Why are the Far Right rising?

Nero said:
I can’t say anything on other places but for Britain it’s political decision making. It would be easy to say Tory Austerity (which is a massive part of it) but the root cause goes to the Thatcher neoliberal agenda.

Selling off massive parts of Britain without reinvestment in industry, allowing large areas of the North to descend into poverty, which has seen massive social issues created, creating ongoing issues for local government.

Removing any control on financial institutions, which allowed them to turbo charge credit. This for a time created the illusion that growth had been achieved, but ultimately it resulted in massive increases in land and property value, which further increased inequality. Cheaper credit allowed normal people to think they were wealthy, but uncontrolled credit resulted in the 2008 financial crises, which very nearly caused the economy to implode.

2008 meant the British government acting like it had to during COVID and creating billions to stop banks going bust. It was the only choice available, but banks withdrew almost entirely from lending. Suddenly, small businesses weren’t supported, bigger business forced into austerity measures by banks desperate for their money back and the knock on effect was recession. Lots of employees were give a choice - take a pay cut or lose your job. Some took a pay cut and still lost their job.

The 2010 election allowed the Tories to create the lie it was Labour’s fault (how that was allowed to stick is incredible). Once Tory Austerity kicked in things really got worse.

Just looking at the state of roads all over England is the symbol of austerity. Local government was massively underfunded causing them to cut back on everything. Proactively maintaining roads was now impossible. Roads are only fixed once they become dangerous.

With local services cut to the bone and all national government services reduced, society started to feel very different. This ultimately led to Brexit, which was always going to be a total disaster.

In light of all that, just blame poor dark skinned people on all your problems. It’s clearly their fault trying to make a better life for themselves in a country many have connections with.
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I agree with most of this but I'm less willing to absolve Labour of all blame. They had been in office for 10 years. Gordon Brown admitted in 2011

From Wikipedia

In 2011 former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown expressed regret at not implementing tougher regulations during his tenure of chancellor between 1997 and 2007, responding to "relentless pressure" from the City not to over-regulate.

We know in retrospect what we missed. We set up the Financial Services Authority (FSA) believing that the problem would come from the failure of an individual institution, so we created a monitoring system which was looking at individual institutions. That was the big mistake.
We didn't understand how risk was spread across the system, we didn't understand the entanglements of different institutions with the other and we didn't understand even though we talked about it just how global things were, including a shadow banking system as well as a banking system.
That was our mistake, but I'm afraid it was a mistake made by just about everybody who was in the regulatory business.
— Gordon Brown
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JackG said:
I agree with most of this but I'm less willing to absolve Labour of all blame. They had been in office for 10 years. Gordon Brown admitted in 2011

From Wikipedia

In 2011 former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown expressed regret at not implementing tougher regulations during his tenure of chancellor between 1997 and 2007, responding to "relentless pressure" from the City not to over-regulate.
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From the point of view of someone whose early adult life (I was 20 when Labour got in) was dominated by Labour's lengthy tenure under Blair and then Brown I probably am a little nostalgic for that time when we saw a much bigger investment in infrastructure, including hospitals and schools.

I went to school in Saltburn and it is unthinkable really that in what is a fairly prosperous town that the local school should a) have been under threat of closure and b) had pupils being taught partly in temporary prefabricated rooms. I know that a lot of the investment was through PFI but it was needed and every political party criticises it until they take power and then they use it as much as possible.

The two main mistakes (I realise that they did other things wrong as well) that people point to of Blair and Brown's Labour Party are the Iraq war and the financial crash in 2007-8-9. Both of those things would've happened under either of the two main parties. There's no way that the Tories wouldn't have gone to war again; indeed even now many of their current MP's voted for it and would've done so even without the spin around the 'threat'. The Tories also wouldn't have more stringently restricted the financial markets.

The far right have one major problem. Once they get into power they get hit by reality. Yes it's apparently fine that this Dutch guy is intolerant of Muslims but the people who voted for him want him to actually govern the country rather than blame other people for their ills. You can work with that sentiment in opposition but people want stuff to work and banning headscarves doesn't help put food on the table. I was on a video call with some Dutch people this morning and pre-meeting the election came up in discussion and although none of the people there admitted to voting for him, the general sentiment was that he'll get one chance.
 
JackG said:
I agree with most of this but I'm less willing to absolve Labour of all blame. They had been in office for 10 years. Gordon Brown admitted in 2011

From Wikipedia

In 2011 former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown expressed regret at not implementing tougher regulations during his tenure of chancellor between 1997 and 2007, responding to "relentless pressure" from the City not to over-regulate.
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Yes I agree with that. Labour let the City of London get on with it. By the mid-2000’s it all seemed rosy and Politicians had long since stopped managing the economy. None had any idea really what a mess the City had created to keep the credit flowing.

The City was doing what all big business does. Lobby government in Westminster until they get their way. That’s not always a bad thing, as industry is better placed than government to know the parameters, but it does mean private industry has a massive input into government policy. So much for democracy.
 
Untrammelled free-market capitalism has failed, in its current guise at least. In short, it has allowed a very small minority to control the narrative and wealth, which has led to everyone else looking for an alternative.

As that inequality has grown, the desire for change has taken on an increasingly extreme bent.

As mentioned above, at the moment, most of these "extreme answers" have incredibly poor records in Government but it feels like we're on a precipice between a) one of them actually excelling in the role of governing or b) long-lasting dismantling of the constitutions and state apparatus which is designed to protect against this very thing happening.
 
Do you think Central Middlesbrough / Stockton town centre look better for
Immigration. I am not far right but do not see the benefit
 
Omega said:
Do you think Central Middlesbrough / Stockton town centre look better for
Immigration. I am not far right but do not see the benefit
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What does that mean?

How would you know whether it looks 'better' due to immigration?

I think they have both suffered from under-investment by all governments over the past 30-40 years. If they have convinced you that immigration is to blame for that, then they have done a good job in that aspect alone.
 
BoroBosco said:
Are you sure things are going to the right?

Elections in Brasil saw the right wing president kicked out and the recent election in Poland saw the Law & Justice party loose power.
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This is true - the right are rising but its also more that, rightly or wrongly, incumbents get the blame when things go bad - next year we are probably going to kick out one of the most right wing governments in British history and replace them with hopefully the most left wing government since the 1970s.

Fingers crossed.
 
Omega said:
Do you think Central Middlesbrough / Stockton town centre look better for
Immigration. I am not far right but do not see the benefit
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I suppose it depends how you view the world. Does it 'owe' you a benefit? Is it not just a natural occurrence where some nations are more desirable to live in than others, and we should just view it as that rather than something we need to 'benefit' from? They're not actually 'our' town centres are they, they're just town centres we happen to have been born and raised in/near and claim as our own.

I appreciate there may be drawbacks to mass immigration too, but I think this idea that we should all 'benefit' from it is a bit vague.

Anyway, its pretty funny that the year after Brexit was executed the UK had the highest immigration levels.
 
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Corcaigh_the_Cat said:
I'm not arguing with that, generalisation isn't right though.

One thing for sure, we need younger people to be more active politically and to get out and vote.
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Yes.

But they also need something to vote for. The social contract risks breaking down otherwise.

Affordable housing and student debt forgiveness at the very least. Infrastructure investment and buy to let landlords thrown in the stocks too.
 
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