What do the tories have to do to lose an election ?

[Desmorelda]

There have been suggestions in the press that within the next year Johnson will call a general election what with the infighting going on in the LP and life for many returning to normal.
At the moment the Tories are still garnering a decent percentage of prospective votes in polls. On a recent thread about Angela Rayner's choice language most posters were incensed that the PM had been subjected to such insults and felt that this genuinely made the opposition unelectable, such was
her threat to the moral fabric of the UK. However bad things are, people seem to have short memories at election time. Default vote is for the tories, however fiscally inept they are, despite multiple incidents of cronyism and corruption, dishonesty, documented lying in parliament.
I appreciate other parties are equally as incompetent but in a more bumbling, less cynical way. The Tories on the other hand are tefal plated and are not subjected to the same rigorous moral standards as the lib dems or the LP, both by the press and voters. I find it mystifying as someone not born in this country that people are so complacent and forgiving. So I just wondered how bad do the Tories have to be to lose your vote. Or maybe explain what have they done so well in the last 11 years to deserve your vote ?

i dont know the answer to it really , they are a disgrace and yet iv seen in comments under newspaper articles from people that clearly support them , it all comes down to brexit really , boris johnson got them their precious brexit and those suppporters are going to be loyal to them

i fully intended to vote labour in the last election ,but sadly on the day i was bedridden with norovirus and could barely make it it to the bathroom let alone up to the town , even labour seem useless now , next time it will have to be the reform party , its the only option or party i can think of to even bother voting for

@lifehappened

I thought Starmer was going to do it for me, then I realised he was really quite shit, and even more stupid than BJ so I'm still waiting!

Why do you say this lifehappened (not goading, but curious)?

KS hasn't had a fair crack at the whip yet because of Covid but he is getting himself out there now.

I know this isn't everyone's view but personally I think he has a good chance of catching all the dispossessed "middle way" voters who currently don't have a home.

And why the fuck didn’t Labour oppose Brexit?
That was all it would have taken, if this was all do predictable why didn’t they predict it? They are just as culpable as the Tories for that shit show. They have had nothing useful to say during the pandemic. Add all this nonsense about cervixes and I wouldn’t trust them to run a bath, never mind a country!

If there is another election I will vote Conservative. I will not vote labour whilst they have no idea what a woman is. I think they have alienated a hell of a lot of voters by saying that.

I think it's a case of what we have is dire but why vote for something just as dire.

Stick with the dire you know!

I've always had hope for Starmer as I like his history as a lawyer and what he believes in.

However I'm a woman - so does he actually believe I exist?

The Torys win because they have a monopoly on right-wing voters. There are other contributing factors but it's really as simple as that when it comes down to it.

If you look at the data from the last election, more votes went to left-wing parties than to right-wing parties but we end up with a right-wing government because of how split up the left-wing vote is. If you're right-inclined, there's one party that gets your vote (which is why Farage stood down his candidates in the last election; he didn't want to split the vote). If you're left-inclined, there's Labour, Libs, Greens, SNP, etc. If there were more parties on the right, or less on the left, the end results would look very different.

Voter apathy is also a huge issue, particularly in the young. More people didn't vote at all than voted for the current government.

@Lottapianos
Christ alone knows. I can't make head or tail of it either. I'm a Labour voter usually but they can whistle for my vote after their shitshow of a conference. I would never EVER vote Tory though and have no idea why so many people still seen to think that Boris Johnson walks on water. I find it borderline frightening
This is how the Tories win, the media spits out a constant stream of negative vitriol about Labour which influences voters and splits the opposition.

The dominating force of the right-wing media presentation of the left also plays a huge part (including social media). Whenever something happens that reveals the truth of the current Government, the PM or the Tory party in general, the media responds with "Labour would be worse".

People then parrot this line in debate after debate but, often, can never produce any actual evidence that supports it. The public discourse around politics in our country has become a mix of "I feel/think it therefore it's true" and "My social media told me therefore it's true."

Realistically, the only party to vote for to remove the Tories is Labour. However shit they are. What we have to do to get rid of the Tories is vote Labour.

It is so ridiculous that people blame other parties for their vote.

Own your own vote or dont cast it. As you are responsibly for it and the outcome of that vote

You dont have to vote for the tories because labour aren't what you want. You should only vote for the Tories, if you want the tories on power, if you think they are best to run the country, if you dont think that vote for someone else or you are part of the problem.

Its noone elses fault for your vote than you.

@CamillaRose

The problem is the other parties Exactly. The Tories are twats but there’s no alternative. I mean Labour believes that women are rights-hoarding dinosaurs!!

And the mansplaining about cervixes from someone who clearly hasn’t thought twice about what a cervix does!

KS is supposed to represent the pragmatic sensible part of the Labour Party, but is unable to recognise the abuse suffered by Rosie Duffield or the circumstances when it is necessary to recognise medical facts.

