General Discussion for politics in the UK.
Please don't post to both [email protected] and [email protected] .
Pick the most appropriate, and put it there.
Posts should be related to UK-centric politics, and should be either a link to a reputable news source for news, or a text post on this community.
Opinion pieces are also allowed, provided they are not misleading/misrepresented/drivel, and have proper sources.
If you think "reputable news source" needs some definition, by all means start a meta thread. (These things should be publicly discussed)
Posts should be manually submitted, not by bot. Link titles should not be editorialised.
Disappointing comments will generally be left to fester in ratio, outright horrible comments will be removed.
Message the mods if you feel something really should be removed, or if a user seems to have a pattern of awful comments.
[email protected] appears to have vanished! We can still see cached content from this link, but goodbye I guess! :'(
I am in a safe Labour seat but I'll be voting Green. Labour lost my vote when they continued drifting to the right.
At the end of the day they need to win the election.
At this point I’d 100% take a shitty labour government that’s compromising, because it’s the first step to moving things back to the left.
If we had a better voting system then go for it, but I just think it’s silly for someone to waste a vote (if they aren’t in a safe seat).
because it’s the first step to moving things back to the left
How? If labour get in while acting like tories, what exactly is encouraging them to move back left?
Funnily enoguh I'm in a Labour safe seat and commented in another post my thiking on the vote:
I was gonna vote Green but they’re so non-existant in my constituency I may vote Lib Dem who are 4th. It’s a Labour safe seat so it’s not handing it to the Tories to vote my conscience. I’m Green economically but Lib Dem socially. Since Lib Dems are higher I’ll put my vote there.
If you're in a safe seat then by all means.
But I'll say to everyone here the same thing I say to Americans. Yous need to be pushing hard for a better electoral system. First past the post shouldn't qualify as democracy, in my opinion. It's just that bad. IRV is the bare minimum that should be acceptable. But ideally, you should push for some sort of proportional system like STV or MMP.
Electoral reform should be every intelligent voter's highest priority, because without it you'll always be stuck with the same two parties doing the same dull shit.
Shame neither party are actually offering electoral reform (and why would they - the current form works perfectly well, for them)
With the right pressure, I think Labour might be convinced. The Conservatives only got a majority at the last election because of FPTP. The two elections before that were even worse for the Conservatives' overall vote.
This is especially true if Labour is only able to govern in coalition with LibDems and SNP.
@DessertStorms @GreyShuck @Fudoshin @Zagorath
That's why I'm hoping that no party wins overall majority. PR is the only way things will change.
"Drifting to the right" relative to what? Corbyn?
To put it simply I'll point out on Political Compass that I'm in the lower left quadrant (left-libertarian). The parties that have consistently appeared there are Greens and, yes, Corbyn's Labour:
https://www.politicalcompass.org/uk2019
To give you an idea of how right-wing Labour really are check this older compass from back in 2010 - Labour and Conservatoives are barely any fucking different:
https://www.politicalcompass.org/ukparties2010
Labour of 2017 & 2019 offered a genuine change to the political landscape. That's now gone and Starmer has drifted back to neo-liberal authoritarianism. Th Greens are the only party offering what Labour used to offer.
There's no clearer example of the rightward shift of the Overton window than look at how policies have morphed over to the right in those graphics. Compare them to parties in other countries. You'll see that parties can exist and run a country in the left quadrants without an apocalypse.
The establishment eviscerated Corbyn massively because it rocked the boat far too much. Even the 'left wing' Guardian was found to be biased against him. London School of Economics did a great study into it: https://www.lse.ac.uk/media-and-communications/research/research-projects/representations-of-jeremy-corbyn
There's also a great video where they did vox pop interviews with members of the ublic asking if they liked "policy X". Huge amount of support for the policies but when they found out it was a Corbyn's Labour policy they blanched and changed their mind.
So scrap Corbyn - I don't care aboiut him personally. I do care about the Labour policies of that period though. They were a genuine fuckign change from the status quo.
I'm sure Starmers Labour will be better than the Tories but not by much. It will just be a slower decline rather than a change of direction.
Socially I'm more Lib Dem but economically I'm old Labour. Black Rose Labour (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_socialism)
If pushed, I'd also describe myself as libertarian socialist. Nice to have something in common!
Now, for the diagreements...
The central plank of Labour's economic policy from Gordon Brown to the present day has been to borrow for investment but not for day-to-day spending. That's consistently been the argument under Brown, Miliband, Corbyn and Starmer (and Harman, in the two interregnums). The differences after that are really just window dressing and changing with the times. A bit more Green stuff here; a bit more planning reform there. Starmer's current trade union policies are more pro-union than Corbyn's were, they're just dressed in a nice suit!
The Greens are, frankly, just dreadful. They are just a Green NIMBY party. They even oppose pro-environmental policies if they'll spoil some rich guy's view and that is a reflection of who they are as a party, in terms of their members and their financial backers.
We need to not get caught up in rhetoric and presentation. What we have is what we've always had: one party funded by trade unions and co-ops and a bunch of others funded by the wealthy. That's the key difference.
Thanks for your response which is much better than the tit who simply commented "Political Compass == Shit" with nothing to add.
The central plank of Labour’s economic policy from Gordon Brown to the present day has been to borrow for investment but not for day-to-day spending.
