WTF won't Labour, Lib Dems (& potentially the Greens) endorse tactical voting?

But my point is that the Labour assumption that a Lib Dem voter would do anything to facilitate an overall Labour win, simply because Labour aren’t the Tories, isn’t necessarily an accurate one.

Plenty of Lib Dem/Green/SNP voters don’t want a Labour government either, or else they would just cut out the middleman and vote Labour. So tactical voting doesn’t hold any appeal for them. But there is this attitude among Labour voters that Lib Dem voters are “letting the side down” by not voting Labour, even though we saw in coalition that if anything, Lib Dems actually cosy up very nicely with the Tories, not with Labour.

I don't think you can force engagement. Turnout at general elections was never lower than 71% between the First World War and the millennium, but has averaged below 65% since. We need to investigate that first before we start telling people they have to vote or else.

none of the above that should say!

I think mandatory voting is good. It removes the apathy, the "it's not my fault I didn't vote". It sounds as though it works well in Australia. I don't know if you need a ' one of the above' or people can spoil their ballot, but at least most people would actually go to the ballot box, and there may well be fewer safe seats.
I wouldn't ever not vote, but I have spoilt my ballot once and I can see myself doing it again.

Agree, I think both major parties wanted the ULEZ extended and personally I think it's a good idea, even if it was introduced by a Tory mayor.

There are fringe areas within the boundaries of outer London boroughs such as Bexley, Chingford, Feltham and Uxbridge that have more in common with the surrounding Home Counties. Not because they are genteel (Uxbridge isn't) or white (Feltham isn't) but because of the low housing density and limited availability of trains and tubes. There are buses but they go to other local destinations, not Trafalgar Square.

No-one ordered Sadiq Khan to incorporate these places in the ULEZ. Other arrangements could have been made. I think he made the wrong call, Kier Starmer thinks he made the wrong call, and it seems like the Uxbridge electorate think he made the wrong call.

This is an interesting article on Starmer and Khan. It also highlights the fact that Starmer doesn't like any MP or Mayor going off message. The northern mayors clashed with Starmer a couple of weeks ago and everything suggests that he no longer supports regional mayors and local democracy. The more I see of Starmer, the less I like it and I don't know what the current Labour Party is for. If he can't support women, won't reverse the 2 child policy to bring children out of poverty, and won't trust local politicians to know the best way to implement policy I do worry there will be little to no difference between the Tories and Labour. I am absolutely not a Corbynite and I understand Starmer wants to be seen as solid and sensible to get elected but at this rate he will get the Tory votes and lose the Labour ones.

www.onlondon.co.uk/jack-brown-starmers-response-to-the-uxbridge-result-is-wrong-in-more-ways-than-one/

It clearly wasn't an order to extend it to Uxbridge but nevertheless, was presented to me as a gotcha

It clearly wasn’t an order to extend it everywhere except Uxbridge either.

I got told off by the same poster who laid into you for suggesting that voters in Uxbridge and South Ruislip had been swayed by the Labour mayor of London extending the ULEZ to their area, which is classically suburban in nature.

I was WRONG because it was apparently the Tories who insisted on this and poor old Sadiq Khan had to carry the can. As proof, they quoted a letter to him from the ministry of Transport asking for "proposals to extend the scope of the ULEZ". It clearly wasn't an order to extend it to Uxbridge but nevertheless, was presented to me as a gotcha.

I still refuse to believe that political parties are paying daft buggers to argue anonymously on discussion boards late into the evening.

I disagree. Labour voters in the West Country are likely to vote LibDem in droves in the next GE having seen how successful a tactic it was on Thursday. Tactical voting means exactly that - a vote for whichever party is most likely to prevent a Tory victory in a given seat.

There was a good comment in the Guardian comments section yesterday. I can’t be bothered hunting for it, but the gist was that when many Labour voters suggest other people tactically vote, what they actually mean is “you guys should see the light and vote for the correct party”.

Even though I am a Labour voter myself, I can sense a definite whiff of that from many of my fellow Labour voters, and I can see it would be pretty off-putting

It’s miles away from yours. At no point does he suggest that electoral success in Selby or Frome was due to Tories staying at home. His predictions - opposed to his analysis - aren’t very accurate. He predicted last week that both Selby and Frome would be close run and the Tories might hang on in Selby by the skin of their teeth.

