"She asked you a followup question; obviously she was planted by our political enemies to make you question your Faith to Labour." --- Labour Board Runner
I've never lived in the UK but this attitude of "why should I know what the party's plans are, I'm not a candidate" is wild to me. It really feels like the imagined relationship between a peasant and the landholding lord - I have to support my lord but hell if I know what he's getting up to politically and why is it any of my business.
Not just support their lord, convince others to support their lord, while they are completely incapable of articulating why their lord deserves support.
Basically he knocked on her door, she said she was undecided and sort of middle on the road on whether or not she'd vote labour, she asked him what labour were going to do to improve her life, he said they'd get some new dentists into Rochester, she said that would probably be good and would help her but asked how they were going to find the money to do it since they said they weren't increasing taxes or cutting spending elsewhere or anything, and then he started spluttering and said he didn't know because hed only briefly glanced over the policy points but could refer her to the MP for a phone discussion so she said "l’m sorry but you’re trying to get me to vote for this party and you cannot even answer these simple questions. [...] you’re meant to believe in this party, but you come out and can’t even explain your policies" and then says labour have lost her vote.
He goes back to labour HQ to talk about how beat down it made him feel and his board runner tells him she was probably a green party / lib dem psy op meant to syphon off his belief in starmerite-blairism or something despite them having no evidence of her being a vocal supporter of any of the other parties. twitter person then has an existential crisis about how Starmer isn't offering any inspiring policies at all.
not to sound like a chud but what kind of hugbox-hamster-ball ass life do you have to live where this is the first one anyone ever asked you a follow up questions about the party you stan for. Like even assuming all other social contacts you'd discuss politics with are also labour party people, are they that lockstep?
she said that would probably be good and would help her but asked how they were going to find the money to do it since they said they weren't increasing taxes or cutting spending elsewhere or anything
He could easily just have said that they are supposedly planning to increase revenue by funding HMRC better, removing loopholes the wealthy use to avoid tax, and adding VAT to things like private schools to the total value of a few billion more a year.
It's a fairly prominent part of their short manifesto and general campaign, and the idea that this idiot was out campaigning without knowing it makes me think that he probably should feel stupid.
If this were a thread, I wouldn't know because it never shows the poster's own replies, and their profile displays their posts in an arbitrary order instead of "most recently posted".
Twitter usually doesn't show me any replies, and also doesn't communicate that replies exist and need to be unlocked with something like a login spell.
Paid outside agitator who couldn't be arsed to learn about the community he was operating in or the party he is literally going unsolicited to people's doorsteps to shrill for gets sad and confused simply because someone asked him a good faith follow-up question.
This is good stuff.
I can take a heckle, a shouty angry person hating Labour, cos it isn’t personal. But this was personal, cos I was made to feel like I was inadequate and foolish
I could talk vaguely about allowing for more infrastructure development by cutting planning red tape but I don’t
"I could actually answer your question, but I won't"
It's not hard. "Even if you don't need new housing, building more housing means more economic activity that funds the government through already existing taxes to do things like hire dentists."
I'd feel some sympathy if this guy's only option was to explain Modern Monetary Theory to someone who's probably been indoctrinated by years of "the govt budget is just like a big household budget" rhetoric, but this is easy street.
Anti-extremism laws must be tightened to stop this blatant attack on Our Democracy™ by extremist voters who are not showing the required respect and deference for unsolicited neoliberal door-to-door salesmen.
Going to the mailbox to get my monthly pay stub that covers living in this labour stronghold so that on the off chance a canvasser comes by I can make them feel bad personally
I know little to nothing of uk politics. But maybe to build new stuff and fund NHS in general maybe they should raise taxes? Only conservatives are allowed to use the "economy is gonna grow for sure trust me bro" line
The conservatives have been raising the tax burden quite significantly the past few years, and it's a big part of their support exploding. Probably there does need to be an increase, but labours approach had been to say they'll go after people avoiding their fair share first which seems to be generally popular.