To think we won't see a Labour Government again for many years?

[Rosehip10]

Even discounting the changes in the ex-industrial former "red-wall" seats, no Labour leader has ever become Prime Minister without winning at least half the seats in Scotland. Even if Scotland does not vote for independence in the next few years, Labour is never going to recover there. If independence comes then it is academic anyway.

Combine that with the changes in the former Labour seats in the north (which I think will only continue) then a Government cannot be formed of London MPs, a few larger cities and some seats in university towns/cities.

I don't think Starmer is the most charismatic leader but I think any ppolitican would struggle to solve this. Very hard to try and appeal to ex-industrial seats AND young, metropolitan, middle class voters in London etc.

One of the best comments I saw yesterday was Labour trying to make traction of the conservatives being corrupt and stuffing money into places that voted for them, was people thinking "well all politicians are corrupt anyway, so we may as well vote for Boris to get some of that too!"

@CherryLemonade

I'm not a fan of Boris but his vaccination programme has been fantastic. The current government was well ahead of other countries in getting the vaccines ordered and rolled out.

It’s not his programme. It’s the NHS. Test and trace as his and it is, has been and always will be utterly shit. In wales that’s also done by the NHS more cheaply and much more effectively.

Your average working class voter has absolutely nothing to do with these movements.

Your average white working class voter, you mean?

@musingloud

The Tories have united all the right-wing voters, and the politically illiterate. "Don't tell me what to think!"" We're not. We're asking you to actually think. Apply critical thinking. Voting Tory demonstrates an absolute lack of thinking at all. You have the gall to demand respect when you're voting Tory? You could start by having some respect for yourselves and by actually demonstrating that you're neither thick, nor gulliible, nor ignorant, and by not voting for the shits who messed things up so badly in the first place

Thank you for that brilliant demonstration of all the points I made.
Do enjoy the years and years of opposition you are bringing upon your party everytime you talk like this.

You have the gall to demand respect when you're voting Tory? Dear God, , you are explicitly stating you refuse to respect the very people you need to persuade to vote for you. And you accuse others of a lack of critical thinking. Dear God!

You accuse others of political illiteracy but I can't think of anything more politically illiterate than your strategy of ' I HATE YOU I HATE YOU AND I WONT' STOP HATING YOU UNTIL YOU VOTE FOR ME'

👍👏👏👏

In my lifetime we've only ended up with a Labour government when the Conservative party or on its knees and the electorate has had enough of them

Good.

It’s not his programme. It’s the NHS

The NHS is part of the DHSC, under the Health Minister, which dictates policy and provides money ie: the government of the present.

[quote MmeLaraque]@musingloud. It's not my party. I'm not the idiot Turkey voting for christmas every day.

Nope, no one is shouting "I HATE YOU!" You wrote that, not me. Don't put words in my mouth. If you're an idiot, own it. Keep your projecting to yourself.[/quote]
You're right, I extrapolated that you hate people who don't vote the way you want from the barrage of abuse and hatred that you directed to them in your post.

I stand by it as a reasonable extrapolation.

@Overthebow

What is Labour's policy on housing, the NHS, schools, employment? Have they actually got any policies?

These are the important things for me, I really have no idea what Labours policies on these are if they even have them. Conservative policies may not always be the best but at least they do focus on these key issues.

So you’ll support the Tories whose policies actively make those things worse rather than doing a little bit of research yourself? Nobody publicises policies this far from an election as everything might have changed by then and different priorities might be needed. It’s easy to find them though - quick google finds the 2019 manifesto which stands until altered by conference. You’ll find plenty about those core issues here labour.org.uk/manifesto-2019/ A democracy only works when people take some responsibility for their own political knowledge.

Labour didn’t have some sort of monopoly over the working vote. It’s a myth.

It did in places like Hartlepool. My dad was from the north east and always said voting Labour was like a religion there.

There’s so much good sense being talked on this thread. If Labour HQ had any sense it would look at threads like this to see exactly how ordinary people feel.

@ScreamingBeans

Transphobia in a public place. Is this what MN supports?

Oh fuck off. Point out the transphobia in my post or pipe down. I've said I don't want to wake up in a hospital bed with a man in the next bed. Where's the transphobia in that? Why aren't you accusing me of androphobia or whatever it is the incels call it?

That whole post was transphobic. "Until they sort out their attitude to women and stop pretending men are women if they say they are, they can fuck off and let the party wither on the vine and die for all I care."

No one gets to pretend anything. Do you not understand anything* about how transition works? Leave the aggression behind. I truly hope that none of your loved ones/children turns out to be trans, because they are not getting any support from you , are they?

I recall a Triggernometry podcast where FF was taken aback and said it's gotten to the point where being called racist is worse than being called a pedo - who most people think are actually the men who display the worst type of behavior. I want to retain the worst people as pedos in society and not replace them with say a 90 year old who uses outdated language in the wrong order for example c people rather than people of colour.

mmeLaraque ah, throwing in the ‘racist’ label to try and validate your argument. It no longer works. People like you throw the word about so much, applying it to threads where there actually has been no racism, that it no longer has an impact.

As an outsider looking in (I don’t live in GB) -

Why people aren’t voting Labour has been pointed out by countless posters on countless posts on MN & other forums.

The de facto response seems to be insults & ‘no, you’re wrong’. Perhaps listening to people might be a start.

@MmeLaraque I may regret weighing in on this but I afraid I just don't believe in it. I'm sick of hearing people say basic biology and be called transphobic like it has been proven and set in stone.

