Ash Sarkar Profile picture
May 12 4 tweets 1 min read Twitter logo Read on Twitter
The #bbcqt audience in Bexhill last night were majority Tory voters, by a country mile. And when government minister Helen Whately praised their local Tory MP, they laughed in outright disdain.

This is the kind of thing which should have the Conservatives very, very worried.
Before the show goes live, there's a practice question (to get warmed up, check mics etc). This week, it was about potholes. And while the mood was good-natured, people in the audience were genuinely angry at the government about it. Potholes were a symbol of neglect and decline.
It wasn't simply that the potholes weren't getting fixed, it was that they were getting fixed on the cheap, with shoddy materials. It really wound people up that public money was being spent, but the job still wasn't getting done.
The story of crumbling infrastructure - not just the problem of underinvestment, but how the profit motive results in worse services - is major a point of commonality for the left, and otherwise rightwing voters. Massive open goal here!

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More from @AyoCaesar

Mar 29
It's not just the Labour Party that operates a hierarchy of racism: it's the media.
Every time I've tried to talk about Islamophobia or antiblackness in the context of a discussion about antisemitism in Labour, I've been shouted down. Which would be fine, if there was ever a chance to speak just about Islamophobia and antiblackness in Labour.
But there isn't ever a chance to talk about Islamophobia and antiblackness in Labour. Because it doesn't fit the narrative, lobby journalists aren't interested, and Labour are happy to readmit Islamophobic and antiblack members so long as they aren't on the left.
Read 4 tweets
Mar 28
I'd rather live in a place where I sometimes got annoyed by noise than a place where neighbours were waiting to call the cops on one another at the faintest hint of nuisance.
Genuinely, I think this impulse to ban whatever you find annoying/call the police for low level nuisance speaks more to the breakdown of community than kids in hoodies.

Crime Survey of England and Wales shows that overall levels of crime have trended downwards over the decades. Image
And this is the same for violent crime – you're less likely to be a victim of violent crime now than you were in the 80s and 90s.

And yet, people are utterly convinced that if you ask kids to turn down their music, or stop being pricks, then they are going to stab you. Image
Read 9 tweets
Mar 28
You can say that about anything in the name of crime prevention (if police had access to all our phones, all the time, wouldn't it be worth it if it stopped just one murder?). Ultimately, you've got to take a wider view of risks and rewards, and that includes civil liberties.
The other thing to bear in mind is what are the knock-on effects. So widespread use of stop and search means you pull a lot of people into the criminal justice system, not for weapons, but because you find small quantities of weed. That has all kinds of negative repercussions...
socially and economically. People become further targeted by police, and a lot of the time that spirals. You end up with knock-on effects on things like exclusion rates, unemployment, incarceration, family breakdown, children being taken into care etc.
Read 5 tweets
Mar 28
2 years ago, when people were calling him boring, Keir Starmer impishly implied that he had tried drugs as a young man ("I had a good time").

In 2020, he said he supported decriminalising cannabis.

But now? He wants police to crack down on smoking weed.

What a joke!
Politicians admit to taking drugs, or do the nudge-nudge wink-wink about it, because it's socially acceptable for middle class people to 'experiment'. In fact, if you haven't tried something at least once at university, you must be a bit of a square.
Middle class people are allowed to live in a world where police and the courts don't get involved in the safe, recreational use of drugs.

But that's not the case for working class people. Not only are the social connotations different, your likelihood of police contact is too.
Read 5 tweets
Mar 26
People will yell, but the fact is that there are some very troubling parallels between media transphobia and media racism, and this ought to make everyone a lot more sceptical about how the issue is framed and narrated in the press.
The starting point for almost every discussion about trans people in newspapers and broadcast is a focus on edge cases – the tiny percentage of individuals who pose a threat to others.
And this has a twofold effect. Firstly, it means that a whole community of people end up being defined by the most dangerous individuals amongst them (and which demographic doesn't have those people), or individuals who aren't representative of most people's experience.
Read 7 tweets
Nov 24, 2022
GHANA ZINDABAD
The powers of Europe ganging up against my non-aligned brothers I see.
Subbing off Mohammed Kudus? I detect the hand of the CIA.
Read 4 tweets

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