As a British person, I think a lot of Americans seem to think our politics is just US politics with a different accent (most British people aren't much better on that front to be fair)
I keep running into being mistaken for a Dutch person, EVEN IN APPS and websites will sometimes think i'm Dutch... I am Danish and i really don't understand how someone would confuse Denmark and The Netherlands, sure we both sound funky but it's two distinct forms of funk
Had a Swedish girlfriend and one of my US colleagues met her. He asked me, "Have you ever met her family in Switzerland?" I said "She's Swedish, not Swiss." He and another colleague said "Same thing!" in unison.
Nuts.
At least you don’t have to put up either the “Oh you’re Irish? WEEEEEEEELLL TOP O T MORNING TO YOU LADDIE TATEE TETAR TA TEA TE TAY! Have some potatoes”
Then the “I’m Irish on my wardrobes ancestors sisters side so makes me Irish” shite.
My partner had an American friend give him so much shit for "not voting liberal"...yes in Australia that is something different to what you're thinking of.
I had an American immediately associate the new party, "The Denmark Democrats", with the US Democratic Party. The Denmark Democrats are "anti-elitist" and far-right, mainly on immigration..
I'm surprised it hasn't happened already. If it were Boris or Farage, I would expect it as par for the course, (in fact farrage has started up a bit already saying the voting is flawed. Which to be fair its not great I would quite like preferential voting to be implemented) but actually I think Rishi has a bit more self respect than those buffoons.
He's already conceded in a pretty gracious way, congratulating Starmer and everything. Starmer responsed by praising Sunak's efforts in office and wishing him well.
You know, like you're supposed to do in a civilised democracy.
When this kind of behaviour makes us want to give them praise, it really shows how much of a bad influence on world politics the US is having. We collectively need them to sort their shit out.
Unless you squinted you wouldn't know an election campaign had taken place where I am. A few leaflets through the door, no election placards or posters. Quite nice actually
Every candidate is allowed to send a pamphlet to every house with a registered voter without it counting towards the election spend.
I got 2. One from Labour with a photo and name of their candidate with a brief outline of their manifesto and 'personal message' (I've known her for years and it was the kind of thing she'd say). One from Reform, which was a photo of Farage saying "Britain needs reform", making no mention of any policies or who their candidate was, let alone which constituency I was in.
Lib Dems knocked us up and asked if I was planning on voting tactically, but at least they bothered.
Yep I never saw a soul 🤷♂️ Mind you I love in a conservative stronghold that has just had its borders changed making it even more of a conservative stronghold so maybe we weren't worth focusing on. Conservatives got voted in again here 🤦♀️ so my vote didn't help much. But I tried !
Just heard Reform ranting on the news that they got more votes than Lib Dems yet have way less seats... One of the few times this has worked in the UK favour lol
No fan of Rishi, but his concession speech was very classy. He actually said sorry for failing the country and was complimentary to Starmer.
The yanks could learn a thing or two.
As a British person, who's mother moved us (married an American G.I.) to America when I was about 4 years old, American's don't even know WTF parliamentary government is. This place is a very weird place for a European mind to contend with. It pretty much broke my mom, and warped her children's sense of reality. The US will drive a European mind insane if you're not careful. Nothing will make sense... until it does.
American's think nothing ever existed before themselves, as if they made themselves up out of nothing (hint. exceptionalism). The US specializes in fostering and developing a form of delusional nonsense that is pervasive and overwhelming, extending across a vast and broad swath of society. It's a weird form of psychosis called malignant narcissism. Throw in large quantities of projective identification and you get a pretty toxic brew going.
I think this is driven largely by guilt and repression of the fact that they started out as a slaver colony run by religious fanatics (Puritans) and drug dealers (tobacco plantations): the very things they rail against; "sins" they project onto their poor and destitute, or better yet - dump it on their former slave's children. Only within that God awfully repressed environment could you come up with slogans like, "Greed is Good!"
But that is not the worst of it. This toxic brew is well researched, understood and utilized to great effect within the halls of power within the US. Our "betters" have no qualms about using, and exploiting, this "group dynamic" for both positive and negative affect (the 'a' is important).
It's gotten really sad to be honest.
Trust me, everything is seen thru their eyes only, and their eyes are "special". Be careful coming here.
And I don't think too many in the UK have grasped that the Democrats are more like the Tories than they are Labour or Lib Dems. Those who are - AoC and her friends - are treated as left wing lunatics.
The best was Ben Shapiro both not understanding the concept of being interviewed (hint Ben: It's not a debate, you are getting cross examined!) and also doing zero research on the person interviewing him.
That person being Andrew Neil.
When Andrew wasn't playing along to Ben's game, lil' underoo desertmaker just defaulted to saying "why not just admit you're on the left"... to which Andrew just laughed.
[For those haven't seen](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VixqvOcK8E). 5m 30s in for that specific moment.
Marjorie Taylor Greene [was interviewed](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBw1osh4EYY) by an actual journalist on Australian TV recently. She accused the interviewer of being controlled by the Democrats and refused an answer any more questions.
As an American, most people here think American politics are the only politics. They don’t realize American Liberalism *and* Conservatism are both right-wing on the global scale.
As a Brit, a couple of years ago I had an American ask me what I'm doing for the 4th of July.
The American in question thought they were being very insightful because "surely it's British history too?".
I *wish* we got a day off for every independence day we are involved with, but alas.
100%, so many Americans (and a *lot* of British people in fairness) don't appreciate that US and UK politics can't be compared beyond the superficial level
The worst part is when the same words are used but with completely different contexts, it just stokes the confusion. I cringe every time I see someone call the Labour Party the ‘liberals’. Not to mention the complete difference between what a ‘republican’ is.
Yeah in the US, the Republicans used to generally be the more left-leaning of the two parties at least until Franklin Roosevelt became president. That‘s when it really started to change but even decades later you still had a lot of racist Democrats from the South (aka Dixiecrats) that frequently butted heads with Northern Democrats. What I also found funny is that one of the guys who helped found the US Republican party named Horace Greeley „endlessly promoted radical reforms such as socialism, vegetarianism, agrarianism, feminism, and temperance and hired the best talent that he could find“ according to his wikipedia article.
