Discover and read the best of Twitter Threads about #GE2015

Most recents (8)

#THREAD

Until everyone in Britain knows that demonising & scapegoating asylum seekers, migrants, & minorities is a manipulative yet effective political strategy, successfully mobilised by tyrants within democracies, we will be stuck in an endless cycle of division & dysfunction.
To spell out how explicit #racism is a constant & central feature of every successful @Conservatives' electoral strategy over the last 45 years, I once again quote directly from the essential & insightful @johnsimkin.

Everyone must learn this lesson. 🇬🇧

spartacus-educational.com/spartacus-blog…
Unemployment remained low in the years following WWII. In 1974 unemployment was only 2.6%.

In a TV interview in January, 1978, Margaret Thatcher played the race-card: "Some people have felt swamped by immigrants. They've seen the whole character of their neighbourhoods change."
Read 88 tweets
A former Conservative councillor who was jailed for election #fraud is now competing for a seat on a Derbyshire council.

Richard Smalley had been jailed for two months in 2016 after being found to have given the wrong address on his electoral form.

derbytelegraph.co.uk/news/local-new…
The @Conservatives have been urged to clarify whether they will hand back about £500,000 of donations from a company linked to a Venezuelan-Italian banker charged with conspiracy, bribery and wire #fraud in the US.

theguardian.com/politics/2022/…
A Conservative candidate in last year's May local elections has been charged with alleged electoral fraud. It was claimed signatures on his nomination papers for May 5's poll were invalid. Mr Afzal has been charged with 'two counts of corrupt practice'.

lancashiretelegraph.co.uk/news/20904020.…
Read 11 tweets
The "star" of the Home Office's grotesque immigration propaganda video is failed UKIPper Steven Woolfe, who nearly succeeded Farage as UKIP leader, until he was in a punch up in Strasbourg with a fellow kipper. He's also featured in #TuftonStreet's abysmal 'New Culture Forum'. 😬
Woolfe's English father was mixed race, born to a British Jewish mother & a Black American father, who abandoned Woolfe as a small child.

His first role as an Employed Barrister was acting as General Counsel for a stockbroking firm Merchant Securities Limited.
Woolfe moved to the Union Bank of Switzerland, London office in the legal & compliance department, & then went onto work for several investment banks such as Credit Suisse, Barclays Capital and Standard Bank as well as Aviva.
Read 24 tweets
#THREAD

Somehow I've managed to stay blissfully unaware of grotesque hard-right dimwit & Tory MP Karl McCartney.

Who is ?

Let's allow his words, record, & myriad investigations to speak for themselves...
In March 2017, the Electoral Commission fined the @Conservatives £70,000 following an investigation into Party spending during #GE2015 (the same Electoral Commission that oversees free & fair elections, & which the antidemocratic Tories have just removed independence from).
During #GE2015 coaches of activists were transported to marginal constituencies, enabling its candidates to gain a financial advantage over opponents. In consequence, Karl McCartney was investigated by Lincolnshire Police over spending rules.

thelincolnite.co.uk/2016/06/lincol…
Read 20 tweets
So, #EuropeDay

I don't want to talk so much about the content as the timeline

To make such an offer 5 years after the end of such a vicious and all-consuming war still makes a big impression
And this year we have the handy equivalent time frame: from #GE2015 to now

Yes, a lot has happened in that time, but could you imagine the size of the shift in 1945-50?

Especially if you'd had the period from the start of the Great Recession to that election fighting before?
Time is always slippery, especially now, but the scale of the shifting plates of European history in those early postwar years is easy to dismiss as just numbers on a page

Will you have left behind C19 in 5 years' time?
Read 6 tweets
In the grand arc of Farage's political career, today marks an important moment

1/
Until now, a key part of his rhetoric has been based on the argument that none of the other parties offer an acceptable EU policy, tapping into wider discontents with politics and disconnection with elites

2/
Sure, that meant a long time standing on the edge of the debate, chipping away at CON internal tensions, but ultimately it brought him to a much more consequential level of importance in the 2010s

3/
Read 13 tweets
Which party has the oldest average age of MPs? THREAD
First off, we must thank-you all. We launched a poll on Monday expecting maybe 500 responses maximum. Instead we had a whopping three-thousand-two-hundred-and-thirty votes on our Twitter poll.

That’s ridiculous.
We asked you which party you thought had the oldest average age of MPs.

Most of you, 66%, thought it was the @Conservatives, then the @LibDems (15%), then @UKLabour (14%), with the @theSNP coming in last with (5%).

I bet the SNP are feeling fairly youthful right about now.
Read 25 tweets
In their own words: How @facebook enabled the @Conservatives to win a majority on 37% of the vote in #GE2015... thanks to targeted online ads and a broken voting system.

facebook.com/business/succe…
"Facebook provided the Conservatives with the means to reach the people that mattered: key demographics in marginal constituencies."

The implication that the rest of us didn't matter is correct. Our First Past the Post voting system means most votes don't affect the result.
That's why some political parties and shady online forces regard contact with people outside the key marginals as "wasted impressions".

Apparently, Facebook can even tell if you're visiting, rather than living in, a key seat - so adverts can be saved for people who "matter".
Read 8 tweets

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