Describe your political journey from 2006 to now

[Gibby]

Picture the scene: it's 2006. You've just been involved in a consensual fingering at Beats of Rage. You get home and log onto Prestone and there's a political thread. You join in.

BAM! It's not 2006 anymore. It's 2026. You are an old husk, a desiccated parody of the beauty lost in the magic of chiptune-based clubnights. Your back hurts. The bills pile up. An old uncle is talking about Starmer on Facebook. You join in.

What has happened between those times? Are you now much more sensible and can see the merits of both sides? Are you more openly conservative? Are you now fully committed to the science of Marx? Are you a single issues type?

I want to hear about it.

[TarnishedGlitter]

I'm more woke I think. I have in that time joined Labour and been slightly politically active, but then got involved in a few non party campaigns, met with some ministers and similar people a few times, done some media work around benefits cuts (Richard Madely is a dickhead, Victoria Derbyshire is lovely), left the Labour Party as they no longer aligned with my values.

I did consider YP but they showed themselves to be a shambles so now I'm Green and fairly active on committees and policy working groups etc.

My jobs and volunteer/education are fairly politics adjacent (housing, poverty, welfare, rights, lgbtqia, social care, etc) and I'm not ruling out standing for local election at some point, first as a paper candidate then more seriously, but I'm not quite ready yet. I wouldn't even stand on paper if I wasn't confident I could do a good job if elected.

[Dogzilla]

I think I've become more annoyingly left wing as I've got older, rather than taking the classical centrist to conservative route

[Gibby]

I think I am weirdly kind of the same. Old Labour. Bit sniffy about progressives with their haircuts, but naturally see them as bedfellows compared to Darren in accounts who has some opinions about what really started 9/11.

Between then and now I did actually read Marx and said yeah I was thinking that too, what's the fuss.

[Gibby]

actually Keir Hardie once said Labour owes more to Methodism than Marx so maybe I have changed a bit

obviously a bit more enlightened around trans stuff than I once was.

[Beaker]

I was a little right of centre, but these days after the absolute fucking disaster and disgrace that 12 years of unfettered Tory excess I'm somewhat more left wing than I was was.

There are some outliers in the mix, but ultimately I'll vote for whoever keep The Furage out of power regardless. Even if it's Lib Dems.

[doktorb]

*takes deep breath*

I supported the Coalition and received abuse aplenty. Things went hot and cold with that, and I drifted away from having any real political connection at all. It was a calling card and I'd rather it wasn't, so there's that.

But I still believe in all manner of things even if ideology etc isn't quite the priority it was. I voted Remain and would bore Rejoin; i believe in all the crusty things 1990s-era liberals tend to believe in, like a fair voting system, and accountability, and wanting government to make better law rather than acres of reactionary b-s.

I happen to believe that bedroom doors have locks on them for a reason, so millionaires and billionaires and the like should stop caring about bits, and what they align to, or represent.

I'm not consistent because I'm not an idealogue . I'm tired of *gestures hands* being a cloud made of concrete we can't waft away.

[godonlyknows]

I have tried writing a response to this about 5 times, and each time I realise I would probably be breaking the forum rules by doing so.

All I can really say, I suppose, is that I have shifted from centre-left to straightforwardly out-of-the-game, since the broad notion was accepted that it's impossible to be unacceptable when enacting/espousing any left-wing position, but most things my Labour voting dad would have said constitute "alt-right hate speech" in 2026.

As you may recall, I like making fun of things I think are silly, and that's literally something people go to jail for in 2026, and it looks like Beaker thinks that's a good thing.

[Beaker]

As you may recall, I like making fun of things I think are silly, and that's literally something people go to jail for in 2026, and it looks like Beaker thinks that's a good thing.

I'm not sure how you get to that.

I don't have any tolerence for bigotry, and I see no reason to be tolerent of intolerent people.

As for 'go to jail' the Tories spent so long underfunding them, the police, the courts and in fact anything that they could get away with there isn't much chance of that.

[Dogzilla]

All I can really say, I suppose, is that I have shifted from centre-left to straightforwardly out-of-the-game, since the broad notion was accepted that it's impossible to be unacceptable when enacting/espousing any left-wing position, but most things my Labour voting dad would have said constitute "alt-right hate speech" in 2026.

I don't think alt-right is a thing anymore. Those ideas and values are just the mainstream right in America now

Also it does feel a bit bonkers to still be banging the "you can't even make a joke without woke lefty liberals cancelling you!" drum at this point where you have an actual right wing authoritarian government who are shutting down liberal institutions, arresting journalists, executing protestors in the street, forcing social media and tv network buyouts by billionaire allies, and where the most popular comedians on tv and podcasts are generally supporting Trump and/or making anti-trans jokes

[godonlyknows]

All I can really say, I suppose, is that I have shifted from centre-left to straightforwardly out-of-the-game, since the broad notion was accepted that it's impossible to be unacceptable when enacting/espousing any left-wing position, but most things my Labour voting dad would have said constitute "alt-right hate speech" in 2026.

I don't think alt-right is a thing anymore. Those ideas and values are just the mainstream right in America now

Also it does feel a bit bonkers to still be banging the "you can't even make a joke without woke lefty liberals cancelling you!" drum at this point where you have an actual right wing authoritarian government who are shutting down liberal institutions, arresting journalists, executing protestors in the street, forcing social media and tv network buyouts by billionaire allies, and where the most popular comedians on tv and podcasts are generally supporting Trump and/or making anti-trans jokes

"alt-right" is a term literally used in the forum rules, honey.