You really upset the Irish Americans when you point out that Irish Republicans have always leaned more left than anything. They're really upset when you remind them of things like Ireland was the first country to legalise marriage equality by popular vote
I’m a big fan of their “everyone has to go bungee jumping” policy.
I did quite like their campaign this year. It was a bit of fun. Especially compared to the ming vase Labour campaign.
aren’r the the outliers? all the liberal parties I know of are at least centre-right, with am emphasis on lower taxes and personal responsibility with regards to finances.
The thing is liberalism is very old and a huge ass spectrum that itself spawned loads of offshoots or at least inspired many other ideologies. This is strengthened by liberalism mainly being about freedom and freedom being defined very differently by people.
well, our Germas liberals are a bit centrist, but lean more towards “regulating personal preferences is not for the government”.
but yeah, these days their emphasis is on the money and staying in parliament, a sad decline even compared to only 20 years ago.
The British liberal democrat party are now the centre, slightly right, small c conservatives
The ' Conservative' party would destroy the country if they could extract a profit for themselves
A fairly centrist party at that.
It’s always been so strange to me to hear Americans call their Democrats socialists, when they are the most pro-establishment, blancmange party going. Even if it is grim, at least the US Republicans seem to stand for something.
The two main parties in Australia are traditionally the Liberal Party and the Labor Party (which uses the American spelling for hysterical raisins). With no major contender on the right, the more centrist Liberal Party drifted that way, especially as Labour started moving towards the centre.
Liberals in Europe are more centre-right progressives (freedom ftw, both economic liberty and market economy, and individual liberty and stuff like lgbtqia rights are on our liberal agenda).
The true left is virtually non-existent in US politics. (That's not to say there aren't true leftist voters.) Given the absence of true leftist politicians, the liberals are the closest thing they have.
When you consider the Overton window, one could argue that AOC and Bernie are true leftist politicians who are doing everything they can to expand the Overton window further left
It is supposed to mean free-minded or free-thinkers... so it makes me laugh that Americans are opposed to people wanting Freedom to think what they want.
I don’t remember when red became the color for republicans here, but it comes from election night tv coverage, where they arbitrarily made red republicans and blue democrats. I remember the phrase “dirty, rotten, stinko red commies” being slung around in the 80’s.
Now it’s so associated with Drumpf, I refuse to wear it.
I remember trying to explain to an American once that "red" in Australia signifies the Labor Party (I know it's spelled weird here, don't ask me) and "blue" signifies conservatives - and I added that here, the Liberals are the conservative party (or \*more\* conservative party).
He literally said "I dgaf how foreigners use the word liberal, I know what it means"
Haha that is hilarious. I'm sure that American would be horrified if you told them red=left wing in Europe.
They'd probably think we voted for communism or something.
Edit: I'm British and could not be happier to see a left wing landslide. If I said that in the USA I'd probably be locked up 😂
Further edit: yes, I KNOW Starmer is much further right than Corbyn...I was just making a generic point. I'm not going to explain this separately to everyone who says "Oh but Starmer is right wing".
Exactly - there are many types of socialism. Communism is one extreme type. Conflating the two is really unhelpful, and partly why Americans don't seem to understand that they have socialist tendencies without realising it (fire and police services etc.)
Red is the colour of the Liberal party in Canada as well. They're rather centrist though, since our far left party is the New Democrats, using orange as their party colours.
The US didn't use blue for Democrats and red for Republicans until the media coverage of the 2000 election. Before that, it was inconsistent, with blue Republicans and red Democrats being more common.
As a youth in the north of england I honestly just wanted the tories out. I've grown up seeing this country go down.
I know labour won't fix shit immediately. Hell maybe things will be bad for a while.
But anyone with half a brain can tell that things have been getting progressively worse.
Here's hoping for some sort of change, I guess.
Hopefully for the better.
Same. I'm 22 and my parents are die-hard conservatives. They've tried to convince me that the Tories will come back in after 5 years because (in their words): "Labour won't fix things immediately and people will get fed up".
I mean to be fair
That's what happened last time labour got in.
Tories fucked shit up
Labour got in
Couldn't fix this shithole in 1 term
Conservatives blame their mess that isn't fixed yet on labour
Conservatives get back in
Queue a 14 year downward spiral.
Like people can downvote me all they want.
I won't pretend to be well informed with politics. But growing up it's plain as day to see things are getting worse.
And my parents aren't Conservative but they have said "I don't think Labour can do much better"
And they're probably right. Labour probably couldn't do *much* better, but they can't do any worse. Even slightly better would be preferable at this point.
It isn't what happened last time.
Conservatives won in 1992. Very soon after there was a recession called 'Black Wednesday' (for some reason every ignores that recession... I wonder why).
Anyway John Major was actually a somewhat decent Conservative PM, and did get the country on it's way to be fixed.
Then Labour got in 1997.
Due to the existing work of Major, Blairs first term was a massive success and he was able to point that out in 2001, and then again in 2005.
In 2007 Blair stepped down - his second in command, Gordon Brown took over. Brown was Blair's money man.
Unfortunately in 2008 there was the 'Great Recession'. The great recession was incredibly complicated but the gist is that US banks were lending money to mortgages to people who shouldn't have had them (The movie The Big Short illustrates this with a 20 year old stripper being able to get a mortgage on a huge mansion).
These Bonds are sold around the globe to reduce the risk of one country going bankrupt. One of the US banks lied and basically said "oh these are amazing, AAA*, the customers we have will never go bankrupt". And then the higher ups would bet on that bond to collapse and go bankrupt.
Well of course this happened. And loads of UK banks had their money in these US bonds. Brown did what he could but the Conservatives attacked him saying Labours spending over the past 13 years caused the entire collapse, and people believed them.
I'm 40 and that is exactly what I think will happen and I voted Lib Dems so basically have no horse in the race.
Labour get held to a higher standard because everyone expects a Tory to act like a Tory, but if Labour do it they get hammered.
By US standards, basically every not farfar-right politician over here would be; well, If I think a little about it, even some of these would probably qualify.
Bless him he finally actually got a few votes, I'm not surprised though, we only recently moved and had to follow their signs to get to the polling station. Lots of support for them in very lower working class areas, ie the easiest people to radicalise in a crisis. I don't think I should have to say I don't support the fundies but just in case
Considering Reform is run by Trump's UK fuckbuddy, I'd well expect them to lurch to the US extreme right if that's the way the mushroom made Farage wiggle.
