How racist are Conservative members and voters?

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tom p
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Re: How racist are Conservative members and voters?

Post by tom p » Mon Jul 11, 2022 12:23 pm

bagpuss wrote:
Mon Jul 11, 2022 11:08 am
El Pollo Diablo wrote:
Mon Jul 11, 2022 10:38 am
tom p wrote:
Mon Jul 11, 2022 9:20 am

Actually doing something about sexism in the workplace & society is better than having a figurehead.
You're prioritising gesture politics over actual implementation of useful policies.
What you say is true, but it's also a source of shame for Labour that it's never elected a woman as leader. Gesture politics does still make a difference. It provides confidence in what Labour says it wants to do.
And also, hello, but who the f.ck says that electing a woman as leader would be gesture politics? It could just be electing the best person for the job*.

[/rant]

*Yeah, I know, like that's likely in British politics :roll:
You're right - it should be; I was talking about the tory talking point of 'we've had 2 female leaders - we're the party that actually care about women' -
that's gesture politics in my view.

Spiking that gun by having a female leader for the sake of it would also be gesture politics. Especially as in Labour's case it was only against Starmer that there were any decent female candidates since 1994 (Cooper, who stood against Corbyn, would have been a very good leader; but her pitch was basically a continuation of Osborne's economic viciousness& so she deserved to lose that election)

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Re: How racist are Conservative members and voters?

Post by discovolante » Mon Jul 11, 2022 12:40 pm

sTeamTraen wrote:
Mon Jul 11, 2022 11:11 am
Is the overall premise of the thread not somewhat impacted by the fact that all of these non-white MPs have been approved by their local Conservative Association, albeit presumably in some cases having been leaned on by Tory head office to accept a parachuted-in "rising star"? But perhaps there is something special about their particular constituencies that makes the local Tories less racist?
Well, it could be argued that their positions help to serve racism by legitimising the racist policies and attitudes of the tory party as a whole, which is why racist people like them.
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Re: How racist are Conservative members and voters?

Post by tom p » Mon Jul 11, 2022 12:53 pm

dyqik wrote:
Mon Jul 11, 2022 11:30 am
sTeamTraen wrote:
Mon Jul 11, 2022 11:11 am
Is the overall premise of the thread not somewhat impacted by the fact that all of these non-white MPs have been approved by their local Conservative Association, albeit presumably in some cases having been leaned on by Tory head office to accept a parachuted-in "rising star"? But perhaps there is something special about their particular constituencies that makes the local Tories less racist?
Or it's likely that they are more racist against unknown immigrants than Oxbridge educated billionaires who shake their hand and pretend to listen to what they say.
I suspect that this is a big part of it.
There's an average of about 300 tory party members per constituency. Obviously this is going to be quite lumpy (I'll suspect there are far more in Witney than in Sunderland South); but even in a safe seat it's not going to be much more than about 1,000 members.
The likes of Sunak could easily meet every single tory party member of a given constituency, and fund lovely civilised events for them, to prove to each and every member of the local tory party that they are one of the good ones* & can be safely voted for. I don't know if they have the self-awareness (or awareness of what their party members are like) to realise that that's what they are doing, since it would appear to be exactly what a white candidate would be doing - but it would definitely be necessary to appeal sufficiently to such people


*you see, they simply can't be racist - some of their best friends are, etc.

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Re: How racist are Conservative members and voters?

Post by tom p » Mon Jul 11, 2022 12:56 pm

discovolante wrote:
Mon Jul 11, 2022 12:40 pm
sTeamTraen wrote:
Mon Jul 11, 2022 11:11 am
Is the overall premise of the thread not somewhat impacted by the fact that all of these non-white MPs have been approved by their local Conservative Association, albeit presumably in some cases having been leaned on by Tory head office to accept a parachuted-in "rising star"? But perhaps there is something special about their particular constituencies that makes the local Tories less racist?
Well, it could be argued that their positions help to serve racism by legitimising the racist policies and attitudes of the tory party as a whole, which is why racist people like them.
The racist MPs definitely think like this. I don't think it's any coincidence that the most openly racist PM of my lifetime has the most brown-skinned people in his cabinet, to pre-emptively deflect the justified criticism for his repeated and obvious racism.
Not sure whether racist voters are being so sophisticated though

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Re: How racist are Conservative members and voters?

