The media machine can, and will if needed, be spun up to point out how a 'far-right' party cannot be allowed to win.
I kind of went into this particular line of thought a while back, but the media machine is only effective if people are actively consuming it. After Covid, more people embraced the internet and computers, so the number of people seeking their news and info from elsewhere increased by quite a lot.
The older generation still watch a lot of TV, but they're also the same generation that Labour rely a lot on and they took a hammer to their bennies. I'll try to keep my response here as precise as possible:
1.
Online news now matches TV in popularity (71% vs. 70%), with social media playing a key role—over half (52%) use it for news. While TV remains dominant for older audiences (85% of 55+ adults), younger people (16-24s) overwhelmingly prefer online sources (88%), especially social media (82%). TV news entities like the BBC still reach large audiences (68%), but their influence is waning, with four of the top ten news sources now being social media platforms. Trust in traditional outlets remains higher, but newspapers continue to decline, and TikTok’s role as a news source is growing (11% of adults, up from 1% in 2020).
2. The above is used in conjunction with the recent report that
the police can't keep up with online 'misinfo'. I.E. the internet is more effective at getting to people than you think.
You say the parties are too different for this to happen? Labour is cutting disability allowance, has its' eyes set on decimating pensions and has rid the pensioners of their winter fuel bill. Not but a fag paper separates the modern tories - led by a female black, and labour
It was back-to-back death of political stereotypes these past five years: Conservatives stopped being the austerity-loving racists for rich people and Labour stopped being the spend-happy, immigrant-loving benefits party for poors.
The Conservative being anti-immigrant party died in the public's eyes in 2023 when they attempted the Rwanda scheme (wherein it was revealed immigration has been on the constant rise every since they got in - again, like Labour's cuts, the Conservatives willingly put the 700k a year figure
everywhere.) and stopped appealing to the people who overlap with the Lib Dems because they were as happy to spend money and raise taxes as Labour were.
Labour quickly died in the eyes of a lot of people less than 6 months after winning the election when they proposed scrapping the winter fuel allowance like you said, revealing they weren't different from the party they just replaced in terms of long-held stereotypes of the party. It was really that easy. This was also a self-own on Labour's part, since anybody who stilled relied on the TV for their news saw this plastered everywhere.
The parties appearing more alike in the eyes of the public is more detrimental to them both than it is a boon. It ostracises their most hardcore voters. "I want Labour, not Tory-Labour!" and vice versa.
If Ami, Ali, or whatever his name is, is the true leader behind Labour, you ought to be thanking him for help destroying it from the inside...
of Starmer's ass.
Look toward France, Germany and Romania for a hint about what happens when a populist and supposed 'far-right' party gets anywhere near the popular vote. If the uniparty can't stop them from winning votes, then they will stop your votes from counting.
I look like a prick because I cited those three as being in a worse state than the UK, and they are, but beside France,
the CDU guy who replaced the SPD guy in charge of Germany's spy agency lifted the 'extremist' label from the AFD (safe for now),
and in Romania the same Right-wing guy won (again) and it caused the PM to resign. Basically, whilst it might appear they're omnipotent and will get their way in the end, they're order of things also succumbs to entropy — it'll eventually die. They're trying their best to delay but despite their machines they can't really keep up.
Romania's telecom deputy wanted to suspend Tiktok prior to the first election due to the Right's surge of popularity, which like the above report about Southport, they really can't do much when it comes to individual exposure to 'misinfo' (uncomfortable facts).
If it means anything for France, Le Pen is trying to appeal her sentence. It's unlikely to work, but even Macron is afraid of what barring her from the election would do. (Helps to remember that the EU did this) Push to come to shove, there's a bloke who can run in her place.
Now there is a chance that niggel farage will cuck out and do thy bidding of the old tories, or offer himself to whomever can offer him power, but if reform become a voice of the disenfranchised, that voice will be silenced and any violent protest stopped in its' tracks.
This is honestly the biggest and genuine worry, and is probably at greater odds of happening than the rest.
There's a handful of things Farage/Reform have promised that if they were done at bare minimum, would massively benefit the Right (Free speech protections being the number 1) but if he tries to absorb the Tories or continue to try and prove he's not a racist to people who would never vote for him, nothing might get done about immigration (which his comments and banishment of Lowe seem to imply) and any attempts to implement some sort of constitution for free speech might fly out the window, so there's still a
bad outcome to a total Reform victory in that situation.
It's the hope that Reform will become the party people want it to be because the MPs within it are more "based" than Farage that makes them winning worthwhile, assuming we don't get a shock upset by Lowe coming in with a steel chair of a party.
But still, the Tories imitating some of Lowe's rhetoric and Labour are trying hard to appear like they
give a shit, so the more and more the disenfranchised make themselves known, the more and more the mainstream parties will need do just to keep their poll numbers in the double digits (Except the Lib Dems, who'll inexplicably remain at 13% until the heat death of the universe). Which might push Farage kicking and screaming into
actually voicing opinions on immigration that Reform voters agree with.
With all due respect, and I can't word this any better so don't take it as a snipy comment, but this is 2025, not 2005.
God, how I wish it was.