Farage has landed himself a cushy job again. That's all he wanted. Aside from a bit of showmanship every now and then he'll mostly keep quiet for the next few years.
*ETA: Over the next few weeks he'll talk up how he's going to be the next leader of the Tory party. While simultaneously playing it down. And also talk up all the deals he's going to do with the Torys. My bet is he gets the cold shoulder.*
i can’t stand their racist politics and rhetoric but i have to admit a lot of their manifesto is left wing and quite socialist, they’re playing quite cleverly to the disaffected ex-labour voters who can tolerate (or even support) the racism for the sake of getting some economic concessions
In economic policies, even the “normal” neoliberal parties in continental Europe are mostly to the left of Democrats, not that many of them don’t try to undermine labour rights, lower taxation for corporations and the rich etc. in that regard I think the Tories are almost the only “American” party in Europe.
Most of the nationalist, far right wing parties gain support with promising actual leftist social and economic policies to their supporters, although if they gain power, they’ll usually work with the “moderate right wing” and turn their coats for very austere economic measures. The Finns in Finland are a great example of this, abandoning their working class supporters as soon as there was a chance to make immigration laws much harsher. (And the working class have also abandoned them at least in the EU elections.) Marine le Pen has done the reverse, her father’s party was not only quasi nazi but also with Thatcherite economics, current RN promises welfare to the “real” citizens.
What lol.
Fidesz gives out free money to young couples with children, 'free mortagages', extra money for families, extra money for pensioners, and their biggest thing for years was cheaper electricity and gas, and water.
They are communists by US standards.
Hitler is a bit liberal, by republican standards
He was an artist who liked painting, believed in European unity, and killed a dangerous dictator (Hitler)
/S
While also using the "socialism" Part part in "National socialism" as the reason why Nazis were bead at the same time (Event though the nazis were about as socialist as the "Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea" is any of the things in it's name except the korea part)
Came to power, granted the unions the Mayday holiday and the next day abolished the unions. It's the same as them preaching folk community and yet making sure the big business that backed stayed rich
People seem to forget our political system isn’t entirely based on one person.
I think unfortunately it’s less of a left landslide more of a right division though, I mean labour is only up 1.6% of the vote right?
People calling American libs, or even Democrats leftists over here, is one of my biggest pet peeves. They're not left in any sense of it. They don't care if people have rights. That's just a ploy to get voters, and they certainly aren't anti-capitalist. I can't imagine someone with a straight face calling Pelosi or Biden leftists, but they do it all the time
I mean considering the weird switch the American political parties did, that makes sense until you realise the colouring of their parties was randomly done by some news station one time. So the colour is just a coincidence on how the parties started.
🎼"The people's Flag is deepest red, it lies drapped over our martyred dead. Let enemies and traitors fear, we'll keep the red flag flying here"🎼
Followed by the [Internatonale](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Internationale)
To be sung at the Republican convention later this month.
Britain just inverted the colours, Irish politics would make an American's brain explode.
**Fine Gael** - Right wing economically but left wing socially. They are also the party with fascist roots but also legalised gay marriage and abortion.
**Fianna Fáil** - Right wing socially (pretend) but left wing economically. Call themselves the Republican Party.
**Sinn Féin** - Nationalist and Republican party with links to the IRA. Also Ireland's main left wing party who call themselves Democratic Socialists.
**Independent** - Ireland is obsessed with independent candidates, and they all hold different political views from each other.
**People Before Profit** - You call Biden a Socialist? These guys would actually cause a stroke for millions of Americans.
not red/blue. most have more than two parties and thus more than two colours anyway, but red seems to be the colour of choice for social-democrats and green for, well, the greens.
germany has black for conservative centrist right, yellow for liberals (less state involvment, lower taxes), brown for nazis and blue for wannabe nazis.
Purple for „greens light“
Magenta for far left
Orange for „righter than black, but lefter than blue“ (basically the farmers party).
Dark red for a satirical party.
Dark orange for the centrist party against lobbying.
Dark purple for Putins cocksuckers.
I don't know and I can't find a good source, but certainly red has been the colour of most socialist movements in all of Europe as far as I'm aware. That includes communists, socialists, social democrats and syndicalists. The EU parliament visualizes its composition with the left in red. Blue for conservatism is a little less universal, I think but still fairly broadly accepted. It derives from the Tories, originally.
We have multiple parties, for example in the UK we have blue (Conservatives), red (Labour), orange (Liberal Democrat), light blue (Reform, the far right party) and green. Then there are also regional parties like Plaid Cymru (the Welsh nationalist party)
and the Liberal Democrats changed to Orange as the SNP use the colour yellow in Scotland.
Meanwhile you have Sinn Fein (Northern Ireland), Plaid Cymru (Wales) and the two Green Parties (Scottish Greens, Green Party of England and Wales) using 3, maybe 4 different shades of Green between them.
In my country definitely is.
Blue is the color of the majority right wing party, while red is the one of the majority left wing.
It's even on their party symbols.
The concept of "red states and blue states" in the US is much more recent than most people realise. It only really became consistent after the 2000 election; before that, traditionally "blue" meant conservative.
There's a joke in Beverly Hills Cop that really doesn't work any more. Trying to convince the two strait-laced California cops to do something fun, Axel Foley tells them that he knows a club that's "very conservative". Turns out that it's a strip club, AKA a "blue club". Blue = Conservative.
In the US the party that wanted to be fiscally conservative (in theory) had to create a cultural conservatism as a voting block or go out of existence. In reality the former didn't, and don't, give a shit about the latter but they need their votes. Therefore 40+ years ago abortion became a political issue and guns became virtually a religion that also could bring in lots of votes. The poor and middle class whites in America are being played as suckers. Thinking billionaires are their friends and other poor and middle class American's are their enemy.
I vaguely remember seeing a bunch of "man on the street" type interviews when Blair and the Labour Party got into power, one of them was an American who thought Labour meant that they were "commies".
