If you were 'politically homeless' have you now found a home?

I won't not vote but can't bring myself to vote for any of the main parties I don't trust any of them. Ed Davey is my sitting MP so we will probably have a Count Bucketface type candidate. I will probably vote for them rather than spoiling my ballot.

I have a feeling that anti Tory Labour voting may put Ed in a vulnerable position. They are leafleting saying that they are not a wasted vote in our area (which they always have been in previous elections). The result on election day could be interesting.

@Brexile Yes you ve hit the nail on the head, i'll prob vote labour but tbh they are very uninspiring.

Thornberry has now said "Vat on fees will lead to parents taking their kids out and going to the state sector"

So that policy will be ditched, no tax rises for the v wealthy not even for billionaires, their plans on the NHS are basically the Tory ones, nothing on sure start, its all very wishy washy.

Labour wont be so corrupt & the Tories need to go, thats it really.

Sad times.

@Northernnature Compared to Reform and the current Labour party, they are left of centre, they even say that on their website.. on some issues, conservative on others.

Yes far left was a bit of a reach, i agree but the point stands, why consider SDP if you re a fan of Farage/Reform??? they are on the same wave length.

..and no i not see me voting remain as some sort of badge of honour, it was, originally, 50/50, it was only after listening to people like Farage that i realised they promised nothing more than a wish list.

Do you think you re clever because you voted Leave?

No real need for that comment was there?

Labour need to counter the argument that "It's all the immigrants' fault" by pointing the finger where it belongs: predatory private energy and transport companies, lack of rent controls or security of tenure, low wages (etc) and the lack of political will to legislate against any of this. Trouble is, this lack of will is shared by Labour itself, and any meaningful attempt to tackle these big problems will be perceived as an electorally damaging shift to the left, as well as alienating big business and shining a less than flattering light on Labour's own time in office, when they did nothing to tackle the root causes of these problems. But if they continue to let the far right set the agenda, they are doomed to become a pallid copy of Ukip/Reform/the Tories, and that is the greater danger.

Labour have nothing to gain, in the long run, by being so pusillanimous. Opposition parties don't win elections, incumbent parties lose them: and the Tories have already lost this election. Labour's lack of both ambition and of truth telling is setting them up to be an unpopular single term government which future progressive voters will stay away from in droves.

I‘m still politically homeless. No way in a million years would I vote for that shower in the Reform party. Farage and his odious mates can do one.

I am politically homeless in that I am (very) to the left of Labour, yet don’t love the greens. I agree with elements of the SNP. Never Tory or LD.

I was too young at the time to vote, but support brexit although not on the same grounds as most of the country (I liked the freedom of movement, one of the few benefits). I care about the environment, but care about people more. I am economically extremely left wing, and very liberal although not totally. I will vote Labour but they are not my political home. Neither is the greens, an old fashioned Labour Party would be more my home but I am probably more liberal.

Whilst I disagree with nearly everything reform say (I agree with them only 8% according to I side with), I can see that there is a section of society for whom the tories and Labour don’t represent them. They aren’t free market, low state capitalists but they are socially conservative. The two big parties have moved on in a way and these groups feel left behind. Our unrepresentative political system doesn’t help. Reform UK, as much I dislike them, are gaining support and bringing people back into politics who are thoroughly disillusioned. It is quite scary in a way. Whilst I agree with brexit / am a left wing eurosceptic, it scares me the way it was done and how much support Farage garnered / change he brought about whilst not holding much elected power.

On balance, I think Conservatives represent me most, but I can't bring myself to vote for them. Nigel Farage raised some interesting points on the debate the other day, but I'm not sure what his solutions are (obviously need to do more research when I can properly put my mind to it). I know there are some awful things going on in the world, but I do want to support green issues, so think I need to look into who represents me most.

Mind you, we're red hot Conservative in our constituency - DD has said she'll do her research and vote who the Candidate who's the strongest opposition, whoever it is!

SDP are not far left @Alexandra2001 it even says on wiki they are socially conservative. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Democratic_Party_(UK,_1990%E2%80%93present) It is very frustrating explaining things to people that can't be bothered to do abit of research. Usually people who think they're clever cos they voted Remain.

TRue but they wouldn't come to the UK if they cannot bring their families.

Never usually applied to EU workers because it was a just cheap 2 or 3hr flight back home.... why up root your entire family for that? ..... not the case if you come from Nepal.

Look what we voted for....

I had to laugh at that...

Reform = Far right
SDP = Far left...

Conservative values? what the fuck are they then?

I'm a left wing gender critical feminist and have felt politically homelessness for some time.

Tories have decimated public services and have never cared for ordinary people. Tories, Reform and UKIP all scapegoat refugees and migrants when it's the rich who are stealing from the poor.

I don't trust Labour, Lib Dems or Greens to protect single sex spaces, get gender ideology out of schools and to support the findings of Cass.

