This is opinion. So read it as such. But consider it please.
Obviously if you read this based on the title. I assume you oppose the Tories.
But if you are wondering why labour are so keen to manage expectations. There is a reason.
Campaign funding wise the Tories are estimated to be 19m ahead of labour. But honestly at the moment they are not spending a huge amount more.
We know the Tories are skilled at election manipulation. So there is genuine fear that the Tories plan to launch a campaign within the last few days.
I.E. when there is less time and funding to ensure fact checking is effective.
They know Starmer is more publicity aware then Corbyn was. He is able to play it in a way that dose not scare traditional Conservative voters.
They also know thanks to Boris, that the courts are unable to punish them for outright lies during any political campaign. And that Rishi is prepared to lie about and accuse civil servants of lying when challenged.
As huge as polling is against the Tories. All it would take is some dramatic claim against the party or Starmer. To convince Tory traditional voters to bite their tongue and vote Tory. While convincing left wing voters not to vote or to switch to 3rd party in seats where labour are the 1st or 2nd party.
The fact we know they have a huge amount of money unspent. Makes it clear they plan to launch something nearer the end of the election. And the only advantage of leaving it so late. Is it will limit the ability of the party to effectively react. Or fact checkers to be able to prove and distribute evidence of lies.
Please be prepared for this.
It’s just getting more and more difficult to feel okay voting Labour. I know splitting the left wing vote isn’t tactically smart, but voting for labour isn’t even a left wing vote anymore :(
(I’m still pro-tactical voting, I’m just doing it with more frustration than ever before)
There will literally be Tory trolls/bots pushing this narrative to split the Labour vote. Get the Tories out, then push Labour for PR, hard, to keep Tories out of unjust power.
This is the exact same problem in the United States and even Canada right now. It’s leading me to believe it’s the inevitable conclusion of a first past the post system.
FPTP has to go, but the further right the government, the hard it is to push them for it. A right Labour is better odds then any Conservative flavor, and it’s not like the Conservatives are moving left right now.
PR (well, some forms of it) is less bad than FPTP but it’s not a panacea. Most PR systems have the problem that they give disproportionate power to unprincipled centrist parties that can make or break coalitions, at the expense of parties with more distinct agendas. This can lead to situations where the centrists are always there, regardless of how the election went, like the Free Democrats in Germany for many years. So if you want the LibDems to hold the whip hand, go for PR, since that result is as inevitable as the emergence of two big parties under FPTP.
I’d enjoy that scenario as a Lib Dem member
What I wanted hasn’t been implemented.
I want Mixed Member PR (Germany and New Zealand have this), but with score/range voting instead.
I used to be a party member but left years ago when it got rough! Maybe getting back into politics more directly is the way to go: changing parties from within!
What do you think this looks like? Like, what, you’re gonna withhold your vote next time, letting a different party take advantage of FTPT, or vote for them anyway, because you’re still trying to keep the tories out of power?
There is absolutely no incentive for them to change the system while in power.
If the public mood is turned against PR and everywhere is calling it undemocratic and their government illegitimate, they may not feel they have a choice. Especially since their membership want it.
The media is largely right wing (because the rich are rightwing) and the right have been able to use FPTP to have unrepresentative governments for decades. But now, with the right split, all of a sudden FPTP might keep them out of power. So the wealthy may turn on FPTP too.
Damn, they may feel they don’t have a choice? Definitely sounds like you know what you’re talking about. We’ll just hope they feel like they have to do it, something that definitely has plenty of historical precedent. What actual physical actions are you thinking of taking that would make them feel they don’t have a choice?
Also confusing - when you talk about the right using FTPT for decades, are you thinking “since 2012” or “since 1708”? Because neither of those are time periods you’d measure in decades.
I follow a lot of politics, and grew up in a political family. But I’m just an interested bystander.
As right in power, even if you don’t include New Labour, it’s more Right government.
This shows the last 100 years (p12) https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-7529/CBP-7529.pdf
14 Conservative governments and 9 Labour
(I counted the two coalition governments as Tory due to them by the major party in the coalition)
Yet the majority of that time, progressives have been in the majority, but out of government because they are split over multiple parties. Plus a rightwing bias media placing a thumb on the scales as much as they can for the right.
I don’t know what questions you think you’re answering, but they aren’t mine.
We have used FTPT since the creation of the house of commons in 1708. It’s over 300 years of “the right [having] been able to use FPTP to have unrepresentative governments for decades”. That’s 30 decades, an unreasonable number to summarise as just decades. As a subpoint, [citation needed] on progressives being a majority - your file shows the Conservatives have averaged 40% of the vote for most of the last 100 years, with the Lib Dems taking another 10-20% most of the time, and 50-60% of the vote is definitely a majority before you start adding the conservative members of supposedly liberal parties like labour.