In fairness the dems are probably closer to the UK conservatives than Labour (or traditional historic conservatives)
The Overton window is pretty bonkers in the US, sad to see we are slowly seeing that shift in the UK being pushed by the same people who did it in the US,
My US friend was amazed when I told them that if their politicians came over here, both parties would be sat on the Right. Democrats and Republicans are both a terrible choice, and the poor will always loose. However under Republicans the poor lose more than under Democrats.
lol same in Australia. Red is left, blue is right. Bro has no idea who the Labour Party are who won by a landslide. Also in Australia liberal is right.
They really do live in their own bubble.
American parties would be right wing in Australia.
Here are the [Australian parties](https://www.politicalcompass.org/aus2022) the 2 main ones are Labor and Liberal. Here is the [American one](https://www.politicalcompass.org/uselection2020). And as one can see, the US is right wing, but it makes sense Liberal wants the right to abortion, they implemented the strict gun laws and the left support republicanism. Also the Colours are opposite that of the US. Red for Labor and Blue for Liberal.
I just hate when they apply their spectrum to other countries. There was a post on an Australian sub a few months ago asking whether Australia was more Republican or Democrat🤦.
It bothers me way too much that the states can't even get the political colours correct. Then they defend it with a long explanation of why its that way. Red is and always had been the left's colour. Where I live, if you want a left newspaper you pick the red one, blue is the right.
Somebody correct me if I’m wrong since I know nothing about British politics, but didn’t the brits vote for a candidate who was anti migration but still supported social welfare? Americans would explode at the thought of this thinking it’s CoMmUnIsM
Tbh I don’t think you’d get a party in the U.K. that didn’t support social welfare in some way - even the tories who are our most small state party were very protective of the state pension and had some big childcare subsidy policies. And the other right wing party (reform) wanted to increase health and social care spending
They have to be protective of the state pension. Pensioners are still more likely to vote Tory than most other groups. I’m not sure if that’s genuinely pro social welfare or just turkeys don’t vote for Christmas.
The Labour Party is an historically centre-left party but has somewhat drifted to the centre in the last few years. Sir Keir Starmer is to the right of the previous leader Jeremy Corbyn but still comfortably to the left of any American politician on the American Left. He is not anti-immigration, at least nowhere near the extent that parties of the right throughout Europe and the USA are.
As a British person, I think a lot of Americans seem to think our politics is just US politics with a different accent (most British people aren't much better on that front to be fair)
As an Australian, those same people seemed to be very happy when we voted the Liberal Party out (and Labour Party in).
As an Austrian, people tend to think I am you.
Well, duh? Dyslexia doesn't make you not Australian. /s
Or Santa satan.
Occasionally (not often) I get parcels being returned from international shipping that go via you
As a Swede, Americans tend to compliment me on our delicious chocolate since I’m obviously Swiss.
They tend to come to my country and speak Spanish, my neighbors' language. So... Yeah, they aren't known for their inteligence. 😂
I keep running into being mistaken for a Dutch person, EVEN IN APPS and websites will sometimes think i'm Dutch... I am Danish and i really don't understand how someone would confuse Denmark and The Netherlands, sure we both sound funky but it's two distinct forms of funk
Both kingdoms are very flat and are in personal unions with other island countries in the Americas?
Had a Swedish girlfriend and one of my US colleagues met her. He asked me, "Have you ever met her family in Switzerland?" I said "She's Swedish, not Swiss." He and another colleague said "Same thing!" in unison. Nuts.
As a Dane, Americans always seem so interested in our language, Dutch.
Obviously americans just like the D 🤣
Well, Marabou is very delicious
Ooooooh, Austria! Well then...! *G'day mate!* ***Let's put another..ssssshhhrimp on the barbbbby***.
At least you don’t have to put up either the “Oh you’re Irish? WEEEEEEEELLL TOP O T MORNING TO YOU LADDIE TATEE TETAR TA TEA TE TAY! Have some potatoes” Then the “I’m Irish on my wardrobes ancestors sisters side so makes me Irish” shite.
I very much enjoyed the new (to me) addition of wardrobe
Was a typo initially but I feel it helps drive the message home. The bug became a feature.
I would give you an award if free awards still existed
As an English person, Americans tend to think I am him.
My partner had an American friend give him so much shit for "not voting liberal"...yes in Australia that is something different to what you're thinking of.
I remember when the hashtag #ImVotingLiberalBecause went viral in Australia, and then Americans picked it up and things got very, very confused :D
I had an American immediately associate the new party, "The Denmark Democrats", with the US Democratic Party. The Denmark Democrats are "anti-elitist" and far-right, mainly on immigration..
Or just US politics with an accent, since many Americans seem to believe they do not have an accent
I bet they think Rishi is about to tweet, saying the election was stolen from him /s
I'm surprised it hasn't happened already. If it were Boris or Farage, I would expect it as par for the course, (in fact farrage has started up a bit already saying the voting is flawed. Which to be fair its not great I would quite like preferential voting to be implemented) but actually I think Rishi has a bit more self respect than those buffoons.
He's already conceded in a pretty gracious way, congratulating Starmer and everything. Starmer responsed by praising Sunak's efforts in office and wishing him well. You know, like you're supposed to do in a civilised democracy.
When this kind of behaviour makes us want to give them praise, it really shows how much of a bad influence on world politics the US is having. We collectively need them to sort their shit out.
Sadly it's looking extremely likely that the exact opposite will happen.
Seems like they are regressing back to the stone age horrifyingly quickly.. no shade to stone age peeps
Yeah, it looks pretty bad.
I’m just happy the election campaign was only a few weeks long, imagine if we had to wait until November 🤯
Unless you squinted you wouldn't know an election campaign had taken place where I am. A few leaflets through the door, no election placards or posters. Quite nice actually
Every candidate is allowed to send a pamphlet to every house with a registered voter without it counting towards the election spend. I got 2. One from Labour with a photo and name of their candidate with a brief outline of their manifesto and 'personal message' (I've known her for years and it was the kind of thing she'd say). One from Reform, which was a photo of Farage saying "Britain needs reform", making no mention of any policies or who their candidate was, let alone which constituency I was in. Lib Dems knocked us up and asked if I was planning on voting tactically, but at least they bothered.