Post by Martin Y » Mon Jul 11, 2022 12:57 pm

Trinucleus wrote:
Sun Jul 10, 2022 2:19 pm
https://twitter.com/TrueBlueTories/stat ... 1241992192

A lot of posts comparing Sunak to Roland Rat, or giving him the head of a snake. Not sure Heseltine got that treatment when he challenged Thatcher
The criticism of Heseltine that sticks in my mind is "He looks like the sort of fellow who bought his own furniture". Can't remember which old-money snob allegedly said it.

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Re: How racist are Conservative members and voters?

Post by discovolante » Mon Jul 11, 2022 12:58 pm

tom p wrote:
Mon Jul 11, 2022 12:56 pm
discovolante wrote:
Mon Jul 11, 2022 12:40 pm
sTeamTraen wrote:
Mon Jul 11, 2022 11:11 am
Is the overall premise of the thread not somewhat impacted by the fact that all of these non-white MPs have been approved by their local Conservative Association, albeit presumably in some cases having been leaned on by Tory head office to accept a parachuted-in "rising star"? But perhaps there is something special about their particular constituencies that makes the local Tories less racist?
Well, it could be argued that their positions help to serve racism by legitimising the racist policies and attitudes of the tory party as a whole, which is why racist people like them.
The racist MPs definitely think like this. I don't think it's any coincidence that the most openly racist PM of my lifetime has the most brown-skinned people in his cabinet, to pre-emptively deflect the justified criticism for his repeated and obvious racism.
Not sure whether racist voters are being so sophisticated though
Well it may not be entirely conscious. I don't mean fully Freudian style unconscious, but just not necessarily as fully calculated as that.
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Re: How racist are Conservative members and voters?

Post by Gfamily » Mon Jul 11, 2022 1:09 pm

Martin Y wrote:
Mon Jul 11, 2022 12:57 pm
Trinucleus wrote:
Sun Jul 10, 2022 2:19 pm
https://twitter.com/TrueBlueTories/stat ... 1241992192

A lot of posts comparing Sunak to Roland Rat, or giving him the head of a snake. Not sure Heseltine got that treatment when he challenged Thatcher
The criticism of Heseltine that sticks in my mind is "He looks like the sort of fellow who bought his own furniture". Can't remember which old-money snob allegedly said it.
Alan Clark: not from really old money, but a terrible snob.
And fascist.
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Re: How racist are Conservative members and voters?

Post by sTeamTraen » Mon Jul 11, 2022 1:17 pm

dyqik wrote:
Mon Jul 11, 2022 11:30 am
sTeamTraen wrote:
Mon Jul 11, 2022 11:11 am
Is the overall premise of the thread not somewhat impacted by the fact that all of these non-white MPs have been approved by their local Conservative Association, albeit presumably in some cases having been leaned on by Tory head office to accept a parachuted-in "rising star"? But perhaps there is something special about their particular constituencies that makes the local Tories less racist?
Or it's likely that they are more racist against unknown immigrants than Oxbridge educated billionaires who shake their hand and pretend to listen to what they say.
Well yes, but that also describes the final two candidates, unless Esther McVey gets to the last round.
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Re: How racist are Conservative members and voters?

Post by lpm » Mon Jul 11, 2022 2:03 pm

The word marginal seems to mean nothing to you lot.

It operates at the margins.

If someone wins by a good distance then the racist few are simply inadequate to overcome the choice of the many. This might well be the case when selecting a candidate. And this might well be the case in the coming play off final, e.g. where Sunak beats Truss by 60-40. The fact that it would have been 63-37 without the racists never becomes visible.

But it might be that Moribund beats Javid 52-48. Which is comparable to a constituency that narrowly selected a white candidate and nobody's ever heard of the non-white reject.

Obviously in a General Election with 632 Tories standing in constituencies there will be plenty of marginals.
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Re: How racist are Conservative members and voters?

Post by dyqik » Mon Jul 11, 2022 2:26 pm

lpm wrote:
Mon Jul 11, 2022 2:03 pm
The word marginal seems to mean nothing to you lot.