I dread to think what the Tories could do worse, but at the moment Labour are not demonstrating that they could do better.

'Why is it always the left that list insults like this?

Really annoying.'

Oh well,what a shame. They're all true though

Something really drastic, like the leader fucking a pig, or something.

Oh, wait.

Whats surprising is that Starmer is just not a good speaker, he sounds like a Spitting Image John Major if anyone remembers him.......deliberately feeble and monotonous sounding.

Like it or not, what won Boris a lot of votes, IMO, was his air of cheerful, confident optimism.

Policy/woke/hard left matters aside, Labour need to find someone with that same air. I’m sure Keir’s heart is in the right place, but he comes across as dour and glum.

All parties need a breath of fresh politicians.

Never voted Conservative, but won't vote Labour because a. I have no respect for their previous approach to Brexit (state your position-have a position) b. I'm a woman c. They have never had a woman leader d. I worked for the CPS under Starmer and was not impressed. For a Labour leader let's just say he doesn't like listening to the little people/staff!

I don’t think it’s the media that puts people off voting Labour I think it’s Labour. The identity politics stuff, the activists going around demanding that people justify themselves, the smugness the hectoring. Ithink it’s true that the right think the left is misguided and the left think the right is evil.

Theres a giant dollop of moral licensing on the left which is a turn off for normal people. “It’s fine to call people scum because it’s true and I’m pure and a good person so it doesn’t matter what I say or how I behave” except a yougov poll suggests that only 19% of people think that it was fine for Rayner to call people scum - those are voters.

It’s also mischaracterising why people vote, really strange ideas abound that tories worship Boris. I don’t think that’s true at all it’s just that they like the other bloke (and in Labour’s case it’s always a bloke) even less. I don’t know anyone who voted conservative and doesn’t roll their eyes at Boris. Momentum looked like a cult from the outside that was off putting to centre ground people.

Labour activists seem to think you can shame people into voting the “right” way. It doesn’t work. The cons don’t have to do anything tbh.

If you're left-inclined, there's Labour, Libs, Greens, SNP, etc.

I think there is a concept of ‘progressive alliance’ parties now, and they are splitting the Labour vote, but the SNP is a nationalist party that has had support across the political spectrum and the Lib Dem’s obviously felt able to govern in coalition with the Tories very recently. Certainly the SW London libdem constituencies split the Tory vote.

I think the fundamental problem Labour has is that it still seems to be split into factions that hate each other more than they hate any other party. This is why it becomes appealing for voters to vote Green because they hate Blairites or Conservative because of Momentum, or to just not vote.

Because Labour doesn’t know what a woman is.
Because round here, many people have had a good lockdown - wfh and saved on commuting costs, many key workers who had children in school or a part time mum to keep an eye on school work.
Because jobs round here are plentiful and salaries are rising
Because I work in the public sector and the last thing the public sector needs is more public sector mentality - there is so much dross it’s impossible to get rid off.

The one thing that would guarantee my vote (once they’ve agreed that TWANotW) is more funding for education. I can’t see that on anyone’s agenda. Most of what Labour is banging on about is of little interest to me.

Nothing. Have you heard the crap that labour spout out these days. Their leader has no clue in all debates with bojo he just says the opposite, like a whiny child.

I have finally reached the point where I am utterly politically homeless. This week's nonsense from labour about women's rights has tipped me over the edge. I won't vote Lib Dem for the same reason after Ed Davey. There's never a situation in which I would vote Tory.

I wait to see about the Greens but I fear that they will also take a pro-trans anti-women line at which point I will be spoiling my paper and making clear the reason why.

@CamillaRose

The Conservatives may hate women but at least they know what one is. Until the other parties learn that I’m afraid there’s no other choice but to vote Conservative. There is literally nothing they could do to lose my vote - not until the other parties wise up.

This^

The Torys win because they have a monopoly on right-wing voters. There are other contributing factors but it's really as simple as that when it comes down to it.

And one of the key reasons for this is that they also have a monopoly on the right-wing press, which is most of the print press. There's a really telling bit in Tim Shipman's Brexit book where he says that the Conservative In movement were just totally confused and stymied by having the press against them rather than with them - that they weren't used to having their statements and figures picked over rather than just reproduced as fact and they didn't know how to fight for a hearing rather than just being handed it. It would be amusing if the consequences hadn't been so unfunny.

@backoffice

I think the British now really just want to be bossed around and shat on by rich posh boys. We think it’s the natural order. It’s like collective Stockholm syndrome. I can’t see it changing. They are literally fucking up our economy through sheer unalloyed greed and we just smile and nod and keep voting them in. They aren’t hiding any of it.

I’ve no idea why people think labour would be worse. It’s madness.

Perfectly put.