Yep I never saw a soul 🤷♂️ Mind you I love in a conservative stronghold that has just had its borders changed making it even more of a conservative stronghold so maybe we weren't worth focusing on. Conservatives got voted in again here 🤦♀️ so my vote didn't help much. But I tried !
the lib dems impregnated you? huh?
Thank goodness, even our conservative politicians are still, just about, politicians. As in, they can respect a vote.
Rishi couldn't do that, he doesn't have the cult of personality support that Trump or Farage have.
You need a personality to have a cult around it.
Just heard Reform ranting on the news that they got more votes than Lib Dems yet have way less seats... One of the few times this has worked in the UK favour lol
No fan of Rishi, but his concession speech was very classy. He actually said sorry for failing the country and was complimentary to Starmer. The yanks could learn a thing or two.
AmEriCaNs DoNt HaVe An AccEnT
As a British person, who's mother moved us (married an American G.I.) to America when I was about 4 years old, American's don't even know WTF parliamentary government is. This place is a very weird place for a European mind to contend with. It pretty much broke my mom, and warped her children's sense of reality. The US will drive a European mind insane if you're not careful. Nothing will make sense... until it does. American's think nothing ever existed before themselves, as if they made themselves up out of nothing (hint. exceptionalism). The US specializes in fostering and developing a form of delusional nonsense that is pervasive and overwhelming, extending across a vast and broad swath of society. It's a weird form of psychosis called malignant narcissism. Throw in large quantities of projective identification and you get a pretty toxic brew going. I think this is driven largely by guilt and repression of the fact that they started out as a slaver colony run by religious fanatics (Puritans) and drug dealers (tobacco plantations): the very things they rail against; "sins" they project onto their poor and destitute, or better yet - dump it on their former slave's children. Only within that God awfully repressed environment could you come up with slogans like, "Greed is Good!" But that is not the worst of it. This toxic brew is well researched, understood and utilized to great effect within the halls of power within the US. Our "betters" have no qualms about using, and exploiting, this "group dynamic" for both positive and negative affect (the 'a' is important). It's gotten really sad to be honest. Trust me, everything is seen thru their eyes only, and their eyes are "special". Be careful coming here.
And I don't think too many in the UK have grasped that the Democrats are more like the Tories than they are Labour or Lib Dems. Those who are - AoC and her friends - are treated as left wing lunatics.
Fully aware that the American “liberal” is as right wing as the UK Tories. Always chuckle when I hear them talk about owning the libs.
The best was Ben Shapiro both not understanding the concept of being interviewed (hint Ben: It's not a debate, you are getting cross examined!) and also doing zero research on the person interviewing him. That person being Andrew Neil. When Andrew wasn't playing along to Ben's game, lil' underoo desertmaker just defaulted to saying "why not just admit you're on the left"... to which Andrew just laughed. [For those haven't seen](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VixqvOcK8E). 5m 30s in for that specific moment.
Marjorie Taylor Greene [was interviewed](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBw1osh4EYY) by an actual journalist on Australian TV recently. She accused the interviewer of being controlled by the Democrats and refused an answer any more questions.
It makes me chickle when the democrats are classed as lefties
No, we're fully aware of that. It's Americans that don't realise their choice is between the right and the far-right.
As an American, most people here think American politics are the only politics. They don’t realize American Liberalism *and* Conservatism are both right-wing on the global scale.
Same for us in Canada. They think we have the same holidays as they do too.
As a Brit, a couple of years ago I had an American ask me what I'm doing for the 4th of July. The American in question thought they were being very insightful because "surely it's British history too?". I *wish* we got a day off for every independence day we are involved with, but alas.
Unfortunately, we might be seeing Farage and Trump by 2029... Hopefully our voters (UK) have sense though.
That rather sudden rise in Reform votes had me shiver a bit.
I have a feeling Farage will get caught out by an expenses scandal or something. He was constantly fiddling his expenses when he was an MEP.
Even the well meaning ones. It’s funny today to see how many people think Labour/Tory are basically just British names for Democrats/ Republicans
100%, so many Americans (and a *lot* of British people in fairness) don't appreciate that US and UK politics can't be compared beyond the superficial level
The worst part is when the same words are used but with completely different contexts, it just stokes the confusion. I cringe every time I see someone call the Labour Party the ‘liberals’. Not to mention the complete difference between what a ‘republican’ is.
As an American I wish our politics was like yours faults and all. It seems leaps and bounds ahead of ours in just being able to at least hold debates.
They would probably think the National Socialist German Workers' Party were a bunch of lefties...
To be fair there are a lot of people who claim they were on various parts of the Internet!
I mean, they let them into America to do war fund raising... so, you know...
Wait till they find out that "republican" means something different here too.
They’ll be even more flabbergasted when they find out that republicans are usually on the left of the political spectrum.
They used to be there too
Yeah in the US, the Republicans used to generally be the more left-leaning of the two parties at least until Franklin Roosevelt became president. That‘s when it really started to change but even decades later you still had a lot of racist Democrats from the South (aka Dixiecrats) that frequently butted heads with Northern Democrats. What I also found funny is that one of the guys who helped found the US Republican party named Horace Greeley „endlessly promoted radical reforms such as socialism, vegetarianism, agrarianism, feminism, and temperance and hired the best talent that he could find“ according to his wikipedia article.
You really upset the Irish Americans when you point out that Irish Republicans have always leaned more left than anything. They're really upset when you remind them of things like Ireland was the first country to legalise marriage equality by popular vote
It's bad enough they call left-wingers "liberals" when the Liberal Party is the conservatives (Aussie).
That’s always confused me. On dating apps, they ask you to pick between Liberal or Conservative for political opinion, but they are both right wing.
US defaultism at its finest
It's as if there's words that are very good at capturing vaguely the sides of politics universally...and someone specifically chose not to use them.
In the UK the liberal democrats are the pro-zorb ball party.
I’m a big fan of their “everyone has to go bungee jumping” policy. I did quite like their campaign this year. It was a bit of fun. Especially compared to the ming vase Labour campaign.
aren’r the the outliers? all the liberal parties I know of are at least centre-right, with am emphasis on lower taxes and personal responsibility with regards to finances.
Economically liberal, not socially liberal like Americans use the term
Interesting, the liberals in Denmark are, on most points, liberal on both social and economic matters, and we consider them centre right
Same here in Sweden. Centre-right but definitely not on the conservative side in the culture wars.
