'The Politics Of Poison': Andy Burnham Condemns Anti-Migrant Protests

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/andy-burnham-condemns-anti-migrant-protests_uk_6a9f0a35e4b0665b7c5bc553

Burnham said... “We are here to speak to the politics of hope and of positivity.”

Thoughts on his response? I think Burnham is the best chance of having a decent country following the next general election. I don't think he's a perfect person (nobody is) but I think he's generally decent, and the polls show that Labour are the best-placed party to beat Reform.

26 points · 3 comments · view on lemmy.world

3 Comments

br3d@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 1d (1 reply)

I agree with everything you say about Burnham and yet... Why did it take him more than 3 seconds to issue a condemnation of masked thugs doing something obviously worse than what got some Just Stop Out protestors sent to prison? Why did we wait days for this?

moderatecentrist@feddit.uk · 4 pts · 1d

I guess the reality is that a lot of people in this country have concerns about immigration. I don't have the same views as many of those people, but they exist. So I guess Burnham is trying to take a line of "concerns about immigration are okay, and Labour are trying to reduce illegal immigration, but we don't believe the tactics of recent protestors are a good thing".

Perhaps the polls are indicating that Labour needs to win over both of these types of voters in order to keep Reform out of number 10:

  • Voters with very few concerns about immigration who are worried about protestors in balaclavas blocking roads
  • Voters who do have concerns about immigration and slightly sympathise with anti-migrant protestors, but perhaps they don't like Tories/Reform because they see those as parties for rich people (which they are)
oeuf@slrpnk.net · 5 pts · 2d

The first response I saw reported from the government was talking about how they have brought immigration numbers down.

Masked men set up roadblocks and the government are going easy on them.

It's totally surreal.