Let's hope not...

It certainly doesn't seem to be that way

[quote flyingtartar]**@btwwhichoneispink

I'm not from the area so wasn't aware of that but a quick Google reveals Robert Jenrick condemning the council for the new building and claiming it's the whole reason for the council tax rises. The rest of the article gives a more nuanced account of what's happening there and the reasons behind the decision for the build. That man (Jenrick) couldn't lie straight in bed so I'm not going to take his word for what's going on there.

However, local people are obviously convinced so that's that. It is a sad indictment of Labour that people believe the lies spun to them by someone who has been involved with corruption at least 3 times and wouldn't spit on them if they were on fire, rather than backing LAbour.[/quote]
But they aren't lies. Even when faced with the scandalous behaviour of the Labour council, and their excuses for doing what they are doing, you make out like it's not a problem and still try to deflect the blame back to another party that has nothing to do with it. And then accuse the public, who are fighting against this taking place in their own towns with petitions and protests, of being misled by the Tories.

There is just no hope for some people. It doesn't matter what Labour do, there will be people making excuses for them and laying the blame elsewhere.

@cardibach "A democracy only works when people take some responsibility for their own political knowledge." Absolutely correct, but we can't have that, can we?

"Don't call us stupid"

Even if they demonstrate utter and total stupidity.

Most Tory voters I know have no opinions about transgender. It’s my liberal labour voting area friends that do as the feminism movement is more alive in middle class UK.

The Tory voters I know feel heard under BJ, they moan about the NHS and so mind if it’s cut even though most of them depend on it, they moan about immigrants and jobs and BJ speaks to what they need. They see Labour as like a middle class student with Marxist newspapers. It is strange as my Tory friends are traditional working class voters, and now depend very much on the benefits system, but are very into the notion of standing on your own feet, capitalism. I don’t agree with it but at the same time, there is a feeling of being talked down to and ignored that I think is really relevant. And not listened to.

For me I was labour but now for the first time am sick of the lot of them! I believe in democracy and voting, and so feel a bit of a fraud myself. What do I believe in? Who do I believe in? If I don’t vote labour now, if my working class friends don’t, then who does?

Depressing that this is our status quo.We badly need the electoral system to be reformed but there is absolutley no incentive for the current Government to agree to that.

Get in bed with Murdoch the king maker, the righteous do not win in the fleapit of politics.

I'm far from being a fan of Shaun Bailey but the sheer amount of racist commentary about him from supposedly left-wing voters is seriously disturbing. The Tories were deservedly labelled the nasty party but it seems to me that Labour are competing to take over that mantle harder than they are competing to win elections. The loudest Labour activists seem to think that if they wrap themselves in a rainbow flag and post cutesy emojis then they can be as unpleasant and vicious as they like.

The recent pandemic has beefed up support for the Tories .Rightly or wrongly, the Vaccination programme has been highly successful and BJ will get all the credit. He has also managed to get us out of Europe which has pleased many older people .Although the last Labour govt was successful in many ways ,the public still feel we were left in a poor state financially when DC came to power in 2008. Added to this many people seem to feel "Middle Class" now ,Remember John Majors speech which said this . I personally cannot see how Labour will get in ATM or any time soon .Keir Starmer seems a little detached somehow and doesnt seem to have come up with any really fresh ideas .

Reading some of the posts here has absolutely demonstrated that political illiteracy
MmeLaraque are you one of the mumsnetters who thinks there should’ve been a test before citizens were allowed to vote in the EU referendum?

[quote MmeLaraque]@cardibach "A democracy only works when people take some responsibility for their own political knowledge." Absolutely correct, but we can't have that, can we?

"Don't call us stupid"

Even if they demonstrate utter and total stupidity.[/quote]
The thing is I do think as relatively well off middle class people, it is a bit ‘rich’ to tell poorer people what to think about things like immigration, education, NHS, Brexit. We just don’t feel the effects in the same way, we have a cushion.

I think we need to recognise that.

[quote supermoonrising]@Letsgetreadytocrumble
I think that’s a fun media narrative, eagerly digested by a small demographic of rightwing snowflakes, but i don’t think it’s actually what Labour has been doing. However, I’ll buy into it for a second ...dissing people may be a rubbish way to win elections - but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t a few million thick and bigoted Britons. There most certainly are. I’ve been abused by many of them over the years. But then there are thick racists in every country of course.[/quote]
It's not a 'media narrative' - it's evident on this very thread.

It started with Gordon Brown being overheard calling a woman who voiced concerns about immigration 'bigoted'.

And very recently we have had Alex Sobel, a sitting Labour MP, telling women who believe in single sex spaces, that he doesn't want votes from them.

The system is crap, a system where the LibDems get nearly the same number of votes as the SNP and yet only be awarded 10% of their seats makes no sense to me.

For some reason MN won't let me quote your post MadamL so here goes:

That whole post was transphobic. "Until they sort out their attitude to women and stop pretending men are women if they say they are, they can fuck off and let the party wither on the vine and die for all I care."

Right, I'm leaving the aggression behind as instructed. What part of that is transphobic? I didn't mention anything about transgender activism at all, you introduced the idea of transphobia so can you please tell me exactly what I said that is transphobic.

Let me guess, it was "stop pretending men are women if they say they are". In other words, in order to be a good Labour approved person, I have to pretend I believe a man is a woman if he says he is?

And you have no idea why normal ordinary people might no longer want to vote for the sort of arseholes who espouse this kind of crap?