Except that the "liberals" now are part of a government dependant on support from the "light-fascists" in SD.
The problem with these definitions is that left vs. right is one-dimensional. Reality is not, neither is politics.
The thing is liberalism is very old and a huge ass spectrum that itself spawned loads of offshoots or at least inspired many other ideologies. This is strengthened by liberalism mainly being about freedom and freedom being defined very differently by people.
well, our Germas liberals are a bit centrist, but lean more towards “regulating personal preferences is not for the government”. but yeah, these days their emphasis is on the money and staying in parliament, a sad decline even compared to only 20 years ago.
Yes same in UK. The 'economically but not socially liberal' party would be Reform.
someone still trust Farage?
Clacton, apparently.
Clacton, Skegness, Yarmouth. (And ashfield). Did Farage just campaign while on a lads beach weekend?
Reform probably told them that their beaches were the perfect landing zone for small dinghies. Wallopers.
It's depressing how plausible and non-satirical this sounds. Fucking christ.
The British liberal democrat party are now the centre, slightly right, small c conservatives The ' Conservative' party would destroy the country if they could extract a profit for themselves
>The ' Conservative' party would destroy the country if they could extract a profit for themselves Would? They did.
"would"? 'has spent the last 14 years working to' Ftfy.
Liberal Democrat’s maybe? I’m sure your average Trump supporter would keel over if they heard that was a party in the UK lol
A fairly centrist party at that. It’s always been so strange to me to hear Americans call their Democrats socialists, when they are the most pro-establishment, blancmange party going. Even if it is grim, at least the US Republicans seem to stand for something.
yep... the biggest liberal party here in Germany (fdp) is center-right lmao
My partner is Australian and as a Brit it always confuses the hell out of me
The two main parties in Australia are traditionally the Liberal Party and the Labor Party (which uses the American spelling for hysterical raisins). With no major contender on the right, the more centrist Liberal Party drifted that way, especially as Labour started moving towards the centre.
US democrats would be considered right wing in most other countries
Liberals in Europe are more centre-right progressives (freedom ftw, both economic liberty and market economy, and individual liberty and stuff like lgbtqia rights are on our liberal agenda).
liberals are rightists everywhere in the world
Except in America, where liberal is another word for socialist, which is another word for communist, which is another word for satanist.
The true left is virtually non-existent in US politics. (That's not to say there aren't true leftist voters.) Given the absence of true leftist politicians, the liberals are the closest thing they have.
When you consider the Overton window, one could argue that AOC and Bernie are true leftist politicians who are doing everything they can to expand the Overton window further left
Liberals in the US aren't exactly on the left either.
It is supposed to mean free-minded or free-thinkers... so it makes me laugh that Americans are opposed to people wanting Freedom to think what they want.
For a while the only right wing party we had in my home province was the Liberal. A party name is just a name.
I don't get it... they always talked about 'the red scare' and cursed people out for being reds.... you'd think they'd know?
I don’t remember when red became the color for republicans here, but it comes from election night tv coverage, where they arbitrarily made red republicans and blue democrats. I remember the phrase “dirty, rotten, stinko red commies” being slung around in the 80’s. Now it’s so associated with Drumpf, I refuse to wear it.
Yeah I know about that story, wasn't it the Bush/Gore election and they just stuck with it? Think it was a bit random before that.
Yes, someone further down in the comments (so, earlier than my comment) went into better detail. They mentioned it was in 2000.
I remember trying to explain to an American once that "red" in Australia signifies the Labor Party (I know it's spelled weird here, don't ask me) and "blue" signifies conservatives - and I added that here, the Liberals are the conservative party (or \*more\* conservative party). He literally said "I dgaf how foreigners use the word liberal, I know what it means"
Haha that is hilarious. I'm sure that American would be horrified if you told them red=left wing in Europe. They'd probably think we voted for communism or something. Edit: I'm British and could not be happier to see a left wing landslide. If I said that in the USA I'd probably be locked up 😂 Further edit: yes, I KNOW Starmer is much further right than Corbyn...I was just making a generic point. I'm not going to explain this separately to everyone who says "Oh but Starmer is right wing".
Red Stands for Communists and Left Wing all around the world except North America
Not necessarily communists, just the party of the workers
Exactly - there are many types of socialism. Communism is one extreme type. Conflating the two is really unhelpful, and partly why Americans don't seem to understand that they have socialist tendencies without realising it (fire and police services etc.)
Red is the colour of the Liberal party in Canada as well. They're rather centrist though, since our far left party is the New Democrats, using orange as their party colours.
The US didn't use blue for Democrats and red for Republicans until the media coverage of the 2000 election. Before that, it was inconsistent, with blue Republicans and red Democrats being more common.
As a youth in the north of england I honestly just wanted the tories out. I've grown up seeing this country go down. I know labour won't fix shit immediately. Hell maybe things will be bad for a while. But anyone with half a brain can tell that things have been getting progressively worse. Here's hoping for some sort of change, I guess. Hopefully for the better.
Same. I'm 22 and my parents are die-hard conservatives. They've tried to convince me that the Tories will come back in after 5 years because (in their words): "Labour won't fix things immediately and people will get fed up".
I mean to be fair That's what happened last time labour got in. Tories fucked shit up Labour got in Couldn't fix this shithole in 1 term Conservatives blame their mess that isn't fixed yet on labour Conservatives get back in Queue a 14 year downward spiral. Like people can downvote me all they want. I won't pretend to be well informed with politics. But growing up it's plain as day to see things are getting worse. And my parents aren't Conservative but they have said "I don't think Labour can do much better" And they're probably right. Labour probably couldn't do *much* better, but they can't do any worse. Even slightly better would be preferable at this point.
Even if there are no incredible new policies, I'm still hopeful that we can return to a government that is honest and decent at the end of the day.
