Honestly, I think I'd respect Starmer more if he genuinely believed in anything, but he's just saying whatever is the most politically prudent. He's not even being consistent. I believe that once they aren't scared of the Tories getting back in, they will ease off on the right wing nonsense.
Once they are in the ghouls round Starmer will be saying “the only way to maintain power is to keep the right wing press at bay, keep punching left and drifting right”
The only way Starmer becomes more progressive is if the polls start to show his grip on power failing to the left flank.
Nah, labour are going to win. The best strategy is the one that means labour feel they’ve done worse than expected &can see a quantifiable number of votes lost to more progressive offers from smaller parties/progressives
I loathe the Tories, but whether they have 50 or 150 MPs is not that important
Like I have said, if your conscience allows it (and I know many who it doesn’t) if it is between Labour and Tory in your constituency, vote Labour, but if there is a better party or labour in a two horse race with no risk of Tory, try to get a better opposition.
So consider Brighton, green seat, by all accounts will still be green because they have a clear lead over even Labour and tories are in 3rd/4th. Why vote Labour there? Would you prefer a green MP or for Labour to have 300 seats as opposed to 299?
My ideal is for labour to do not as well as expected but for all losses to be to parties who aren’t Tory/reform (or obviously not Galloway’s mob) They will still say their right wing route was correct but there is more chance of reform than an absolute wipeout.
We have an even spread of candidates where I am, but it will very much be either Labour, Tory, or Reform winning. Either way, I am way more concerned with who is running the country than who is running my little part of the world.
There is a very real risk that a lacklustre labour that spends five years not taking on and defeating right wing talking points will enable a greater drift toward that fascist country in time for the next election.
*gestures vaguely at everywhere currently run by liberal centrists…
That's true, but I hope a strong Labour majority might stop them panicking so much about losing the right wing vote and some of them might return to their actual principles.
Experience of the Blair government says that is not going to happen. What a massive majority will tell them is that courting the right is the only way to stay in power and the left will follow no matter what (basically Labour policies for most of the last 20 years).
They have kicked out 99% of anyone with principals. Hell they were outflanked on the left by the SNP for nearly 20 years and they haven’t changed a damn thing, the strategy was wait for the SNP to wear out and the left will have to come back to offer votes but nothing else.
I would argue the Labour if it is Labour/tory but weakening the Labour majority is that. Unless polling is off in a way that basically means it is useless the “because Labour don’t win all the seats a Tory/reform coalition gets in” just isn’t on the cards
Now obviously Labour are very keen for people to believe it is because they really don’t want their left to look at better options. Hence why Starmer has now decided FPTP is great actually. You have Tory or Tory and you better not vote someone else or the Torys get in
I don't think it is on the cards, but if enough people decide to erode the Labour majority then it might be on the cards. I don't want to even remotely risk Reform pulling something. I think I've just given up on the possibility that one election is going to fix the damage that's been done.
I would say the Lib-dems would disagree. And by that argument we shouldn’t worry about reform. Remember it is constituency that matters in FPTP, national percentages are largely irrelevant (Don’t think there has been a government with 50% nationally in 20 years)…
Exactly why Labour is suddenly for it, but the value of unifying the vote behind one party is that none of these technicalities will be able to pull any bullshit. FPTP makes it more important to get Labour as many seats as possible to ensure no-one else can kick the country while it's down.
Sorry that doesn’t make sense, the only question this election is how big a majority Labour will get. We already know they will use a massive majority to do pretty much what the tories are doing now, can’t really see how not giving Labour all the seats stops bad things happening?
For my money, no party should ever have a big majority. There should always be an element of cross party cooperation. Despite the tories changing many rules to make it not the case government is more than parliament and a mix of parties means more at committee stages etc.
That's the point. I think you're coming at this from an idealist viewpoint as if things are still rational. I feel like they're irrevocably fucked and protection from immediate fascism is the best we can hope for right now.
I’d argue you are coming at this because Labour aren’t protection from imminent fascism. The only way to change Labour at all (experience tells me it won’t) is to show the left vote is going elsewhere. In an election this clear cut it is the best time to show them.
Did the rest of the party say “we think Corbin is too left wing but we have to back him or we get Boris fucking Johnson” no, they briefed against their own leader and gave us this shit show. It is the people in charge of the party that delivered a Tory Majority.
The last election was a knife edge and the people who are now telling us we must deliver Labour and only Labour couldn’t bring themselves to vote Labour when they didn’t like the guy in charge. Oddly enough I’m not really willing to take “vote Labour or we are all doomed from them now”
MPs are all shit. They will move parties to wherever gives them a good expense account. Voting on principle isn't going to work as no-one in government has principles. Keeping out open fascists and the incompetent is all we can hope for.
This is the time to strike a killing blow to the Tories and block Reform. Sending a message to Labour is secondary. Not to mention, people aren't voting left because they're more left. They're voting left because the Tories are shit. Labour voters going Lib Dem will make them court the right.
Whatever ya'll are trying to achieve how you vote has to depend on the individual possibilities in your constituency.
stopthetories.vote/keyseats is our attempt at looking where voters can get Tories into 3rd behind the Lib Dems.
It doesn't. I don't think we can stop our country sliding right. That's very intentional. However, right now, the less power the Tories and Reform have, the better, and spreading the seats among a range of parties gives them lots of small opponents instead of one big one.
You assume Labour are an opponent. I don’t see it, they agree with tories and reform more than disagree. The left wing remaining in labour have no ability to change things.