Sorry, all I got from your post was “I, I. I. Me, me, me”. You’d think an adult would realise that people vote differently for a variety of reasons.

I am a single-issue, tactical voter. Have been for about a decade. I am in Scotland, my main aim is voting for whoever is best placed to give the SNP a kicking. That might be Labour, COnservative or Lib Dem depending on whether it's a general election or Scottish parliament election.

I don't agree with everything any party says and certainly don't agree with the Lib Dem stance on sex/gender. But the independence issue is more important at present.

Prof Curtice's analysis is not far from mine:

“Both our two biggest party leaders have been left with something to think about.”

"Labour must ask why its hold on voters is apparently so weak"
"The Tories still have an awful long way to go before they look as if they might have a chance of being able to retain power”.
“The Labour Party should be the largest party in the next parliament”.
He predicted that Labour would win 312 seats meaning it would be 14 short of an overall majority. The Conservatives would win 226 seats.

You must not know anyone who works in education or health care then.

I agree. The only time I ever hear or read gender-critical views is on here. Among my friends, family and colleagues it's simply not an issue.

1. Because it's an admission that you can't win - it's essentially defeatist.
2. There aren't that many seats where it would make a difference.
3. People don't like being told how to vote, or other people interfering in the democratic process. You risk the danger of emboldening the Tory vote.

And if you think about it a bit more, it's a hard sell. In most cases you're appealing to third-placed LibDem voters to switch to Labour in the cause of unseating a Conservative. The LibDems are already the smallest main party so you're inviting them to vote themselves out of existence. People who vote LibDem presumably prefer their policies to Labour's.

The Labour vote is already more efficiently distributed (in terms of fewer 'lost' votes) so their failure to win reflects the quality of their offering. You're trying to find excuses for a party that's failed badly in the past. And your solution is to move the goalposts rather than address their failings.

And don't fall for the PR nonsense. It's an open invitation to the extremists and populists who are firmly locked out under FPTP.

Surely all it takes for Labour to win is for Tory voters to stay home. Which they are doing in droves. The Tories haven’t helped themselves by requiring voter ID at the polling station; lots of pensioners didn’t have a driving licence/passport.

We need some type of electoral reform, when the Lib Dems get nearly as many votes as the SNP but have 1/10 the number of seats then the system is broken.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/tories-labour-byelection-results-uxbridge-selby-b2379395.html

That’s not John Curtice’s analysis. I think his is rather more reliable.

There do seem to be a couple of pp with low grounds for making any sort of point.

The ‘weird fuckers’ one and ‘shill’ poster

For the latter it’s a shame some get invested enough to follow posters on mn around with personal insults.

I’ve had some in the past but happily they all buggered off, looks like the Hannibal poster is more committed. Lucky me.

Sidebar - Does it annoy anyone else that three new MPs are being paid their £86,584 salary from today, when Parliament will only sit for 2 weeks between now and 16th October?

Firstly I acknowledge that by election turnout is normally lower than in a general election, but there was massive tactical voting in these three by elections.

In Selby the Lib Dems lost over 75% of the votes they received in 2019. The increase in Labour votes was lower than the Lib Dems lost.

In Frome, Labour lost 88% of the votes they received in 2019, and only half of these votes were picked up by the Lib Dems.

In Uxbridge, Labour lost 25% of the votes they received in 2019, and Lib Dems lost 82%.

The only performance that was actually good was by the Lib Dems in Frome. Both Labour and Conservative parties performed poorly, but they will never acknowledge this in public.

By far the biggest factor in all three by elections was the number of 2019 Tory voters who stayed at home and didn't vote, one reason being that whatever happened, the Tories would still have a massive majority in Parliament. In Selby, Labour are boasting about overturning a 20,000 Tory majority, but they didn't persuade these Tory voters to vote Labour, the Tory voters stayed at home, and Labour picked up enough Lib Dems tactical voters to scrape over the line.

Many are thinking that Labour are on course to comfortably win the next general election, but they face a massive task to persuade those who voted Tory last time to switch to Labour (or stay at home) and these by elections show there is little sign of them achieving this. The best news for Labour has been the self inflicted implosion of the SNP, but I still think that no party will achieve an overall majority in the next election.