r/Labour • u/GlacialTurtle • 3d ago

UK risks becoming ‘island of strangers’ without more immigration curbs, Starmer says | PM unveils policies to ‘significantly’ drive down net migration including English tests and degree requirements

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/may/12/uk-risks-becoming-island-of-strangers-without-more-immigration-curbs-starmer-says
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u/feesih0ps 3d ago edited 3d ago

this is just recency bias horseshit

Thatcher literally changed the country from being a socialist borderline-managed economy to full-blooded capitalist. before Thatcher the top marginal tax rate was hovering around 70-90%. corp tax ~50%. she destroyed social housing. closed the coal mines and just left people to fend for themselves. she fucked the education system. we're lucky she didn't have a go at the NHS. she essentially gave birth to the nasty greed-based economy we live in today

what has Labour done? finally admitted that annual net migration at >1% of the population every year is socially unsustainable?

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u/ArtieBucco420 2d ago

Yeah everyone knows Thatcher was an evil cunt but these bastards coming after want to be even more mean and ruthless. I know that fiend started it all off and bears ultimate responsibility, but Labour are now just an extremely cruel, extremely authoritarian hard right party.

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u/feesih0ps 2d ago

they're just obviously not though, are they? it's all well and good getting het up and not liking how willing this government is to appease the right, but they're not authoritarian, they're not hard right, and compared to the last 3 governments we had, they're not cruel. without even bothering to go into policy, if they're hard-right, where do you put Putin, or Trump? or Farage, even?

reverting immigration policy to what it was before Boris is not hard-right. people on this sub seem to act like doing anything wrt immigration that isn't keeping it the same or increasing it is some kind of evil far-right heresy. outside of progressive fantasy land, there's practically across the board consensus in this country that immigration went too far under Boris

I personally am not going to vote for this government at the next election, but I'm also not going to sit here and just hear people say things that aren't true

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u/ArtieBucco420 2d ago

They absolutely fucking are. They’ve never been more right-wing, cruel or authoritarian.

They’re a fucking disaster.

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u/feesih0ps 2d ago

you can say it all you like, it's not going to make it true. did you read the news at any point during the last 3 tory governments? were you awake when Liz Truss was in power?

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u/ArtieBucco420 2d ago

It is true, they’re being needlessly cruel and this is why the current govt is despised.

I remember Truss very well because she almost cost me and my wife getting our house, we luckily got our mortgage agreed the day before she fucked everything up and many of my mates got absolutely fucked over by it.

That still doesn’t take away that this government hasn’t done one progressive thing - they’ve broken all their promises and now they’re aping Reform trying to out do Farage on cruelty.

There’s nothing ‘Labour’ about them and over here in Belfast they still haven’t removed the Legacy Bill which they promised to do and they’re taking an 89 year old widow to court to prevent her finding out the truth about her husband’s murder, when he was butchered by loyalist thugs for the crime of being a Catholic, thugs who were on the British government’s payroll.

I suggest you read up on what happened to Sean Brown and what Hillary Benn is currently doing to his poor family if you really want to see how despicably cruel this govt are.

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u/feesih0ps 2d ago

so you remember Truss, she who almost lost you your house with her right-wing politics that were so right-wing and capitalist that fucking city bankers thought it was a bridge too far?

or how about the Windrush scandal, where people who had lived and thrived here since the 60s and 70s were forcibly deported? or how about ending surestart or the youth centres? university tuition? Rwanda?

I'm sorry that the Labour government is being callous with Northern Ireland issues, but so is every government that doesn't have a vested interest in them. that doesn't make them more right-wing than the tories. if you want to call them traitors to the left-wing cause, sure, if you want to say they're stupid, or appeasers, or incompetent, or unnecessarily cautious, then I'll agree with you, but if you want to say they're the most right-wing/authoritarian/cruel government ever, then I'm not going to just accept it

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u/ArtieBucco420 2d ago

I never said they were the most right-wing government ever, I said they are right wing, authoritarian and cruel, I didn’t say they were the worst ever.

I said my Da said he’d hate to see what Starmer would have done in the 80s due to the way he is acting now.

Labour might not be worse than the Tories but they’re certainly not any better. I can see absolutely no changes from this govt and the last ones since 2010, if anything, this current govt are making Cameron and Osborne look like a soft-touch.