Secondly, nothing you said names a single actual action you’re willing to take to pressure Labour. If you were being realistic you’d have said something like mail bombing or arson, but you haven’t even said you’ll write an angry letter or something. There’s just this gap of thinking where they get into power, and then something vague happens that makes them do the right thing. Back in 2002/3 me and 36 million other people worldwide took to the streets protesting plans to invade Iraq. On the 15th of February the largest demonstration in history occured worldwide, with close to a million people marching in London alone. IT had absolutely no effect on government policy, with our nominally progressive government throwing their full support behind the invasion, so what are you going to do this time that will actually effect change?
Are you saying you think FPTP has delivered representative Parliament?
As for action, I bash FPTP every chance I get, including here on Lemmy. But also Reddit (less now), Mastadon and Twitter. I do write into some of the main stream political podcasts I listen to. I voted for AV. Though I don’t think large marches have a good history in recently. With Iraq and Brexit being examples. But I’d join a voting change one anyway.
But when voting under FPTP my priority is get the Torys out. Anyway trying to convince people not to prioritize that I think are actually pro-Tory.
What? Are you actually reading what I’m writing? How did you get this idea from what I said?
So you say that you don’t like FPTP, especially on niche internet communities, and write in to podcasts. Could you explain to me how these influence the actual Labour Party? Like I used the example of an angry letter as a joke about completely ineffectual action, but you’re genuinely suggesting that writing an angry letter to someone with no connection to the Labour Party is action.
oh god i’m gonna
You really are a parody of liberal activism.
Well it would be nice if there was anything left of the left in UK labour. At the moment all you got is a transphobic piece of shit that is just slightly left on economic issues.
Yall really gotta get better to scrub off the stain of the currently accurate description of being TERF island.
And of course I am painfully selfaware that I am saying this from America where our choices are between two genocidal fascists credibly accused of SA
Tactical voting ourselves right into death camps is not the strategy you think it is.
Almost everyone hates FPTP, and we know it sucks, but unfortunately, tactical voting is a realistic option for most areas in the UK. I’m personally very likely to vote Green (or lib dem) as I’m in a safe Labour seat, and I won’t conscionably vote Labour for a myriad of reasons (including being trans), but it’s a bigger priority to get the Tories out than anything else right now.
More optimistically though: voting is one part of a large variety of things people can do to influence politics. Protests, voting locally, working with local and bigger organisations, writing to MPs, donating to causes we care about, etc. can all help offset the feeling of having to vote for a party you hate slightly-less than the worse one.
I AM BEGGING YOU TO FUCKING DO MORE THAN VOTING AND STOP THINKING THAT VOTING IS GOING TO DO ANYTHING HOLY SHIT MAN.
I HATE that you fuckin libs think that politics ends at the ballot box and then when I say this this motherfucker makes up a strawman about me advocating political assassination.
You people are fucking useless.
Please try to calm down a bit mate.
We can appreciate your frustration: It is not a fun situation when the main options for the government both support the horrible things happening in the Middle East.
I can promise you, we don’t enjoy it either. People choose to vote tactically to put the most pressure on the lesser of two evils, and avoid an even more questionable result (CON+REF+DUP coalition, anyone?)
Hopefully, one day we can see AV coming into practice. And we can see MPs better representing the votes of the nation.
And until then, we can continue to put pressure on bad situations, via the small parties, via protest. But not by cutting off our noses to spite our faces.
Please be civil with people on feddit.uk. Shouting is not civil.
I will try to respect your rules better but I fundamentally disagree with civility/tone policing when it comes to literal genocide and people advocating voting for people facilitating said genocide.
Like I said before I got heated and that person strawmanned me saying I was advocating political assassinations. There is a world of action that needs to be taken outside of electoralism and focusing on elections and voting is something I feel is a distraction from What Is To Be Done.
Its reasonable to be angry at world politics right now (I don’t know many people who aren’t) but you can be a good leftist and be kind at the same time.
So I agree: it is an unproductive distraction to start beef on the internet about voting and elections. We both want the same things:
Why not share stuff like: https://linktr.ee/opolivebranch instead of getting into the weeds with strangers
Yeah you’re not wrong but the whole OP was about voting as harm reduction which I fundamentally disagree with.
Paraphrasing Matt Christman.
In short by holding dear to these liberal institutions we are inadvertantly accelerating the rise of fascism.
That sucks. What can we practically do about it?
Literally half of their goddamn comment is about doing other stuff. You’re all over this thread getting mad at people for voting because you’ve just made up that that’s the only thing they do.
