to point out that tory voters are far from being in the majority

[IceBeing]

to the labour party...because they seem to have forgotten.

24.4% of the eligible population voted tory in the last election. At less than 1 in 4, tory voters are a long long way from being in the majority.

Why the hell would labour go after those voters rather than the biggest section of potential voters...the 33.9% who found nothing in politics worth voting for?

[ssd]

hope DC reads your thread title

[IceBeing]

just getting sick of all the 'we have to listen to the voters' shit. Listen to the population....many of which stopped voting labour when it became tory-lite in the first place....

[TTWK]

OP, if the party you support had won the election, you'd be claiming you had a clear mandate from the electorate to pursue the policies in your manifesto.

I'm not a tory, but there's a lot of hypocrisy in all this bleating about the percentages of their overall support.

They won, and won comfortably. More people who bothered to vote want this than the agenda of any other single party. Deal with it!

[PanGalaticGargleBlaster]

OP, you do understand that in this country we have a First Past the Post electorial system don't you? That it is impossible under that system to get an outright majority victory result? The highest post war result was 49.7% by the Conservatives in 1955! Did you complain when Tony Blair was elected with 35% of the vote in 2005? If you dont like the system, fine, campaign for PR, but until that point accept the system we have and stop throwing your toys out the pram when your 'team' loses.

[MNpostingbot]

how many months on are we, you lost, and miserably.

You should be more concerned why over 50% of your beloved labour MPs are supporting the welfare reforms. If you own MPs are voting Tory it doesn't really matter who the public votes for.

[AnnoyedParent22]

I don't think the OP is 'throwing her toys out of the pram because her team loses'

What a ridiculous and dismissive thing to write.

FWIW OP I agree with you that Labour needs to stop pursuing the Tory voters who probably won't change their mind set anyway but rather focus on those who felt that neither party spoke for them.

[AnnoyedParent22]

Well MNpostingbot many people are still horrified that your beloved Tory party won the election.

We'll get over it in our own time thanks.

Meanwhile why don't you tootle off and start your own thread proclaiming the utter brilliance of DC and co and what a wonderful decision you made in voting for them.

[Coffeethrowtrampbitch]

I too don't think the op is having a dig at the Tories, she is pointing out that Labour pursuing Tory votes is futile.
Most people who voted Tory either agreed with austerity, and believe Labour can't manage the economy, or dislike UKIP policy and voted Tory to keep them out.

Neither of these groups are likely to change their mind and vote Labour, but the third of the population who did not vote at all may vote Labour, and the party would be better to direct their attention to them before the next election, rather than spouting right wing policies and supporting austerity and cuts. That is only going to impress existing Tory voters and they are probably going to be more impressed by the fact that the Tories have carried them out than Labour saying they would do the same.

Moving radically to the right suited Labour when they were in power, as all the Tories could do was agree, and they looked powerless and ineffectual. Now it's the other way round, but Labour could try going back to their traditional left wing roots, an option the Tories didn't really have, and reclaim some of that demographic, who currently have no one to vote for in England who represent their views. It has worked well for the SNP in Scotland, they have no Ed to the left radically I'm the last fifteen years and their support has grown enormously as a result.

[Coffeethrowtrampbitch]

'no Ed' - moved, sorry.

[MNpostingbot]

Annoyed parent. Yes many people are horrified, just not as many people who are satisfied. That's democracy for you, why don't you "tootle off" to North korea if you dont fancy democracy.

[PanGalaticGargleBlaster]

The thing is Annoyed, it seems to be every week that some labour/left supporter insists on starting threads pointing out the % of the electorate who voted Conservative while making some feeble point about Cameron not having a majority or a mandate to rule. These threads always conveniently ignore the fact that previous Labour governments have been elected to power on a lesser share of the vote while simultaneously utterly failing to grasp the mechanics of the FPTP system.

Its getting very tedious

[MNpostingbot]

Hear hear pan

[8angle]

The problem is that decisions are made by people who show up and if close to 34% of the population can't be bothered to vote, then the parties can only look at those who did vote.

There also is an assumption that the 34% who don't vote are a left wing caucus just waiting for the right leader to bring them to the promised land, when there is no evidence for this, in fact if we had had PR at this election then the Government would have been a right wing coalition of Conservative, UKIP and DUP.

The Government have a legitimate majority under our voting system and democracy - a democracy that a significant portion of the global population envy, and often try to emulate.

We had a vote on an alternative system - AV, this was voted against.

Labor had well over a decade in power with a large majority and did nothing to reform the voting system.

