Thread by @butwhatifitsall

I don’t blame the people of Hartlepool for apparently being about to elect a Tory MP in a move that is apparently at odds with their interests. If you’ve ever been there, the place is a dump; years of decline & depopulation that Lab failed to address when in power #Hartlepool

compounded, enormously by 11 years of crushing austerity and now Brexit. So why do poor people apparently vote against their interests? Because they are lied to on an industrial scale by newspapers & the BBC, which has been captured & subverted by the Tory Party. Because they

are influenced by the populist, reactionary shit spread by “friends” on Facebook & don’t have the education to discern fact from fiction because they’ve been failed by an education system that government ministers don’t care about because they pay not to use it. Because politics

has been reduced by most media to a grotesque circus, where a man who is manifestly unfit for office, by dint of ability and character, is protected by his billionaire tax avoiding press backers. I do not know how Labour can break through, how they can get their message across,

when Tories control most of the channels of communication. We are heading for, may already be in, a managed democracy; a country with the appearance and institutions of a democracy, but one where the result is never in doubt. Working class, state educated boy made good Keir

Starmer is a decent, capable man who, in normal times, would trounce a clown like Johnson, and would make a far better PM, but will he ever get the chance? People in pain often resort to self-harm; the people of Hartlepool deserve our sympathy more than our contempt.