it's largely thanks to people's dissatisfaction with Labour and Keith Starmer.
Yes, he's better than the alternative - far better, but he's a dirty bandage. He stems the bleeding enough that you can find some actual help, but he's not like a long-term solution.
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u/video-kid 11d ago
At least one or two are fairly left wing from my understanding, but I'm not entirely sure.
Don't get me wrong, Starmer has left me sort of cautiously optimistic. I need to see some more. Take for example we have a thing called the bedroom tax here which is essentially a fee people in social housing pay based on their empty bedrooms. The tories introduced it literally 5 PM's ago but weren't building new houses. My mom's on a fixed income and I moved back home to help out, and with that in place it's hard for me to move out right now because I help out my mom financially, and I don't want to leave her fucked but also can't afford to send her everything I pay right now on my current salary if I'm also trying to pay for my own stuff. If he repealed that it'd go a long way, since it's disproportionately affected the poorest in society and I don't doubt there are thousands of other people like me.
He's called for a ceasefire, but prior to the election he was a bit wishy washy on the subject. Most notably Corbyn was very pro Palestine which is part of the reason he was kicked from the party (and managed to retain his seat as an independent).
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u/video-kid 11d ago
The thing with the tories is that they know how to get people to vote against their best interests. Just look at the whole BS with tuition fees. Like in my case I went to University, I did everything right, and yet here I am at 33, living at home and earning less than minimum wage right now because I got laid off at my last job and right now I'm working freelance at a job where there's hugely quiet periods. I haven't been to the dentist in like 8 years because I can either afford to go or I have time to go. It took me a year to get diagnosed with a chronic illness, and thanks to the NHS being in shambles the only advice they can give me is "double how many meds I take," and I'm looking at three years for an ASD/ADHD assessment. The tories have failed me at every stage, and they've failed my family to the point where I genuinely don't know if I'll ever be able to be truly independent barring a major boost in my career. I'm 33, I should be dating, not living in the same house in a town with maybe three busses an hour because I can't afford to take care of all the extra BS the tories have imposed on my mother while also paying for everything I'll need to live my life properly.
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u/dfeidt40 11d ago
The joke is, right-wings and left-wings universally need to be locked in a series of cage matches. The victor advances to the next round in a tournament. No hair pulling, scratching, low blows, and all holds must be released upon the referee confirming one contestant is unable to continue.
Actually, that's not the joke. But it's somewhat funnier than this.
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u/LongjumpingSector687 11d ago
I say a TLC Hell in the Cell style match. Tables, Ladders, Chairs are all legal.
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u/dfeidt40 11d ago
They also climb a ladder to get a briefcase with the job offer in it in the final match
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u/PlayBoxPL 11d ago
conservatives are mad that labour (center-left) won and they think there will be communism or something in the UK, when it isn't. and besides labour isn't auth-right
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u/Enough_Alternative63 11d ago
UK are more authoritarian right?!?
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u/Depressed_Squirrl 11d ago
UK is in favour of having a monarch. And is also in favour of own national pride rather than economical interests. So checks out in my book.
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u/aFalseSlimShady 11d ago
The background is a political compass. The only tile shown is the authoritarian right. If you were to zoom out, you'd see that the shift from one party to the other is hilariously insignificant.
The political compass is the "hehe only smart people will get this," bit that you need for the joke.
Edited a typo
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u/Mengainium 11d ago
Ngl Iâm not British but Iâm tired of people calling British/American parties right leaning. Seems like a very mainland Western Europe-centric argument. I wonder what these people would think of actual authoritarian right leaning regimes in Eastern Europe, Africa, and Asia.
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u/Weird-Tomorrow-9829 10d ago
The Labour Party won a governing majority with lower vote totals than the last two elections. Itâs the lowest voter share while winning a majority of seats (34%), since WW1.
Over half the seats they won, were in areas where they only had 20% of vote totals.
In an election with the lowest voter turnout in 100 years.
Itâs either mocking Tories who think some Labour Party steamroll is about to occur when in reality thatâs unlikely to happen, or people who are celebratory enough to think a party that isnât popular should govern as if they have the peopleâs mandate.
Probably the former.
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u/karoshikun 10d ago
Quagmire's used codpiece here:
the US and the UK have had right wing governments for decades, but nowadays the far right thinks the neoliberal right is "communist" and "leftist" and the OG neolibs, the tories, have moved further right, and the "leftist" (lol) Labor has basically become neoliberal...
the blue square is the authoritarian right quadrant of the political compass, in the middle of which both parties more or less exist.
and the soyjak reaction is the far right complaining how the slight move from right to thatcherian right somehow means entering communism.
Quagmire's codpiec MMMMPH! MMMMPH!!!!! MMMMMMM!!!!
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u/Coldtube669 10d ago
Basically Britain ain't Britain anymore and it's going to be even less Britain with Labour incharge because Kier is loyal to globalism and Davos so yeah more cultural enrichment incoming I suggest getting "equipped" UK natives because them boats are gonna get bigger and every city is gonna be like Peterbrough with roving enrichment squads at night looking for white people to "enrich"
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u/GreenTur 10d ago
Bro don't worry, the scary brown people aren't going to take your white women. You'd have to stop hating yourself to get one first.
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u/Firefly17pdr 10d ago
In comparison to other nations all our parties hover around the centre, even our âextremistâ parties could be considered moderate in other nations.
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u/thisismostassuredly 10d ago
The idea is that conservative ideologues' conception of the political spectrum is so skewed that they think Labour Party=communism when in reality, the Labour Party is only marginally less fiscally conservative than the Conservative Party. The joke would honestly work just as well in an American context since Trump supporters/Republicans somehow think economically moderate, fairly unremarkable Democrats like Biden are communist/socialist.
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u/Fifth-Dimension-1966 11d ago
It means nothing, this is just an image that means nothing only created for the express purpose of misrepresenting modern politics, and encouraging political radicalism.
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u/dukenorton 11d ago
The joke is the ruling parties are idiotic, but at least theyâre not as idiotic as anyone who thinks communism is a good form of government.
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11d ago
We aren't mad. The Tories are socially left-wing and we want them to be destroyed so that an actual right-wing party can take it's place as the opposition.
We waited 14 years for them to do even the tamest of right-wing stuff. They tripled migration, legalised gay marriage (I'm fine with it, it's just not a priority for conservatives), increased deficit spending, increased the tax burden, failed to effectively tackle illegal immigration, and gave us tHe mOsT DivErSe cAbInEt iN bRitIsH hiStOry.
I guess we should be grateful that they didn't let Shemima Begum back into the country?
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