/r/ukpolitics
Political news and debate concerning the United Kingdom.
Rules detailed here: https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/wiki/rules
Political articles and debate concerning the United Kingdom.
Anything not specifically concerning politics in the UK or geopolitics involving the UK will be considered spam and removed.
While robust debate is encouraged, at least try to keep things civil. This sub is for people with a wide variety of views, and as such you will come across content, views and people you don't agree with. Political views from a wide spectrum are tolerated here.
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Information on voting in the United Kingdom
Resources
House of Commons Library Constituency Dashboard
- Demographic and economic data for every UK parliamentary seat
- Hansard (the Official Report) is the edited verbatim report of proceedings of both the House of Commons and the House of Lords.
- Erskine May, often referred to as ‘the Bible of parliamentary procedure’ is the most authoritative and influential work on parliamentary procedure and constitutional conventions affecting Parliament. Now available to read for free and in full online.
- The UK operates safe and legal routes for the purpose of providing humanitarian and other forms of protection to vulnerable people. These are detailed here.
Guidelines
1: Robust debate is encouraged, angry arguments are not. This sub is for people with a wide variety of views, and as such you will come across content, views and people you don't agree with. Political views from a wide spectrum are tolerated here. Persistent engagement in antagonistic, uncivil or abusive behavior will result in action being taken against your account.
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/r/ukpolitics
507,286 Subscribers
The Observer view: Ignore the stigma and tackle the toxic cycle of child sexual abuse | Observer editorial
00:02 UTC
Labour’s big relaunch won’t solve its biggest problem: this government doesn’t speak human
17:17 UTC
Are we due a big economic and cultural shift in the West?.
Is the West going to collapse due to low fertility and materialism?.
It seems to me that all the immigration that’s happening is a natural outworking of people in the US and Western Europe failing to pro-create. If capitalism relies on perpetual economic growth how is this possible with a declining population?. The lefts solution would be to abandon capitalism and the rights solution is go back to family values. Both are correct but neither will compromise to encompass both, so is the west doomed?.
14:02 UTC
The myth of immigration?
Immigration is becoming an ever more bipartisan topic after it being relatively acceptable to politicians and the general public during the 80-late 00s. It seems like the wing is blowing where both sides, the centre left and centre right, are reaching a consensus that immigration needs to be curtailed. This seems clear to me after Starmer’s recent speech on immigration.
One thing I’ve noticed when discussing the topic of immigration is even those who aren’t really fully for it will claim it needs to come down but then they posit “who will run our basic services that no one born in Britain wants to do like X?”. Replace X with anything that comes to your mind at the point of this conversation such as:
- Waste collection workers, takeout workers, taxi drivers, cleaners etc
My retort to this has always been, well, highly educated people from abroad with work experience in highly specialised fields struggle to find companies to sponsor them, so I am sure it’s nigh on impossible to get a work visa to come to the UK to drive taxis. To me it’s always felt like a convenient excuse the far right have used when discussing immigration “Dey Gonna Take Our Jobs”.
But then my own experience when using many of the aforementioned services is actually, they are mostly worked by immigrants.
I just want to start a discussion on this and find out more but my questions around this are:
How comes it is extremely difficult to get a work visa while being educated and having work experience in specialised fields but you do see a lot of people from abroad doing jobs which are relatively unskilled such as taxi drivers and takeout workers? Is it actually true that a lot of visas are given for low level work?
From the recent statistics that came out about immigration in the last year, only a small % of those coming to the UK came on work visas. The vast majority were dependents, family members and students. Why are these counted as part of the immigration statistics as in theory they should be here short term and will leave the country?
Do we, as a country, actually depend on people from abroad for unskilled labour such as taxi drivers and takeout workers? What would be the effect if, theoretically, we made it impossible for anyone from abroad to come to the UK to do these jobs? I am only asking because one of the main arguments given for immigration is the economic argument. But are such low level jobs such a key pillar to our economy that we need to bring in close to a million people every year to work these jobs? Does it make up for all the other negatives associated with immigration such as compression of wages at the lower level and less housing availability?
13:53 UTC
AMA (Ask Me Anything) Thread: Kamal Ahmed and Camilla Tominey from The Daily T Podcast (The Telegraph): Tuesday 3rd December, 3pm - 4pm
Camilla and Kamal, hosts of The Daily T, will be joining us on Tuesday 3rd December, from 3–4 PM, to answer your questions.
Please ask your questions in this thread. They’ll be using the u/TheTelegraph account to respond on Tuesday.
Message from Camilla and Kamal at The Daily T:
Hi everyone,
We’re Camilla and Kamal, the hosts of The Daily T, the podcast bringing you straight talking and free thinking as we break down the day’s biggest news.
Between us, we cover everything from Westminster drama to global politics and social trends. We love engaging with our listeners, so we’re here to answer your questions about the news, the podcast, or anything else you’re curious about (within reason—we’re journalists, not psychics).
Wondering how we choose which stories to cover? What goes on behind the mic? Or how we handle the chaos of the news cycle? Fire away.
We’ll do our best to answer as many questions as we can in the hour, and we’re looking forward to hearing what you want to know.
Thanks,
Camilla & Kamal
Notice to Users / Tourists: robust questions are fine - insults and low-effort complaints are not. Please be civil and courteous at all times - moderation action will be taken against those who are not.
Please familiarise yourself with Rule 15b of the subreddit before asking a question: Low-effort complaining about sources you disagree with, insulting the publication or trying to shame users for posting sources you disagree with is not acceptable. Either address the post in question, or ignore it.
13:46 UTC
Record immigration numbers. What drives it?
Read the news that during 2023 a record number of 900,000 people moved into the UK. The numbers for 2024 were lower but still in the 750k range annually.
I am genuinely wondering what makes people move in and decide to live in the UK. The housing situation is in bad shape, from my experience the renting market in London is going nuts, where I’ve seen people ask for 1400 pounds per month for a room. The job market is extremely competitive, making it extremely hard to get any job, let alone getting a job sponsored by a company. NHS barely copes with a number of growing patients. Cost of living is skyrocketing while salaries remain stagnant for the most part.
12:58 UTC
Louise Haigh's mobile phone -- a believable story?
I know nothing really about Louise Haigh, good or bad, but I am finding it hard to believe that someone would not know whether they (a) carry their work phone in their handbag, or (b) keep it in a drawer at home. If her habit was to keep it in a drawer when not at work, then why would she think that it was stolen from her handbag when she was mugged?
Maybe I am being unfair due to not knowing all the details -- Can someone provide some context that makes her claim more believable?
12:22 UTC