To think it's not a foregone conclusion that Labour will win the next election?

Education secretary should be someone who has actually taught in a state school and understands the system....

Estelle Morris though she resigned - she also said she felt she had more influence as junior education secretary - which tallies for me with things Rory Stewart said in interview with Mary Beard about how ministries they have to rely on others to get things done and they can feel powerless and ineffectual at top.

I always vote Labour and live in a huge Labour stronghold. This is the first time in my life I've been conflicted. I would never vote conservative; their policies have decimated our area and Lib Dem's are a joke. But my Labour mp didn't even vote in the recent call for a ceasefire in Gaza and their cowardly attitude towards that and their wishy wishy approach to protecting single sex speared have made me unable to vote for Labour too.

Im honestly not sure what I'm going to do but I knew Labour was fucked when a Tory got into Blyth valley. I truly never thought I'd see the day.

@pacora I share your view, but I can't bring myself to vote Tory, and the other parties all have dodgy views on basic women's rights.

To abstain or spoil my ballot paper is a failure. I'm hoping a decent independent stands locally but if not, I have no idea who I will vote for.

There's never guarantees and labour tend to perform less well than predicted. I share similar concerns to others about labour but I still think tories are worse so hope that change does happen

I think part of the problem is that politics has become so toxic, fewer people want to go into it

Absolutely. This is one of the reasons why I think that Boris has been so damaging to UK politics, because he was SO dodgy, and openly so - yet the electorate seemed to lap it up. Hes pretty much destroyed politics, because everyone is tarred with the same brush now. It begs the question, do you have to be a dodgy person to go into politics, or does politics make you dodgy?

I saw Arnold Schwarzenegger speaking on his book tour, he was saying that the one thing he always remembered was that he wasn't just the governor for republican Californians, he was the governor for Democrat Californians as well. He knew that there are certain things that should never be politicised (e.g healthcare, climate change, education) - they are things that should always be a priority and it was his job to find the best way to compromise and meet everyone's objectives. Its hard to argue with that point of view.

What I think should be policy in an ideal world is that someone should only be able to be a minister, if they have experience in that area. EG, for the Health secretary job, it should be someone like Dan Poulter, who is a practicing doctor still working in the NHS, or someone like Emma Lewell Buck who used to be a social worker...

Education secretary should be someone who has actually taught in a state school and understands the system....

But that will never happen.

No woman should be voting for Labour. They will destroy all our rights as the female sex. Children will be greatly damaged.

No and a lot can happen before a general election is called and during election campaign.

They have been ahead in polls for a long time now - which given how crap the current Tory are isn't hard - whether that actually translates to people going out to vote is different though.

Low turn out could mean other parties could do better - though biggest other party is SNP and they have their own problems.

No it isn’t, but the Tories have a huge amount of ground to make up if they’re going to have a chance.

I won’t vote Labour either but ‘better the devil you know’ is a weird attitude to take towards the tories if human rights are your concern! You would be far better to vote green if you want to register a protest vote against our two shitty predominating parties.

I think Starmer's stance on Gaza is likely to make his job harder because it is likely to disaffect the U.K. Muslim voters.

Whether it is enough to swing the election back to the Tories, I'm not sure, but probably reduce his majority.

I will vote for whoever is most likely to beat the tories in my constituency. Which won’t be Labour.

I think part of the problem is that politics has become so toxic, fewer people want to go into it

Fully agree. Just look at Tim Farron, an excellent MP for South Lakeland. He became leader of the libdems but was hounded out because of his personal religious views. That's a massive loss for the Libdems as he'd have been a popular leader and would have drawn in voters in a GE, just like Clegg did. Instead, most voters don't even know the name of the libdem leader and wouldn't recognise him in a line up, so they're no chance at all of being any kind of influence in the next GE. People thinking they may be part of a coalition are deluded - they'll be lucky to get a dozen seats with an invisible leader. Had Tim Farron stayed, they'd probably be looking at 50-100 seats.

'and at least with the Tories its "better the devil you know" and not Labour pretending they give a shit about people/human rights.'

The situation in Israel-Gaza will be settled at an international level - it's way beyond how people feel in the U.K. Tragic but true.

The U.K. is a very, very minor player in this. Especially since we left the EU & therefore can't sway a large power bloc.

Making this the issue that decides your GE vote seems baffling to me.

And 'better the devil you know'? The defeatism of that statement is mind-blowing.
Handing 5 more years to a Party that is now at war with itself, torn between a faction hell-bent on a right-wing agenda & those trying to put a brake on that because it's destroying the U.K. ... that is ignoring material reality.

This shambolic government have absolutely fucked the economy & ransacked the public sector. They've pillaged and stripped bare the public goods we need (education, NHS), starved local councils, while feeding platitudes to the core vote (Boats! Rwanda!).
Decent housing is now an aspiration - wtf!
Aspiration is a fantasy - inequality has soared.
Businesses - at all levels - know the Conservative Party cannot and will not support them.