On that domain they are a bunch of lunatics over there
And which party with any electoral chance is sound on trans issues? Neither? So now you have a choice: vote on a single issue when you know the party you’re voting for has no hope, or take the less bad alternative and try to work from there.
Yeah, right, because Biden and Trump are exactly the same. /s
Anyway, where’s the “credible” accusation of sexual assault against Biden? Laughed out of court for not being credible. And against Trump? A civil finding that he did commit SA, and in any state but New York, it would have been rape.
This all smells like encouraging voters to stay home because “both sides.” And that favours the party with the more fanatical base. Seems to me a more likely way to get death camps than Starmer getting in.
Not going to throw my trans comrades under the bus for political convience, and to vote for a center right liberal party.
God you people have a one track mind. No I am begging people to take more action (and responsibility) than just going to the voting booth once every 2, 4, 6 years etc.
Join a revolutionary party, join a mutual aid organization, volunteer whatever free time you can to actually doing something about issues you claim to care so dearly about. Maybe if you are of the privileged demographics put your body on the line to defend those targeted by state and or fascist violence.
Stop pretending like the only politics is liberal bourgeois democracy ffs. It’s sooooo god damn tiring.
And sure vote if you want to but stop blaming the people for reasonably checking out of this broken system while still doing the more important work of direct action for not endorsing literal genocide.
Like it or not that is materially what your vote does. It endorses the policies of the person you voted for. All of them.
Pretty sure that represents the labour lead atm. Def folks wanting to vote against tories rather then for labour. Unfortunately it also leave the Tories with an open attack vector. They just need to time the right attack to dramatically split the left vote in Lab seats where they are still 2nd.
Why? The Tories are barreling towards literal fascism, anything that will stop that is good. Could Labourbe better, absolutely, but it is not worth falling into what America has become just to spite them for being centralist and unambitious.
Some of Labour’s recent policies (and stances on Palestine, trans people, etc) are scary and harmful. It’s emotionally hard having to vote for a party that has spoken about removing your rights.
Pragmatically though: I know voting Labour will still shift things towards being better, even if that “better” is way worse than I wanted, and I would never begrudge anyone for voting for them. There’s always more we can do in-between elections anyway
Edit: This is rambly and long and probably wrong, it’s not worth anyone’s time to read. Sorry.
I’m not trying to persuade you to vote Labour (I’m not voting them), but isn’t their current trans policy a slight improvement over now? Only needing approval and a diagnosis of dysphoria from one doctor, not having to live openly as your preferred gender for two years.
Its still not remotely good enough, and will continue to see people die, but hopefully fewer people. Its a tiny little crumb. Like, the UK is transphobic to a shocking extent. And it would be good if the supposedly left-wing party properly stood for minority rights, instead of being bellends on refugees and trans people.
To be honest, this isn’t even really directed at you, I’m mainly just talking it through for myself, a proud socialist questioning my gender. Sorry.
Tories have been trying to fight this election on immigration and trans people, as a replacement for their Boris and Brexit campaign in 2019 that beat Corbyn. Starmer has seemingly been trying to avoid giving them any ammo in this regard.
But Labour has a massive lead in the polls, even if it took a 5% hit by properly defending trans people, it could easily afford it, rather than making the climate even more unsafe. Maybe this policy is a tiny step towards that?
I’ve always maintained that even voting for the lesser of two evils is the least you can do, basic harm reduction, while then protesting and direct action and everything else on any other day.
But with Labour so far ahead, how important is it that they win every Tory marginal? But what matters more, stopping Labour from having the biggest majority ever, or pushing the Tories into 3rd? And every seat Labour takes from the Tories pushes them closer to the LibDems.
I saw Richard Drax predicted to lose Dorset South for the first time, and that filled me with such joy that I wouldn’t even care if he lost it to Starmer himself. Fuck the Tories.
The rivers and the oceans are full of actual shit.
I don’t know. I don’t know what I’d vote in a predicted Tory-Labour marginal. Thankfully I live in a Labour safe seat and am free to campaign and vote with my conscience.
No need to apologise, I agree :)
I’m also in a labour safe seat, and grateful I can vote my conscience, I’m just sad other people aren’t so fortunate. Labour are saying some tiring stuff now to win over the Conservative voter base: it’s the one time where I hope that politicians lie. Let’s hope that Labour uses their win for good things, as they’ve promised in previous years.
May we all get to vote for more positive things within the next decade 💚
They are arguing for segregation of trans people on hospital wards, are meeting with JK rowling to ‘discuss concerns’ today and are seeking to ban ‘trans ideology’ from schools.