It operates at the margins.

If someone wins by a good distance then the racist few are simply inadequate to overcome the choice of the many. This might well be the case when selecting a candidate. And this might well be the case in the coming play off final, e.g. where Sunak beats Truss by 60-40. The fact that it would have been 63-37 without the racists never becomes visible.

But it might be that Moribund beats Javid 52-48. Which is comparable to a constituency that narrowly selected a white candidate and nobody's ever heard of the non-white reject.

Obviously in a General Election with 632 Tories standing in constituencies there will be plenty of marginals.
Yes, this is always the case with political scandals/opinion. It's not about how many of the faithful switch sides (see Trump supporters in diners trope), but how many of the unsure/inertia voters quietly forget to vote, and how many of the non-voters last time remember to vote this time.

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Re: How racist are Conservative members and voters?

Post by plodder » Mon Jul 11, 2022 2:53 pm

lpm wrote:
Mon Jul 11, 2022 2:03 pm
The word marginal seems to mean nothing to you lot.

It operates at the margins.

If someone wins by a good distance then the racist few are simply inadequate to overcome the choice of the many. This might well be the case when selecting a candidate. And this might well be the case in the coming play off final, e.g. where Sunak beats Truss by 60-40. The fact that it would have been 63-37 without the racists never becomes visible.

But it might be that Moribund beats Javid 52-48. Which is comparable to a constituency that narrowly selected a white candidate and nobody's ever heard of the non-white reject.

Obviously in a General Election with 632 Tories standing in constituencies there will be plenty of marginals.
Do you think racists are the biggest wedge of Tory fringe views? More so than, say, War On Woke or Zero Tax or Hang Em And Flog Em or Chaos Under Labour?

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Re: How racist are Conservative members and voters?

Post by dyqik » Mon Jul 11, 2022 3:07 pm

plodder wrote:
Mon Jul 11, 2022 2:53 pm
lpm wrote:
Mon Jul 11, 2022 2:03 pm
The word marginal seems to mean nothing to you lot.

It operates at the margins.

If someone wins by a good distance then the racist few are simply inadequate to overcome the choice of the many. This might well be the case when selecting a candidate. And this might well be the case in the coming play off final, e.g. where Sunak beats Truss by 60-40. The fact that it would have been 63-37 without the racists never becomes visible.

But it might be that Moribund beats Javid 52-48. Which is comparable to a constituency that narrowly selected a white candidate and nobody's ever heard of the non-white reject.

Obviously in a General Election with 632 Tories standing in constituencies there will be plenty of marginals.
Do you think racists are the biggest wedge of Tory fringe views? More so than, say, War On Woke or Zero Tax or Hang Em And Flog Em or Chaos Under Labour?
Two or three of those are at least partly racist views (War on Woke almost certainly includes GOP-type opinions about BLM and CRT; and Hang em and flog em almost certainly includes views on attempts to prevent racist policing, while "Chaos" almost certainly includes "out-of-control immigration"). The other one is only systematically racist.

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Re: How racist are Conservative members and voters?

Post by plodder » Mon Jul 11, 2022 3:56 pm

Right, but that's not *just* racist is it? It's a crafted blend and with a bit of added copy pasta it stops being about people from other ethnicities and turns into concern that local services can't cope, or that free speech is being stifled or whatever. Fear of the other is always a factor in reactionary politics. What lpm is trying to understand is the influence a few hardcore racist bigots have, not the wider group of wet behind the ears ones.

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Re: How racist are Conservative members and voters?

Post by lpm » Mon Jul 11, 2022 4:03 pm

And also to get an inkling of what happens when a PM with unruly blond hair, who is very very popular with racists, gets replaced by a PM with dreadlocks.
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Re: How racist are Conservative members and voters?

Post by plodder » Mon Jul 11, 2022 4:37 pm

lpm wrote:
Mon Jul 11, 2022 4:03 pm
And also to get an inkling of what happens when a PM with unruly blond hair, who is very very popular with racists, gets replaced by a PM with dreadlocks.
coke vs spliff innit

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Re: How racist are Conservative members and voters?