I feel incredibly lucky because I have a Party of Women candidate in my constituency so will vote for her.

You have to click on the graph @Defenestre as periods aren't clear without doing that. That clearly shows that spending was higher from 2010 than it was in the 90s and higher than ever now. I wasnt of course including covid years. And as we get more and more into debt an increasing amount of the deficit is spent on interest payments. Immigration doesn't help as those people also need health and social care as they age and non eu immigrants are a net cost not benefit. Things like restructuring the NHS to a more contributory onevas most of Europe does, means testing state pension and encouraging people off benefits are the only way forward and will have to be done eventually and politicians should start explaining this to people.

Public spending that actually makes it through to being spent on public services, or public spending that goes straight into the pockets of matt hancock’s neighbours and thames water shareholders? Problems of corruption, revolving doors and privatisation of natural monopolies make the turnover a fairly irrelevant metric.

Immigration can help by bringing in more people of working age whose taxes can contribute to the government's income and therefore the money available to pay for public services.

I think this only works if you do not allow them to bring in relatives who need a hip replacement or dental surgery or maternity services. Many will have 4 children.

Yep, Covid is an obvious outlier. I think the point is that if you look at the years prior to that, there is a clear and obvious decline in public spending through the period of Conservative government from 2010, mirroring that under Thatcher in the 80s. In fact if you were to superimpose the periods of Labour and Tory government over that graph the correspondence would be pretty clear.

@Northernnature

Two things I would say about that graph:

I don't think we can really include the Covid years as they were hardly typical.

And secondly, the spending on public services has changed. In the past the proportion of spending on things that grew the economy (e.g. education; science and technology) was higher, whereas more recently the money spent on public services is overwhelmingly spent on health and social care because of our rapidly ageing population.

Immigration can help by bringing in more people of working age whose taxes can contribute to the government's income and therefore the money available to pay for public services.

Please don't fall for nonsense that spending is low.

Very important point thank you @Northernnature

@MotherofPearl here is the graph of public spending as % of gdp - as you can see it is higher than ever and far higher than the 90s.https://www.statista.com/statistics/298478/public-sector-expenditure-as-share-of-gdp-united-kingdom-uk/ in actual terms also v. high and fast more than govt income which is why we have a deficit adding to debt and interest payments yearbon year.
That is why Labour have not pledged to increase spending. Please don't fall for nonsense that spending is low.

Those who are saying they'll vote Reform because of immigration - and saying our public services can't cope with more migrants etc - and that Reform is the party which recognises their concerns - have you paused to consider that it is Reform who have created this scapegoat?

The reason why public services are in such a mess is because of 14 years of austerity and Tory underfunding. The Tories have deliberately crushed public services. And then parties like Reform (helped by the right-wing press, especially the Mail), have manufactured the idea that migrants are to blame. Don't fall for their lies!

Immigration is not a key voting issue for me. I'm not even considering reform.

But stating that being concerned about high immigration means you are racist is probably about the most ill advised political argument I can imagine. It's both logically flawed and needlessly alienating.

But the two are totally the opposite. The Greens are deeply socialist, support mass immigration, have no interest in sex based rights and are further left than any other party. Reform are on the right and defend sex based rights and want to limit immigration. It's like saying the Tories aren't standing so I'll vote for the Socialist Workers instead!

I've been politically homeless for years and have held my nose every time I've voted. Usually wrt erosion of women's rights.

I've voted Labour, Liberal Democrat, more recently Green and even Conservative once, but Reform would be a step too far.

For life-long Tories who are embarrassed by the current fiasco then Reform will probably be their protest vote. And there are a lot of them out there.

Voting SDP or Reform is the only option for someone with conservative values. I think by 2029 there will actually be an Islamic party to threaten Labour so that will be the chance for a conservative party (not the Conservatives who are similar to Labour) to gain traction.

Yes are correct on failing to invest in technology but that may well lead to a loss of jobs, many of which will be skilled, jobs the unemployed cannot do.
Manual and Care work jobs are not quite so easy to automate.

You say there are 5m on out of work benefits? so people who are sick, chosen not to work, unemployable, older people etc and you think they will be able to become bricklayers, slaughter men, various trades people and are suitable to care for our parents?

Brexit meant that we lost access to, generally speaking, well educated people from (close by) culturally similar countries, with equivalent skills and good English for ones that are not well trained and bring in large numbers of dependents.
Its also meant that we've many more people here who otherwise would have gone to the EU either to work or retire.

Walk around my local Hospital in Plymouth and there are very high numbers of migrants working there, from Dr's to porters and everything in between, how would you replace them?

Its empty words to just say "halt migration until we fix our economy/nhs etc..."

Farage has no more idea on how to limit/stop migration than my cat does, he is selling cow pats dressed up as choc cake.

I wasn’t going to vote initially but I’ll be voting Reform now on Election Day.