Constantly complaining that "it's not fair!" is boring and achieves nothing. What would be good would be a viable and strong opposition, with clear beliefs and a real alternative vision for the future. Constructive opposition, that openly discussed Government policies supported the ones they felt were a good idea and opposed ones they felt were bad. The constant bickering inside the Labour party right now, is not engaging people in the political process - in fact it is doing just the opposite.

We NEED politicians who have a vision and are not afraid to express it, argue for it, defend it and most importantly stand by it. This might engage people in the process - if they can clearly understand what politicians stand for they can make a decision whether or not to support them.

Apologies for the long rant - once i started it just kept going!

[TroubleinDaFamily]

Nuff said.

[MNpostingbot]

Good rant. Despite an earlier reply the tories are not beloved to me, they are simply the best option. In my opinion they offered the lowest possibility of UK sliding back into economic decline. If there was an alternative, I'd seriously consider it, there isn't.

[OTheHugeManatee]

I will be very interested to see what happens if Labour moves significantly to the left, for example under Corbyn. There seem to be two views on this: one says that if it happens Labour will be unelectable for a decade, like in the Michael Foot years, and the other says that if it happens Labour will come roaring back in with the popular support they've been lacking for some time.

I'm not sure which is which, especially as I'm not really a Labour voter. I'd be interested to see them try though. It would shake things up, and I think things need shaking up. British politics has for some time been frozen in the grip of a consensus that basically takes it as read that a certain set of things (capitalism, globalisation, EU membership, a certain level of welfare spending etc) are not up for discussion or challenge, and so the field on which politics can happen is quite a narrow one that's really just about tinkering round the edges. This contributes to the sense you get from, say, debates between Blairite Labour MPs and Cameroonite Tories that there's barely a gnat's crotchet between the parties.

What's interesting about figures such as Nigel Farage, and now Jeremy Corbyn, is that they're speaking for a growing body of people in the country who've been 'left behind' by the forces of globalisation etc and are now protesting that their voices aren't being heard and wanting to see things change. Corbyn and Farage might have different ideas about how to fix things (leave the EU, nationalise everything, whatever) but they speak for a significant and I think growing number of people. They're interesting because they do or say things that violate the unspoken consensus about the things it's ok to debate in politics, with predictably violent repercussions in the mainstream media. Witness the frothing recently in the Telegraph etc about some of the organisations Corbyn is believed to associate with, or the frothing last year about things Farage supposedly says or believes.

Increasingly, I think the big political debate isn't between Left and Right, but between the elitists (or technocrats, if you like - the ones in bed with big business and the global elite) and the populists - people who want to see popular politics, and populist ideas, having a voice in the political sphere.

[silveroldie2]

I don't give a fuck as long as the Conservatives are in power, AND with a majority. Long may it continue.

[LuisSuarezTeeth]

Why not answer OP's question instead of all the gleeful "we won" shit?

[Spartans]

Ffs so fed up of this argument. The Tories won the majority they needed. People who didn't vote, don't count. All this 'if you take the population as a whole' argument doesn't work as no one knows who they would have voted for.

They won. Do I like it? No, not really. But they won. The technicalities don't actually matter

[mollie123]

well said pan and bot - sorry too lazy to insert full names
have been fighting a losing battle re these same sentiments over on gransnet - have you ever been bullied by a bunch of leftie grannies - it is not pleasant

[IceBeing]

wow - I am NOT a labour supporter...sorry so many people seem to think:

problem with electoral system not representing population = labour supporter.

[IceBeing]

God - whatever this is, it sure AINT democracy.

No way in hell this is democracy.

Party politics =/=democracy.

Hope that is clear....

Still definitely NOT a labour supporter.

[AnnoyedParent22]

Yes Luis, exactly.

Except of course some of the Tory posters on this thread haven't seemed to have grasped that.

Oh well.

[IceBeing]

Ffs so fed up of this argument. The Tories won the majority they needed. People who didn't vote, don't count. (and others)

they didn't even get a majority (or close to it) of those that turned up though!

they got 36.9% of the votes of those that voted.

That isn't a majority is it?

[8angle]

Firstly why do you say the Labour party aren't going after the 33.9%? by saying that they are going after the Tory voters and not the 33.9% of non voters you are implying these non voters are looking for a left wing option - and there is no evidence of this.

If it is the case that they are going after the current Tory voters then it is probably because a lot of these people voted Labour last time Labour won so they know they are "in play", who knows if someone who has never voted before is suddenly going to get involved.