Post by dyqik » Mon Jul 11, 2022 8:08 pm

plodder wrote:
Mon Jul 11, 2022 3:56 pm
Right, but that's not *just* racist is it? It's a crafted blend and with a bit of added copy pasta it stops being about people from other ethnicities and turns into concern that local services can't cope, or that free speech is being stifled or whatever. Fear of the other is always a factor in reactionary politics. What lpm is trying to understand is the influence a few hardcore racist bigots have, not the wider group of wet behind the ears ones.
Its a crafted blend of racism, policies that respond to the concerns of newspapers encouraging racism, and policies that enforce systematic racism. Plus misogyny, and trans- and homophobia, which are usually made worse when racism is added to the mix.

There aren't many bigots who confine their bigotry to just one field. Some of the transphobes might claim to though.

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Re: How racist are Conservative members and voters?

Post by raven » Mon Jul 11, 2022 11:07 pm

Trinucleus wrote:
Sun Jul 10, 2022 2:19 pm
https://twitter.com/TrueBlueTories/stat ... 1241992192

A lot of posts comparing Sunak to Roland Rat, or giving him the head of a snake. Not sure Heseltine got that treatment when he challenged Thatcher
Hezza just got repeatedly ribbed about being Tarzan instead. And jokes about the hair. Are the rat & snake comparisons more because Sunak stabbed our dear leader in the back though?

On the thread subject, are we perhaps failing to account for how many Tory party members are non-white themselves? I don't know what that might be as a %, but I'm sure it's not zero and in some places might be significant. (I grew up in a town with a sizeable Asian minority, we had Tory candidates for the local council from that community, and the community certainly seemed to come out and vote for them, so I've always thought there was a lot of small-c Conservatism there to be exploited by the Tory party. That would be the generation of my parents' age though, might not hold so well for mine and younger.)

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Re: How racist are Conservative members and voters?

Post by Bird on a Fire » Tue Jul 12, 2022 12:53 am

I would guess that middle-income immigrants of all races are overrepresented in Tory membership.
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Re: How racist are Conservative members and voters?

Post by Millennie Al » Tue Jul 12, 2022 3:16 am

tom p wrote:
Mon Jul 11, 2022 9:20 am
Millennie Al wrote:
Sun Jul 10, 2022 1:39 am
lpm wrote:
Sat Jul 09, 2022 8:57 am
To their credit Conservative MPs are a diverse lot. Labour just gives us white men as leaders,
Labour are great at talking and useless at implementation. Labour is the only party with MPs in Parliament to have never elected a woman as its leader (it has had women as acting leader, but not chosen via election).
Actually doing something about sexism in the workplace & society is better than having a figurehead.
You're prioritising gesture politics over actual implementation of useful policies.
If you think Margaret Thatcher (or, indeed, Theresa May) was a mere figurehead, you don't know much about British politics. You may not like her policies, but the policies were clearly her own choice.

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Re: How racist are Conservative members and voters?

Post by Millennie Al » Tue Jul 12, 2022 3:30 am

tom p wrote:
Mon Jul 11, 2022 12:23 pm
You're right - it should be; I was talking about the tory talking point of 'we've had 2 female leaders - we're the party that actually care about women' -
that's gesture politics in my view.
The Conservatives would be silly to take that line, as it is not they who are the outliers, but Labour. Parties which have elected MPs to the current Commons (so Alba not counted as their sole MP was a defector), with their first female leader:

1937, Sinn Féin, Margaret Buckley
1975, Conservative, Margaret Thatcher
(2004, Labour, Margaret Beckett - acting, defeated in leadership election)
2008, Green Party of England and Wales, Caroline Lucas
2010, Social Democratic and Labour Party, Margaret Ritchie
2012, Plaid Cymru, Leanne Wood
2014, Scottish National Party, Nicola Sturgeon
2015, Democratic Unionist Party, Arlene Foster
2016, Alliance Party of Northern Ireland, Naomi Long
2019, Liberal Democrats, Jo Swinson
-, Labour, -

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Re: How racist are Conservative members and voters?

Post by noggins » Tue Jul 12, 2022 7:15 am

Having reviewed the candidates I hope the tory voters are racists, and sexist too, when they choose their leader.

