Anyone in Hartlepool - what on earth is going on

[Purplecatshopaholic]

Genuine question. (Apologies if this is in the wrong place, I don’t post much). I’m Scottish and in Scotland, and I am constantly aware these days of how different the views are of Westminster up here, to across the border sometimes. We also have our own Labour Party leader up here. But really? Is Keir Starmer that bad? Are other parties not available? Who on earth is still voting for Boris…? Any WHY?

I really think we need to get over Tony Blair and Iraq.
A centrist Labour party won three GEs.

@overnightangel

Turkeys voting for Christmas and thrilled to death about it

This is a little snapshot - and there are many others on this thread - of why people don't feel Labour represents them. There's a sneering superiority, telling people they are stupid if they don't vote Labour. It's a failure by the party to offer a credible opposition with policies that voters will actually want to vote for, that's where the problem lies. Not stupid voters.

Don't think there's much point worrying about the strategy that will win Hartlepool - it's just one of more than 400 wards around the country. This is a today-only argument.

I agree with GlassBox those people include many who vote around the centre.

Turkeys voting for Christmas and thrilled to death about it confused

You’ll forever be in political wasteland if you can’t see past this kind of stuff.

On the upside, the hardening Tory control of England makes the breakup of the union all the more likely.

Silver linings.

Keep seeing "woke agenda" in posts like these can someone please explain what this is and why some people seem threatened by it.

I think @hamstersarse summed it up perfectly:

The Labour party tell me I am racist (white privilege and do not want unlimited immigration), transphobic (I believe men cannot be women), colonialist (I don't believe we should rip down historical statues), offensive (cannot have free debate), privileged (because I have had a stable family background - that one is particularly confusing as that is what they claim they want for everyone) and also that women need a leg up to get on.

People may vote for someone they dislike but they will never vote for someone that they believe dislikes them

This is it in a nutshell.

As proved by @19bears and many others They've moved to the right to capture the mood of those who once hid their prejudices

When will labour supporters learn that telling people you despise hate them is not a winning electoral strategy?

You could blame the electorate which is the Labour standard course of action. What I would suggest is uncontrolled immigration impacted those already struggling for work and the crime it brings. Anti-British identity politics getting down on one knee and worse of all middle class comfortably off preaching to an electorate that's not listening. The Conservatives just need to show up they have it on a plate.

@GlassBoxSpectacular

I haven’t assumed that Labour voters defecting to Tories don’t feel represented by the Tories, but they are not, nonetheless.

The Labour party tell me I am racist (white privilege and do not want unlimited immigration), transphobic (I believe men cannot be women), colonialist (I don't believe we should rip down historical statues), offensive (cannot have free debate), privileged (because I have had a stable family background - that one is particularly confusing as that is what they claim they want for everyone) and also that women need a leg up to get on.

This is the most self-pitying nonsense.

@adeleh
Precisely! Have the cons actually managed to twist this to turn the focus onto the what, rather than the why?

I’m not in Hartlepool, but for all the caterwauling here about wallpaper, Google is your friend. I imagine even those silly people of Hartlepool have it too... www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/hartlepool-by-election-paul-williams-saudi-arabia-b1819597.html%3famp

Why are pp still mentioning Brexit? It's done and in political terms finished with.
Yes there are many problems to be faced, several of them in NI but they are being addressed.
We now have agreed to Diplomatic status for EU Envoy. To us it might seem trivial but the EU was very wound up about it.
The fishing access in Jersey is also progressing.
We, the British people need to feel that we are all trying to solve these problems. We do not want whingeing remoaners explaining the faults of a decision made 4 years ago. It contributes nothing that is forward looking.
Hartlepool candidate please note.

"Fools rush in" ... Labours thought on why it lost. Everyone who didn’t vote Labour is a fool
No need to look at what it is doing wrong. It’s the voters fault that they aren’t intelligent enough to vote Labour

Indeed; they learned nothing before the last election and they seem to have learned nothing since, so instead we get disingenuous queries about "what does a woke agenda mean?"

It's all been explained countless times before, but the Momentum backed hard left aren't listening so Labour continue to go down the pan and we're stuck with the rotten Tories for want of a viable alternative

How they must wish that they could tell people how to vote, just as they seem to believe they can tell people how to think

@IntermittentParps

I really think we need to get over Tony Blair and Iraq. A centrist Labour party won three GEs.

In its history, only three Labour leaders have won a majority at a general election. None of them were on the left. That tells us something.

@ShoppingPrecinctPrincess

On the upside, the hardening Tory control of England makes the breakup of the union all the more likely.

Silver linings.

Yup.

And all the people who insisted they needed to feel proud of their country will have a much smaller country to feel proud of.

So to everyone who says Labour needs to appeal to the masses - what would that look like? What policies do they need in place?

@DogInATent

1. Brexit (and a bit of perfectly timed distractive gunboat diplomacy against the French). Leave still believes it's being frustrated by Remain and that it wasn't fundamentally flawed from the start.

1. The working class of old isn't the current working class. Labour isn't the party your grandfather voted for, but dead grandfathers don't vote. The working class isn't the working class that people who refer to things as Working Class with a sense of nostalgia thinks it is.
2. No one wants to pay higher taxes, and everyone believes that given the opportunity they'd be in the higher tax bracket next week.
3. No one wants to be a 'Centrist'. Both extremes want the Blair/Brown years remembered for the Iraq war, they want everyone to forget about the every day improvements and progressive achievements that were made.
4. We have a really terrible electoral system, but no one in power wants to change it - because it supports the two-party system as it is.

Actually, this covers it.

@ArabellaScott

I had to laugh at this post: Urgh, the last thing we need is another Tony Blair

What exactly is it about the only Labour leader to win a general election since the 1970s that you don't need?

Someone who takes the country into an unwanted over oil under the auspices of ideology?

I marched against the Iraq invasion and I said I'd never vote Labour again after that. But times move on and I have voted Labour on occasion since.

And Labour won't get elected again without another Tony Blair-type leader.

Brexit is as a process may be done but the ramifications are only just beginning. It's fascinating to me that so many ardent Leavers are now desperate to try an end any further mention of Brexit.

why could that be I wonder?

‘Boris really cares about us, he won’t let us down’

So the first group he shafted with his Brexit Deal were the fishermen - the very ones who had been the poster boys for how wonderful Brexit was going to be.

Who will he let down next?

@AsMuchUseAsAMarzipanDildo
Agreed... BUT that was declared!! Unlike the wallpaper... the whole point is not that they can't accept donations, but that it needs to be transparent to at least allow people to go "ok, so I can see what's going on there and can make an informed decision about who I'm voting for"

@ShoppingPrecinctPrincess
Yeah let's watch the results up north...