Good to hear you still know more than I do about America, though.

[Beaker]

"alt-right" is a term literally used in the forum rules, honey.

That's from experience. A forum I used to help with a bit allowed "a few" of the Tommy Ten Names types on, and they're just fucking horrible people.

[james]

As I've got older, the difference between personal and party politics has become more important.

When I was younger, I believed I was really left wing. More so than younger me would believe now-me is. But I don't think I was, really. I certainly wasn't good at a lot of the more fundamental aspects of being a lefty, like believing in the common good and wanting to give a boost up to people who were struggling. And I thought that hating the Tories was enough. Now I think I'm more left wing, thanks to teaching throughout the coalition/Tory disaster, and doing a lot of work with the NEU, but I'm utterly disillusioned with party politics. I'll always vote, and I'll always vote for whatever is most likely to bring about the lesser of however many evils are on offer, which is likely to be Labour for a long time yet, but it's so fucking depressing.

[Dogzilla]

"alt-right" is a term literally used in the forum rules, honey.

In that case I apologise for my sass

[Dogzilla]

The second part isn't really about claiming to know America better, because it's a cultural thing in both countries (and we are constantly exposed to American culture)

The right wing complaint of "look what you made me do". The endless parade of people complaining that "you can't say that anymore" while still saying it and then being paid loads of money. The grievance culture of right wingers acting like they're hard done by despite being wildly ascendant in politics and the media

[Dogzilla]

The left can certainly be guilty of sanctimony and purity tests but I think that stuff is mostly easy to ignore and laugh off in a way that, say, being shot in the face by a masked officer isn't. There's a false equivalency between the extremes of left and right

[TarnishedGlitter]

It gets impossible to have a normal conversation with right wingers in the end as well.

"Do you like my new dress?"
"Trans people would say you aren't ALLOWED a dress, and Muslims would probably MURDER you on sight for wearing it, and I'll get ARRESTED for saying this soon but I'm protecting women by shouting at them!"

[Dogzilla]

In other political news, that little shit McSweeney resigning is a brief bit of cheer. Though he'll probably just pull the same routine as his paedo-pal mentor and pop back up again in a few years in another Labour role

[Ziv]

I'd still rather be a tree huggin hippy over being a cunt.

[Beaker]

In other political news, that little shit McSweeney resigning is a brief bit of cheer. Though he'll probably just pull the same routine as his paedo-pal mentor and pop back up again in a few years in another Labour role

I have a similar view here. The current lot are going to GIFT power The Reformatives.

[Dogzilla]

It is actually demented how bad they are at this

[KingsleyAnus]

Not sure I've really had a journey. Not since 2006, by that time I'd already moved on from my lunatic teenage Marxist phase (which went into my 20s an embarrassingly long time). Still a fairly tedious centre-left dad. Wanting a government somewhat further left, realising that's unlikely to impossible under this system, voting Labour with a weary sigh, being called a bleeding heart commie by lunatic right-wingers and a fascist by their equivalents on the right.

[Dogzilla]

Corbyn had more actual people vote for him in the previous "disastrous" election that Starmer did in his "landslide". Labour only won due to the Tory collapse thanks to Reform

Even if Labour keep all the voters they had last election (which seems unlikely given how horribly unpopular they are), I think Reform will still beat them

Saying "vote for us because we're not Reform" just won't work, any more than it worked for the Democrats to say "vote for us because we're not Trump". You need to give people something to actually vote for, not vote against, to motivate them

The neoliberal routine of "the adults are back in the room" politics beloved by Blairite centrists doesn't work if they think business as usual will get people to vote them. Especially when each right wing government pushes what the "centre" is further to the right each time they're in power and then Labour does nothing to push it back the other way when they're in

My frustration with Starmer isn't just that he's barely even nodding at the left in terms of his policies, but that his government will absolutely hand over power to Reform at the next election by ceding almost every major issue to them. They will obsess over chasing Tory/Reform votes by catering to the whims of people who will just vote Tory/Reform

And I think there's people at the top in Labour who hate the left so much they actually would prefer Reform to get in than to hand the reins of Labour over to anyone even vaguely lefty

[piercedmilo]

I was raised in a Very LibDem household (my Dad* was Dame Shirley Williams' election agent for the Crosby by-election) and I remained centre-left until they got into bed with the Tories.

I became disillusioned and more cynical and my politics began to swing further to the left. Quickly became similarly disillusioned with Labour because they seem determined to follow the tired old trope of Trotskyists arguing with each other over misunderstood points of order rather than doing what they were elected to do.

Now I'm leaning towards the Greens as they've finally moved past being a single issue movement, I'd probably quite happily vote Co-operative (as I believe in the principles of cooperativeism) if they didn't have a parliamentary pact with Labour.

Mostly these days I'm just exasperated and emotionally exhausted from people being such utter abject towers of dicks over things that don't really matter (such as the ethnicity of a certain type of scumbag) and totally ignoring things that are important (like finding for things that protect people from said scumbags, or might even prevent people from becoming a scumbag - i.e. key public services, especially for young people).

Why can't we just, like, abide man?



*Dad was very working class but we were middle class because he had a good career - we were raised to be acutely aware of our privilege because he was of the first generation to be raised on the welfare state due to being in a single parent household.