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Re: How racist are Conservative members and voters?

Post by Woodchopper » Tue Jul 12, 2022 8:01 am

Two things to consider. Firstly, how important is racism to a Tory MP or party member? A hardcore racist might be opposed to any person of colour as Prime Minister. But someone who held some negative stereotypes might be happy with a candidate who didn’t appear to conform to those prejudices. As was mentioned up thread, pretty much every racist will claim to know persons of colour who the racist thinks are decent people.

Especially important in the Tory party is class. That might trump the colour of a candidate’s skin. The Tory party likes posh people, and it likes self-made ‘strivers’. For example, where Sunsk went to school might be more important to some party members than what he looks like.

Secondary, for the self-aware racists, having, say, Badenoch as leader of the party would be a smart strategic choice. It would be difficult for any Labour leader to denounce deportations to Rwanda if they were to be defended by a Prime Minister who was brought up in Nigeria.

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Re: How racist are Conservative members and voters?

Post by tom p » Tue Jul 12, 2022 8:40 am

Millennie Al wrote:
Tue Jul 12, 2022 3:30 am
tom p wrote:
Mon Jul 11, 2022 12:23 pm
You're right - it should be; I was talking about the tory talking point of 'we've had 2 female leaders - we're the party that actually care about women' -
that's gesture politics in my view.
The Conservatives would be silly to take that line, as it is not they who are the outliers, but Labour. Parties which have elected MPs to the current Commons (so Alba not counted as their sole MP was a defector), with their first female leader:

1937, Sinn Féin, Margaret Buckley
1975, Conservative, Margaret Thatcher
(2004, Labour, Margaret Beckett - acting, defeated in leadership election)
2008, Green Party of England and Wales, Caroline Lucas
2010, Social Democratic and Labour Party, Margaret Ritchie
2012, Plaid Cymru, Leanne Wood
2014, Scottish National Party, Nicola Sturgeon
2015, Democratic Unionist Party, Arlene Foster
2016, Alliance Party of Northern Ireland, Naomi Long
2019, Liberal Democrats, Jo Swinson
-, Labour, -
Except tories do take that line. They make that claim quite often, because they prioritise gesture politics over doing something for people. It's the same reason Patel, Sunak & Zahawi were given top jobs.

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Re: How racist are Conservative members and voters?

Post by tom p » Tue Jul 12, 2022 8:45 am

Millennie Al wrote:
Tue Jul 12, 2022 3:16 am
tom p wrote:
Mon Jul 11, 2022 9:20 am
Millennie Al wrote:
Sun Jul 10, 2022 1:39 am


Labour are great at talking and useless at implementation. Labour is the only party with MPs in Parliament to have never elected a woman as its leader (it has had women as acting leader, but not chosen via election).
Actually doing something about sexism in the workplace & society is better than having a figurehead.
You're prioritising gesture politics over actual implementation of useful policies.
If you think Margaret Thatcher (or, indeed, Theresa May) was a mere figurehead, you don't know much about British politics. You may not like her policies, but the policies were clearly her own choice.
I didn't mean a figurehead who didn't have her own policies; but I used a suboptimal word - they are, in reality, more figleaf than figurehead.

Your argument, which is nothing but the fatuous tory one (quelle surprise) is that labour aren't the party who help women 'cos they have never had a female leader. That argument was dead in the water by the mid-80s, once Thatcher's policies were clear to all & was then reinforced with may as PM.
It is an entirely vacuous argument, as befits your general MO.

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Re: How racist are Conservative members and voters?

Post by plodder » Tue Jul 12, 2022 8:58 am

tom p wrote:
Tue Jul 12, 2022 8:40 am
Except tories do take that line. They make that claim quite often, because they prioritise gesture politics over doing something for people. It's the same reason Patel, Sunak & Zahawi were given top jobs.
Saying they got their jobs because of gesture politics is walking on pretty thin ice. Try and be careful that you're not meeting the racists round the back of the argument. Once you screen out remainers, idiots and hopeless liggers in the ranks of Tory MPs it's clear that they're in their roles due to some form of twisted Tory merit that has very little to do with their ethnicity.

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