That may have been the case but not anymore that I can see. Why have Labour walked back and reversed all of their pledges on infrastructure spending (E.g. environment pledge, HS2, etc)? Because they just want to continue the same policies as the Tories but more competently.
The differences after that are really just window dressing and changing with the times.
If by chaning with the times you mean Starmer admitting we've got to carry on Tory policy because the country has no money - then yeah I guess. But that['s not "window dressing". Actually, no, it IS window dressing. It's a Tory wearing a red rose and tie. That's the window dressing.
I don't see Nordic-model social democracy here. I see Wes Streeting vowing to "open the door wide to the private sector". A policy that has been proven detrimental to the NHS since it was floated by Major and implemented by Blair.
Wes Streeting looks at Singapore as a model for the UK NHS. A country with great hospitals but it's also a low-tax, one-party dictatorship with eye-watering income inequality. That'd be like looking at North Korea's labour camps and saying we need to import their excellant work ethic.
Starmer’s current trade union policies are more pro-union than Corbyn’s were
I'm wondering if we're talking about the same Labour party. You mean Starmer who veto'd public support of the Unions? Starmer who sacked MPs for speaking on it or showing at pickets? I must admit I initially bought the bullshit he spouted about Labour needing to represent the whole country (business and unions) but seeing the suffering going on in the NHS and the shit doctors and nurses are going through - he's morally wrong. It's not about being a "party of government" it's about makign a moral stand for what's right. Something Starmer seems allergic to.
We need to not get caught up in rhetoric and presentation
I used to agree. I used to say Starmer is just saying what he needs to win. But I can't anymore after a year of him flip-flopping, reversals, transphobia, kissing corporate arse, banning open union support, party purges of anyone left of centre, Palestine, privatisationpolicy
You're absolutely right it's just window dressing - They're just competent Tories.
In fact there's actually Tories that are more left wing than current Labour. One Nation Tories like Theresa May wanted to have workers reps on company boards until it got shot down by all parties concerned. Heaven forbid we implement a policy that has worked well on the "Commie continent".
In a decade when the country is in a worse state people will scrabble around wondering who to vote for and their only choice will be - the same shits with a different coloured tie.
The Political Compass is a joke though.
Did you miss the bit where it says Labour were more right-wing than the BNP?
I'm a NZ citizen and left wing voter. UK Labour look hopelessly centrist to me. Corbyn was obviously more LW
Then those that don’t turnout can’t complain after the fact. “Sure, keep destroying my country!”
Which option doesn't keep destroying the country?
It isn't that they're "dull", it's that they offer the exact same bullshit and serve the same overlords, rather than the public.
This is deliberate of course, and trying to frame it as somehow the public's fault and not the systems' is gross propaganda.
Either way - we are not the US, and we do have the ability to vote "none" in protest.
DO.
vote against the conservatives. Why on earth would you want to risk another 4 years of this?
don't give in to apathy. the older conservative voters won't. it's always like this before an election. a concerted effort to increase apathy.
That's how you get stuck with shitty RW government. That said, Starmer IS dull and politically milquetoast
we don't need another rock star PM like Jonson.
I was referring more to his political timidity than his lack of charisma
I find it frustrating, too, but after we lost the by-election in Johnson's seat over the obviously good but controversial policy of the Ulez, I can totally understand the timidity. We literally lost an election as 'punishment' for a policy that made the air cleaner and raised money! It's completely ridiculous, but that's the world we live in.
why make too many proposals now. don't give your enemies something to pin on you.
If they get a good majority I firmly believe it will be for the better. they can implement things that will change the UK for the better.
13 years of austerity have destroyed the country.
once things are a bit better than we can put the Tories back in to sell off the progress to their mates again.
once things are a bit better than we can put the Tories back in to sell off the progress to their mates again.
UK politics in a nutshell! Maybe one day we'll break the cycle.
Agree that Labour will make things better. Got my hopes up for better employment law, planning reform (=more houses) and green investment. If we do get a bit of growth, we should see some health and education improvements, too.
What a fantastic election… You’d struggle to get a rizla between the gaps in their policy positions and both parties are supporting genocide in Gaza. Which means in this election your choice is: you get to pick the colour of tie of the guy who uses your taxes to support the massacre of civilians. Red or blue.
Great. Democracy in action. What an opportunity to steer the nation. I’m so motivated to go vote.
I think Curtice underestimates how much people want the Tories out, to be honest. I think we'll see high levels of tactical voting among people who want the Tories out, which is nearly everyone, and that will drive higher turnout.
EDIT: Just saw this, lot of it about in this thread:
“If Starmer wants to win a general election, then he’s going to have to compromise and do things that I might not like to appeal to a broader cross-section of voters. Now, that might lead to improvements in the lives of the majority of people and remove the worst government in living memory, but is that worth me having to put up with him not doing everything that I specifically want him [sic] from a Labour government? Not really.”
This is good. One of the reasons we get such shit governments is all the people just voting for the celebrity leader not thinking about the actual policy. If those people can't be bothered to turn out then we might get more of a percentage of votes coming from people that actually know what they are voting for.
Yay! That makes it even easier for the Tory party to get away with rampant breaches of election campaign laws - just like they have since 2009!!
This is why compulsory voting is so good!