And there really is 'no money left'. It's been squandered and looted.

A vote for the Conservatives is like voting for the gang that broke into your home, smashed everything up, took everything - including the Christmas presents under the tee - and shat on the floor.

No one, no-one, rewards behaviour like that by inviting them back.

I'll vote for them but only as best of a bad bunch.

I don't like Kier at all.

I think part of the problem is that politics has become so toxic, fewer people want to go into it

The last 20+ years have seen a huge change in who goes into parliamentary politics. It is now very much dominated by exSPADs and lawyers.

Before that, there was a far greater proportion of those who had had a successful first career, so knew a lot about that sector, whether as the business owner/entrepreneur or as the Union leader. That brought so much experience to the House, and it was one of those things you only missed when it was gone.

A bit like insisting on competency in the carrying out of policies. Good administration and attention to detail seem to have vanished

Probably lots of votes for independents too

I don't know how anyone can objectively look at the Tories record over their time in power and the see the decline in almost every area of life and think "oh I'll have some more of that".

Pick any aspect of government / public life - health, policing, behaviour, the economy, etc - and we're considerably worse off than we were before the tories took power.

But then again, British apathy is legendary and if the tories can find the right combination of scapegoats for their failings who knows what will happen.

I wondered that as well @StrictlyAFemaleFemale

I think we might see a record low turnout. So many are anti tory but can't bring themselves to vote for anyone else.

Be careful what you wish for

Tories tend to come second to SNP far more often than any other party does. I know this flies in the face of the rhetoric of no Tories in Scotland, but there's a consistent high share of the vote and if we had just about any form of PR then there would be Scottish Tory MPs

I agree with PP's who won't vote for the Tories but don't feel able to vote Labour either. They aren't providing any clear messages of how they will changes things to the electorate in my opinion. The Shadow cabinet is light weight, I don't see any visionary thinking. Starmer is OK but not a leader, he'd make a good minister but not Prime Minister. I think Labour need to get back to basics, think about their core Northern voters, stop getting sucked into London centric politics.

Depressingly I'm not voting for who I think is best - I'm voting for who I think is the least worst, and has the best chance of winning the constituency. Given that the Tories are, without a doubt, the worst, that means either Labour or Lib Dems - but because I'm in a pretty safe Tory Constituency, it probably doesn't really matter either way.

I used to be a Labour Party member, but I quit once they started swinging to the right and began ignoring the membership.

Agree. There is usually a hidden Conservative population that appears for voting but not in the general discourse perhaps because the older population skews right? Any labour win will be narrower then predicated im sure.

I'm also not naive that they will fix anything to a great extent. The bar has fallen so low in the past decade or so that any marginal improvement will be massively lauded without any need to return to where we were then. I know this isn't down purely our politics but I fear that we have gotten used to things being shit as the new normal and expectations are lower now.

I have a similar feeling as pp. I'm voting Labour but I'm not very happy about it or them. I think there is a slight chance things will improve vs where we are. I just hope they improve things for the NHS, childcare and teachers, this would help so much with everything else imo. Interesting that so many of the proffessions being worst effected are female dominated. We seemingly have to be the ones to take up the slack in any crisis.

Unfortunately I don't think enough people care about anti-semitism or misogyny in the Labour party to make a dent.

Nothing is a foregone conclusion as far as politics is concerned.

However notwithstanding any major changes in the political landscape over the next 6-10 months, I feel it is more likely than not that we'll see a labour govt next.

I'm politically homeless to be honest. But I simply cannot understand how labour , and Lib Dem to an extent, are such terrible opposition that their win isn't a slam dunk.

Objectively, the facts are that in the last 13 years, under Tory rule

• Thousands of people needlessly died during the pandemic
• Thousands more have needlessly died as a result of missed treatment through the pandemic
• We had a prime minister given a police fine for breaking the law
• Liz Truss. Nuff said.
• Women's rights have been eroded
• Education has been a disaster, to the point where school buildings are literally falling down
• NHS waiting lists are horrendous
• Inflation and the economy are fucked (obv due to global reasons, not just their fuck ups)
• We've seen more strikes in the last year than we have in decades, so if you were a rail worker, NHS staff, teacher, you would be extremely unlikely to vote for them
• They left 3million people (myself included) stranded during the pandemic as part of the #excluded group.

Yet despite all of this (and more), labour are still absolutely shite. Kier hasn't just been given an open goal, the players aren't even on the pitch and he STILL can't score.

I genuinely don't know who I would vote for in the next election. It seems to be a toss up between utter shit, total bollocks pr absolute crap.

I predict it will end up being a labour/lib dem coalition