Trump's America heads into fascism - will the UK follow it?

I think the democrats did what all mainstream politicians do. Stick to what used to work and what they know. So it is about jobs, crime, health care and so on.
In this country all Labour and the Tories talk about is health, education, crime, the usual stuff. Which leaves a massive gap for those people who don't feel a part of society, who don't feel they have anything to gain from our capitalist society and who see others coming into this country and are perceived to be getting hand outs left-right and centre.
Enter stage right, Reform. Reform don't have any solutions to the problem of a disenfranchised public or immigration. Ironically their policies of reducing the state and cutting taxes (Farage is a Tory at heart) won't help anyone. But what Trump and Farage have managed to do very successfully is recognise and acknowledge that there is a problem in the first place.

Best Trump meme of the day :

You’ve still not offered any meaningful definition of woke. If you consider yourself to be previously woke, surely it would be easy for you to explain what it means and why you are happy to see a country slide towards authoritarianism to combat what you see as the scourge of wokeness.

So is almost half a kilometre of erosion 'a few metres'? what does 'there's lies, damn lies and statistics' even mean in this context? Yes, 10,000 years ago Norfolk was underwater, but that has zero relevance in this argument, what does that even mean?
Great, so you being able to say politically incorrect banter in your workplace is grounds for electing a proven sex offender, child molester and someone who will literally bring about the fall of western society if he continues at his current rate?
DEI is not anti-white racism, you've completely made that up. you don't even know what it is.
Once again, please provide any evidence whatsoever to support your claims, explain your definition of 'wokeness' and answer my question - are 'DEI' and 'wokeness' the only two deciding factors for who you think should be the most important man in the world, past economic and social policies, and his diplomacy tactics and foreign policy tactics which are taking the world exponentially closer to war (possibly nuclear)?

Whether lowe is in reform or not isnt really relevant to any of the examples I gave? They were about right/authoritarian groups sacking people over their comments/free speech, and they illustrate that it appears to be much more prevelant in such groups.
Theres always a boundary with free speech, so hate or inciteful or ... and those have been the usual reasons why people have lost their jobs. Nothing "woke" or ... about it.
Ive never found free speech to be a problem (for me). There are plenty of examples of how musk, for example, was a hypocrite on free speech
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/15/elon-musk-hypocrite-free-speech
and it seemed to be a demagogue cause.

"It was a lot more pleasant going into work and having the politically incorrect banter we used to have."
While it might have been pleasant to you, if your politically incorrect banter contained sexism, classism and racism, I can't imagine how that would be pleasant for the subjects of it.
But I agree, there's a bit of political correctness nowadays that has nothing to do with preventing sexism, classism etc. It's just that I find it more often than not, when someone describes something as political correctness, they would like to have extra band to behave in a way which keeps the old inhuman system in place to their benefit and the disadvantage of others.

Sounds like you won't consider any definition I give to be meaningful
The bits of Norfolk that have been eroded used to be underwater so we're not really losing any land there.
It wasn't me who elected Trump, it was the majority of the American voting public. Like I said you can only vote for who's standing. Would Trump be my ideal candidate? No. Would he get my vote over Harris? absolutely.
Woke and DEI do stand out as factors but as I'm not American and can't vote it's not going to make a difference what I think. Clearly the majority of Americans who did vote saw Trump as the better candidate and you can't say that none of them knew what they were doing.
DEI is anti-white racism. I have seen job descriptions that clearly state that only minorities will be considered and that is anti-white racism.
I don't think there should be a boundary for free speech. Everyone should be free to give their honest opinions no matter how controversial they may be.
If anything political correctness causes racism, sexism etc. Only a small minority of people really are these things, but once you start brand people these things for little things that really don't matter it's not going to end well.

Sounds like you won't consider any definition I give to be meaningful
The bits of Norfolk that have been eroded used to be underwater so we're not really losing any land there.
It wasn't me who elected Trump, it was the majority of the American voting public. Like I said you can only vote for who's standing. Would Trump be my ideal candidate? No. Would he get my vote over Harris? absolutely.
Woke and DEI do stand out as factors but as I'm not American and can't vote it's not going to make a difference what I think. Clearly the majority of Americans who did vote saw Trump as the better candidate and you can't say that none of them knew what they were doing.
DEI is anti-white racism. I have seen job descriptions that clearly state that only minorities will be considered and that is anti-white racism.
I don't think there should be a boundary for free speech. Everyone should be free to give their honest opinions no matter how controversial they may be.
If anything political correctness causes racism, sexism etc. Only a small minority of people really are these things, but once you start brand people these things for little things that really don't matter it's not going to end well.

I take that as your concession that you are unable to define woke.

"If anything political correctness causes racism, sexism etc. Only a small minority of people really are these things, but once you start brand people these things for little things that really don't matter it's not going to end well."
I agree with this overall. But I think we've come a long way since ~20 years ago, when people were more lax with insensitive inhuman behaviours in various shapes or forms (both willingly and mindlessly) and engage in “politically incorrect banter” often at the expense of others. I think it’s important to distinguish mere political correctness from genuine progress in the social norms that govern how people treat one another in our communities and work place.

