Thread

UK Government Body Kept Files on People Criticizing Prevent Program

73 points · 28 comments · latein

mike_hearn · 1791105992 · focus · HN ↗
The Yookay Government has become an atrocious far left dystopia over the past ten years so a lot of people no longer trust anything they say, but this particular thing seems to be a non-event. The complaints were being collected by a department that is supposed to be supervising Prevent, and they came from public internet comments with no apparent attempt to de-anonymize them.
OK - how is the supervisor supposed to know what people think of Prevent or why they hate it if they aren't going out there and collecting feedback? Did the people criticizing it online not want the government to take notice of their complaints, and maybe even act on them?
The ReclaimTheNet article relies heavily on blurring the lines between Prevent and the "Prevent Standards and Compliance Unit". Now, cynical people might argue that there can't be any real difference between these two parts of the government and the whole civil service marches to one agenda. And sure, there's plenty of evidence for that point of view. But if there was to be a difference, and there were people in the civil service who knew Prevent needed to be reigned in, then collecting evidence for that point of view would make a lot of sense.
For this to be a sign of the times would require them to be going to X and Reddit saying give us the IP addresses of these complaints. But there's no evidence they did that.
1. Spivak · 1791107447 · focus · HN ↗
  I'm not exactly tuned into UK politics but haven't you guys had a conservative government for eight of the last ten years? And even then I don't think I've ever seen Labour called far left before so I assume that isn't it. Is there some far left throughline in your government that isn't obvious?
  1. iso1631 · 1791107921 · focus · HN ↗
    Yes, you're right. No doubt Theresa May, who was criticised massively for US style deportation policies, is the far left. There are people online who thing Nigel Farage is "far left".
    OP thinks that a "far left" government are against groups like "Hope Not Hate"
    Not sure if these people really exist, but if they do its a sad indictment of the damage the internet does
    mike_hearn · 1791111701 · focus · HN ↗
    Theresa May never attempted anything close to US style deportations. She did the reverse! Under the Conservatives immigration spiked to never before seen levels.
  2. mike_hearn · 1791109303 · focus · HN ↗
    [dead]
    Spivak · 1791109905 · focus · HN ↗
    Wait what? So people were fed up that the conservative government wasn't conservative enough so they elected a government that purports to be further left, and that you call far left? Or are you saying they lost because a further right party took some of their votes and spoilered it?
    DaSHacka · 1791111404 · focus · HN ↗
    Not a brit but it's a combination of both. They disappointed their voterbase leading to demoralization, while their opponents got increasingly fed up they did not do 'enough' of what they wanted.
    You'll see the exact same thing play out in the U.S. midterms in a few months.
    mike_hearn · 1791111517 · focus · HN ↗
    The people fed up with the non-conservative Tories weren't the ones who elected Labour. They stayed at home and didn't vote for anyone so the Tory vote collapsed, allowing Labour in.
    Remember, Starmer won with three million fewer votes than Jeremy Corbyn got! And nobody claimed Corbyn wasn't far left. It was called the "loveless landslide" because so many voters just turned away in disgust at what British politics had become, allowing Labour to win by default rather than because they were popular.
    Partly this happened because many of the supposedly Conservative MPs preferred a Labour government to giving their own voters what they wanted. Sunak called a surprise snap election to deliberately ensure Farage (the only competitor on the right) would have almost no time to prepare.
    Lio · 1791110943 · focus · HN ↗
    > It was conservative in name only.
    The ol' "No True Scotsman"[1] defence, eh?
    1. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman
    DaSHacka · 1791111284 · focus · HN ↗
    Its not "No true Scotsman" when a party or organization affirms itself one thing, then does NOT do that thing.
    Like when Trump got elected and one of his campaign slogans was how Harris was going to start a new war, then he proceeds to start one himself, would it not be fair to say he was "anti-WoT in name only"?
  3. rcxdude · 1791128150 · focus · HN ↗
    Labour has some internal splits: there are elements which are fairly left-wing and there are elements which are hard to distinguish from the Tories. There's almost always some degree of power struggle between the two happening inside the party, and the paradox the party is faced with is that the left wing part represents their members better but the right wing part is what wins elections. As such I would say that the UK leans pretty right wing and we've essentially never had a far-left government, and only occasionally flirted with some really left-wing policies.

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