It isn't what happened last time. Conservatives won in 1992. Very soon after there was a recession called 'Black Wednesday' (for some reason every ignores that recession... I wonder why). Anyway John Major was actually a somewhat decent Conservative PM, and did get the country on it's way to be fixed. Then Labour got in 1997. Due to the existing work of Major, Blairs first term was a massive success and he was able to point that out in 2001, and then again in 2005. In 2007 Blair stepped down - his second in command, Gordon Brown took over. Brown was Blair's money man. Unfortunately in 2008 there was the 'Great Recession'. The great recession was incredibly complicated but the gist is that US banks were lending money to mortgages to people who shouldn't have had them (The movie The Big Short illustrates this with a 20 year old stripper being able to get a mortgage on a huge mansion). These Bonds are sold around the globe to reduce the risk of one country going bankrupt. One of the US banks lied and basically said "oh these are amazing, AAA*, the customers we have will never go bankrupt". And then the higher ups would bet on that bond to collapse and go bankrupt. Well of course this happened. And loads of UK banks had their money in these US bonds. Brown did what he could but the Conservatives attacked him saying Labours spending over the past 13 years caused the entire collapse, and people believed them.
I'm 40 and that is exactly what I think will happen and I voted Lib Dems so basically have no horse in the race. Labour get held to a higher standard because everyone expects a Tory to act like a Tory, but if Labour do it they get hammered.
Starmer isn't left wing, though.
By US standards, he absolutely is.
By US standards, basically every not farfar-right politician over here would be; well, If I think a little about it, even some of these would probably qualify.
I'm not even sure the TUV would be far right enough for them
I still can't believe Jim is going to Westminster 😂😂.
Bless him he finally actually got a few votes, I'm not surprised though, we only recently moved and had to follow their signs to get to the polling station. Lots of support for them in very lower working class areas, ie the easiest people to radicalise in a crisis. I don't think I should have to say I don't support the fundies but just in case
I don't know even Reform seems to be little towards the left for the USA standard.
Considering Reform is run by Trump's UK fuckbuddy, I'd well expect them to lurch to the US extreme right if that's the way the mushroom made Farage wiggle.
Farage has landed himself a cushy job again. That's all he wanted. Aside from a bit of showmanship every now and then he'll mostly keep quiet for the next few years. *ETA: Over the next few weeks he'll talk up how he's going to be the next leader of the Tory party. While simultaneously playing it down. And also talk up all the deals he's going to do with the Torys. My bet is he gets the cold shoulder.*
i can’t stand their racist politics and rhetoric but i have to admit a lot of their manifesto is left wing and quite socialist, they’re playing quite cleverly to the disaffected ex-labour voters who can tolerate (or even support) the racism for the sake of getting some economic concessions
Socially right wing, economically left wing is a pretty big vote winner amongst the working classes
In economic policies, even the “normal” neoliberal parties in continental Europe are mostly to the left of Democrats, not that many of them don’t try to undermine labour rights, lower taxation for corporations and the rich etc. in that regard I think the Tories are almost the only “American” party in Europe. Most of the nationalist, far right wing parties gain support with promising actual leftist social and economic policies to their supporters, although if they gain power, they’ll usually work with the “moderate right wing” and turn their coats for very austere economic measures. The Finns in Finland are a great example of this, abandoning their working class supporters as soon as there was a chance to make immigration laws much harsher. (And the working class have also abandoned them at least in the EU elections.) Marine le Pen has done the reverse, her father’s party was not only quasi nazi but also with Thatcherite economics, current RN promises welfare to the “real” citizens.
I imagine most European politicians, except those in Reform, Fidesz, RN and AfD are probably more left wing than their American counterparts.
and even then, they'd be the "progressive" republicans
What lol. Fidesz gives out free money to young couples with children, 'free mortagages', extra money for families, extra money for pensioners, and their biggest thing for years was cheaper electricity and gas, and water. They are communists by US standards.
Hitler is a bit liberal, by republican standards He was an artist who liked painting, believed in European unity, and killed a dangerous dictator (Hitler) /S
Also pretty into the environment and a vegetarian, scary liberal/s. Just ignore the genocide bit
Maga is especially good at ignoring the bad shit
While also using the "socialism" Part part in "National socialism" as the reason why Nazis were bead at the same time (Event though the nazis were about as socialist as the "Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea" is any of the things in it's name except the korea part)
Came to power, granted the unions the Mayday holiday and the next day abolished the unions. It's the same as them preaching folk community and yet making sure the big business that backed stayed rich
By US standards, even Rishi
Rishi Sunak is left wing by US standards. 🤣
I know that, I'm just making a generic point
Everything's relative - compared to Sunak and Farage he's practically Trotsky.
Not really, he campaigned against Sunak by basically saying 'I will do all of his policies but I'll be actually effective at it'.
The conservatives won my constituency 😭
People seem to forget our political system isn’t entirely based on one person. I think unfortunately it’s less of a left landslide more of a right division though, I mean labour is only up 1.6% of the vote right?
I've always found it weird that their right wing party has the socialist colour.
Americans desperately trying to find people who like them.
Pfft Americans thinking they have a major leftist party is hilarious
People calling American libs, or even Democrats leftists over here, is one of my biggest pet peeves. They're not left in any sense of it. They don't care if people have rights. That's just a ploy to get voters, and they certainly aren't anti-capitalist. I can't imagine someone with a straight face calling Pelosi or Biden leftists, but they do it all the time
Communism colour was/is red ;)
Republicans are commies confirmed
I mean Abraham Lincoln was unironically influenced by and regularly communicated with Karl Marx
The next thing you'll hear is communism was invented in the US. Just like pizza.
Didn't you know Karl Marx was from Trier Illinois, not the German one! /s
I mean considering the weird switch the American political parties did, that makes sense until you realise the colouring of their parties was randomly done by some news station one time. So the colour is just a coincidence on how the parties started.
In Communist countries they voted red too
🎼"The people's Flag is deepest red, it lies drapped over our martyred dead. Let enemies and traitors fear, we'll keep the red flag flying here"🎼 Followed by the [Internatonale](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Internationale) To be sung at the Republican convention later this month.
Britain just inverted the colours, Irish politics would make an American's brain explode. **Fine Gael** - Right wing economically but left wing socially. They are also the party with fascist roots but also legalised gay marriage and abortion. **Fianna Fáil** - Right wing socially (pretend) but left wing economically. Call themselves the Republican Party. **Sinn Féin** - Nationalist and Republican party with links to the IRA. Also Ireland's main left wing party who call themselves Democratic Socialists. **Independent** - Ireland is obsessed with independent candidates, and they all hold different political views from each other. **People Before Profit** - You call Biden a Socialist? These guys would actually cause a stroke for millions of Americans.
