The Author, Séamas O'Reilly: What's striking about this grid from JL Partners Polling earlier this month is just how little British people care about all the anti-woke moral panic bullshit despite how much of the discourse it constantly monopolises in every single nook and cranny of the UK press.

What's striking about this grid from JL Partners Polling earlier this month is just how little British people care about all the anti-woke moral panic bullshit despite how much of the discourse it constantly monopolises in every single nook and cranny of the UK press.

It tallies with Ettingermentum's findings time and again with republicans in the US: woke panic gets right-wing media a ton of eyeballs, clicks and cash but it is the dog that simply does not hunt electorally. www.ettingermentum.news/p/the-modern...

The Modern Electoral History of Transphobiawww.ettingermentum.news How trans hatred has been a consistent liability for Republicans, and why the right refuses to give it up

A cynic might say that the right wing press - in both countries - has simply made the decision that going hard on woke is worth it because hatred and fearmongering makes them a shitload of money, despite all polling repeatedly showing it actively hurts 'their' party.

You might also look at this and ask why Labour (or the BBC) constantly capitulate to anti-woke narratives, when all available evidence suggests these moral panics are just a direct subsidy of clicks to newspapers that want them dead, via stories about which 90% of British people do not give a shit.

Before Brexit, Europe was one of those below the line issues that most people weren’t fussed about. But the tories managed to push it up the charts by pinning a lot of their own failures to it. I think they’re desperately hopeful of repeating the trick.

I'm struggling to see what the equivalent would be here. Has to be a issue they own that currently seen as unimportant. 'Woke' issues they have tried to push and mostly failed. If Ukraine went badly, ie there is a major Russian breakthrough, would that potentially work?

“Leveling up?” Fuckin’ nerds.

All these people talk about to each other is the papers, what the papers say about them, etc, without realising that this is a very niche interest these days.

BBC journalist and Labour capitulate here because they agree surely?

It's also because politicians are obsessed by the press, but the press is mostly read by pensioners. They pander to that "things were better in my day" audience and politicians think that's the mood of the country, but it's really not.

Immigration only scores high because the right has managed to link it to the actual issues in the top left corner. More and more it turns out these links are strenuous at best and right-wing parties can't or won't do much about immigration anyway. So they switched to 'woke'.

Money is all they actually care about. Same with left wing media.

And we all know what Republicans do to dogs that won't hunt

FG ministers got hundreds of emails about evictions - but just 22 about gender and trans issueswww.thejournal.ie A party TD claimed earlier this year that transgender issues were a bigger issue for the public.

Most of those were probably written by Flanagan to himself.

There's also the fact that a vanishingly small number of actual people - in some cases, activist groups of a dozen members, most of whom are family members - can call into Joe Duffy or speak to papers at a protest etc, and make it seem like there's a groundswell of public feeling where none exists.

Then the cycle kicks is: credulously platforming these people gives their fringe positions publicity, inevitably leads to recruitment among others who've had their brains boiled by lockdown, the next protest is still statistically insignificant in size, but larger, and capable of real societal harm.

For climate sceptics we used to say "these ideas are as ignorant and fringe as flat earthers, and we don't platform flat earthers every week". It was intended for effect, but everyday we see the platforming of transphobes and migrant bashers who *literally* believe there are microchips in vaccines.

I fully expect Joe Duffy to one day have a bunch of flat earthers on just so he can balance out the horror of the orthodox opinion of a round planet.

And if, to pick an example at random, Joe Duffy is sympathetic to that caller, then it looks like public opinion is firmly on the side of that activist.

Hey, it's not like the Joe Duffy twitter account was seen 'liking' lots of tweets from transphobic accounts or anything, is it? oh yeah that did happen

Paul have you stopped to consider he was just asking questions

Wild. I sent few FGers emails and only got one ambiguous and mealy-mouthed response from a minister. I wonder how many of the emails they received were even anti-trans.

that’s really interesting, pretty depressing though to see where Ukraine finds itself, also climate change

Yes but on the flip-side you could also read it as "Nobody cares if we keep shipping Ukraine weapons"

The media and the government are now indistinguishable. The place is run by opinion columnists, and they know it.

What does "levelling up" mean? I still don't know

As far as I can tell it's basically rebranded 'trickle down' i.e. instead of now pretending that wealth at the top will naturally spread to the bottom, they're now pretending that they can bring the bottom closer to the top without bringing the top down.

Also "tackling woke" is presented as a concern but equality, civil rights, and ensuring equality, decency, and respect in public life are not.

Mustn't forget that the Murdoch press is still in the midst of a phone hacking scandal, which is obviously not appearing in his papers, but includes hacking multiple politicians in an attempt to find dirt to make the investigation go away and pressure them into following his anti-woke agenda.

app.independent.co.uk/2024/05/03/w...

The Independent UKapp.independent.co.uk

In case that's oneof the subscriber articles: app.independent.co.uk/edition/uk.c...

The Independent UKapp.independent.co.uk

Wasn't levelling up a Tory slogan? and it's already firmly a labour issue. Brilliant.

I want one of these for all the USA pet conservative moral outrage.

Yep. Labour have noticed this and have started to feel confident to start being more progressive on this stuff again, rather than panicking about how the right wing press perceives them on this stuff as they did last year. youtu.be/M_GGP-Qit7Q

Signs that the Tories Are Losing Their Culture Wars?youtu.be There were a few more signs this week that perhaps the Conservatives are losing their culture wars. Not only has polling showed a drop for the combined vote share of the Conservative Party and Reform UK, but Labour seem to be emerging from the panic on trans issues they had last year. Join this channel to get access to perks: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCj1_pZ7vmxnhy5clIcMVJtg/join https://www.patreon.com/adifferentbias https://twitter.com/Philmoorhouse76 IPSOS poll: https://www.ipsos.com/en-uk/uk-opinion-polls YouGov poll: https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/49455-voting-intention-con-20-lab-47-15-16-may-2024 Labour article: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/labour-transgender-keir-starmer-b2547724.html

But man, someone really, REALLY wants it to matter for some reason. And I really would like to know why, and whether anyone has the stones to do owt about it.

"tackling woke" should be called "enabling bigots"

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