It's pretending to be kind when you can't wait to throw the next person under the bus for stepping out of line.
I agree that progress was made but now it's gone too far in the other direction which is undoing all the good work done. When I was at school in the mid-90s someone in my class said all black people should be shot. Not one person agreed with him, he faced the consequences for it and rightfully so. He was a small minority of genuinely racist people.
It went too far when you had for example sports presenter Jim Rosenthal get accused of being racist because he called a black javelin thrower a "great spear chucker". He was complimenting her sporting ability, nothing racist about it whatsoever.

I'd like to think that as a nation we can hold ourselves to a somewhat higher bar regarding how we treat others than not approving of genocide being the limit of our progress.
Re Jim Rosenthal's comment - as an experienced sports presenter we might expect him to use a description like "great javelin thrower" or even "great athlete" which compliments sporting ability without leaning into racist tribal/jungle tropes that black Britons have suffered listening to for decades.
Regardless - one clumsy comment by a sports presenter 17 years ago is no basis for demanding a world of open preferential treatment for straight white men.

I'm not demanding a world of open preferential treatment for straight white men. However the woke agenda is to give open preferential treatment to anybody but straight white men. As a straight white man myself I have a problem with that.
I do not have so called "white privilege". I'm not going to apologise for my skin colour and sexual orientation aligning with the majority of the UK male population. The slavery that was happening hundreds of years ago has nothing to do with me.
I've always treated everyone as individuals regardless of race, sexuality etc. That's good enough, anything beyond that is just virtue signaling.
As for Jim Rosenthal, the athlete herself said Jim Rosenthal is not racist and they laughed about it afterwards. Making a big thing about things like this just takes the attention away from genuine racism.

Take a step back, breathe, and think before posting.
No one is asking you to apologise for your skin colour, sexual orientation, or claim you are responsible for slavery. They *are* asking that you don't use the relatively fortunate position you're in to not discriminate, or humiliate, or otherwise make life miserable for others who don't share your skin colour or sexual orientation (whether this is through workplace "banter" or otherwise).
What you call the "woke agenda" is not about disadvantaging white men. DEI is about removing, or at the very least reducing the barriers still in the UK that mean being a straight white male gives you a substantial advantage in terms of opportunity over others. It's also DEI that makes discrimination against white men illegal, just as it makes discrimination against black women illegal.
This isn't virtue signaling, it's about general human decency and trying to make the world a better place for others less fortunate than ourselves. The unfortunate history of racism in the UK is that even the most basic progressive steps forward (such as prohibiting landlords from refusing black tenants, or stopping an employer from refusing to employ black workers) were bitterly opposed at the time by people claiming no racial prejudices even as they recited horrendously racist statements that make you wince reading them today.

Being a straight white male does not give you a substantial advantage in terms of opportunity. This is exactly the sort of attitude that gets people like Trump elected. There are lots of straight white men who are unemployed, or work hours on end at a dead end job to scrape enough money together to pay the rent. You cannot honestly say they have a substantial advantage because they are straight and white.
I have never made life miserable for others just generally speaking. What does make me and no doubt many others miserable now is having to walk on eggshells all the time in the workplace.

Ok my question is will the UK follow it? Are we going to show any sort of wisdom or experience as a country and refuse to follow them down this path? Or could it happen by the next election? I see worrying trends like the power the right has on social media, and growing disdain for rigorous debate and intellectualism. Fascism is said to go hand in hand with anti intellectualism.

I'm not demanding a world of open preferential treatment for straight white men. However the woke agenda is to give open preferential treatment to anybody but straight white men. As a straight white man myself I have a problem with that.
I do not have so called "white privilege". I'm not going to apologise for my skin colour and sexual orientation aligning with the majority of the UK male population. The slavery that was happening hundreds of years ago has nothing to do with me.
I've always treated everyone as individuals regardless of race, sexuality etc. That's good enough, anything beyond that is just virtue signaling.
As for Jim Rosenthal, the athlete herself said Jim Rosenthal is not racist and they laughed about it afterwards. Making a big thing about things like this just takes the attention away from genuine racism.

The UK has been left wing since John Major exited as PM. If you are of the belief that anything outside of New Lab New Con is Fascism then Im sorry, but the UK is heading towards the Libertarian Right.
Even most lefties from 2018, including myself have thrown in the towel and hopped through the Fascist window. Reason? The UK political class favours foreign labour and foreign belief systems over the native population and its own individual culture.
Reform has united the majority of Nationalists, Conservatives, Libertarians, Christians and Atheist thinkers into 1 broad group. We will end up have a Maga style Government without a doubt. The opposition will be along the lines of Jezza Corbyn and the TUSC.

I'm not saying Trump is the answer but you can only vote for who's standing. On one hand you had a candidate endorsed by countless woke celebrities who I despise and was just an extension of them really. On the other hand you had a candidate who upsets all these woke celebrities with everything he says. I know who I'd rather vote for.
I never trust anything the Guardian says, they represent everything that's wrong with modern society.
Which leads me on to a huge positive about Trump is scrapping net zero targets. Another big positive is scrapping DEI.