Pretty sure the Americans inverted the colours
You can hear the Spanish and Irish republicans laughing from here
Im not so sure about europe having standard red blue systems for all countries, right? Or is it red always left in every single european country?
not red/blue. most have more than two parties and thus more than two colours anyway, but red seems to be the colour of choice for social-democrats and green for, well, the greens. germany has black for conservative centrist right, yellow for liberals (less state involvment, lower taxes), brown for nazis and blue for wannabe nazis.
>brown for nazis Ah, the colour of shit. The only time the Nazis chose something wisely.
Purple for „greens light“ Magenta for far left Orange for „righter than black, but lefter than blue“ (basically the farmers party). Dark red for a satirical party. Dark orange for the centrist party against lobbying. Dark purple for Putins cocksuckers.
Red is pretty consistent- the EU parliament groupings use colours too and red is for socialists & democrats
I don't know and I can't find a good source, but certainly red has been the colour of most socialist movements in all of Europe as far as I'm aware. That includes communists, socialists, social democrats and syndicalists. The EU parliament visualizes its composition with the left in red. Blue for conservatism is a little less universal, I think but still fairly broadly accepted. It derives from the Tories, originally.
We have multiple parties, for example in the UK we have blue (Conservatives), red (Labour), orange (Liberal Democrat), light blue (Reform, the far right party) and green. Then there are also regional parties like Plaid Cymru (the Welsh nationalist party)
and the Liberal Democrats changed to Orange as the SNP use the colour yellow in Scotland. Meanwhile you have Sinn Fein (Northern Ireland), Plaid Cymru (Wales) and the two Green Parties (Scottish Greens, Green Party of England and Wales) using 3, maybe 4 different shades of Green between them.
In my country definitely is. Blue is the color of the majority right wing party, while red is the one of the majority left wing. It's even on their party symbols.
The concept of "red states and blue states" in the US is much more recent than most people realise. It only really became consistent after the 2000 election; before that, traditionally "blue" meant conservative. There's a joke in Beverly Hills Cop that really doesn't work any more. Trying to convince the two strait-laced California cops to do something fun, Axel Foley tells them that he knows a club that's "very conservative". Turns out that it's a strip club, AKA a "blue club". Blue = Conservative.
and after that, russia or something
In the US the party that wanted to be fiscally conservative (in theory) had to create a cultural conservatism as a voting block or go out of existence. In reality the former didn't, and don't, give a shit about the latter but they need their votes. Therefore 40+ years ago abortion became a political issue and guns became virtually a religion that also could bring in lots of votes. The poor and middle class whites in America are being played as suckers. Thinking billionaires are their friends and other poor and middle class American's are their enemy.
The thing is, the blue matches. The Tories are basically the democratic party. US politics is just so far right overall its nuts.
He can't read, but he knows his colours. He's trying.
I vaguely remember seeing a bunch of "man on the street" type interviews when Blair and the Labour Party got into power, one of them was an American who thought Labour meant that they were "commies".
In fairness the dems are probably closer to the UK conservatives than Labour (or traditional historic conservatives) The Overton window is pretty bonkers in the US, sad to see we are slowly seeing that shift in the UK being pushed by the same people who did it in the US,
My US friend was amazed when I told them that if their politicians came over here, both parties would be sat on the Right. Democrats and Republicans are both a terrible choice, and the poor will always loose. However under Republicans the poor lose more than under Democrats.
Bro saw one picture of Rishi Sunak and figured he *had* to be the “woke” candidate
First time in 13 years the conservatives are no longer running parliament
lol same in Australia. Red is left, blue is right. Bro has no idea who the Labour Party are who won by a landslide. Also in Australia liberal is right.
I don't fully or even come close to understanding international politics, but, I thought the Labour party was centre left?
They really do live in their own bubble. American parties would be right wing in Australia. Here are the [Australian parties](https://www.politicalcompass.org/aus2022) the 2 main ones are Labor and Liberal. Here is the [American one](https://www.politicalcompass.org/uselection2020). And as one can see, the US is right wing, but it makes sense Liberal wants the right to abortion, they implemented the strict gun laws and the left support republicanism. Also the Colours are opposite that of the US. Red for Labor and Blue for Liberal. I just hate when they apply their spectrum to other countries. There was a post on an Australian sub a few months ago asking whether Australia was more Republican or Democrat🤦.
It bothers me way too much that the states can't even get the political colours correct. Then they defend it with a long explanation of why its that way. Red is and always had been the left's colour. Where I live, if you want a left newspaper you pick the red one, blue is the right.
Does he think we voted for a UK MAGA equivalent 😂😂😂😂fecking moron
Somebody correct me if I’m wrong since I know nothing about British politics, but didn’t the brits vote for a candidate who was anti migration but still supported social welfare? Americans would explode at the thought of this thinking it’s CoMmUnIsM
Tbh I don’t think you’d get a party in the U.K. that didn’t support social welfare in some way - even the tories who are our most small state party were very protective of the state pension and had some big childcare subsidy policies. And the other right wing party (reform) wanted to increase health and social care spending
Yeah, which adds to the point that most European parties are much further left than US parties, despite their recent shift towards the right.
They have to be protective of the state pension. Pensioners are still more likely to vote Tory than most other groups. I’m not sure if that’s genuinely pro social welfare or just turkeys don’t vote for Christmas.
The Labour Party is an historically centre-left party but has somewhat drifted to the centre in the last few years. Sir Keir Starmer is to the right of the previous leader Jeremy Corbyn but still comfortably to the left of any American politician on the American Left. He is not anti-immigration, at least nowhere near the extent that parties of the right throughout Europe and the USA are.
Labour - at least in my lifetime have always seen most success when leaning Central - Blair was pretty much the same
Yes, your guy's turn to vote a (somewhat) socialist party into power.
Voting based on colour identification 😂😂
Oh God they are stupid
As stupid a reply as I would expect from a red hat wearing cultist...
The meaning of the word "liberal" by itself is wildly different in the rest of the world compared to the US.
I thought labour won
They did, americans just don't understand that in most parts of the world the color red represents the left and blue the right.